St Joseph Seminary

Discourse by Fr. Shayne Craig, given at the opening ceremonies on May 2, 2011

Your Grace, Archbishop Smith, Archbishop MacNeil, Bishops, Brothers and sisters in Christ, guests and friends of St. Joseph Seminary and Newman Theological College:  Welcome!

It is now axiomatic in Catholic discourse that the Eucharist is the source and summit of our Christian faith.   Knowing that, we had intentionally wanted to begin the opening of our new campus with the Eucharist and this meal together - in the blessing that was not to be.   Instead, we find ourselves gathered here only at the end of this long year of opening - having finally reached the summit!!!  Which is to say, that either way - either at the source or at the summit - it's appropriate we're here - gathered around the table  - first and foremost to give thanks to God, for the gift of these new buildings and the place that they will hold in our community and in the mission of the Church - but also, to give thanks for the many people who have been involved in this project, who have given of themselves along the way:   our architects and engineers, our contractors and construction workers, our steering committee and Cornerstone of Faith committee, our Cornerstone coordinators and volunteers, and our donors and benefactors.    On behalf of both of the communities of St. Joseph Seminary and Newman Theological College:   thank you!  Thank you for the love and the gift that you have made, in making these new buildings, and this new campus, possible.

Together, we have truly left a legacy for the future, and a new and essential element for the building up of the Church and the people of God, a place and space for the formation of our future leaders, and the education of our people.

In those famous words of Mother Theresa, we have done something beautiful for God.

In an oft-cited phrase, Fiodor Dostoevsky once said that "Beauty will save the world."   Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the great theologians of our time, has taken up this theme of beauty and its importance for the Church.

"In a world without beauty…. We stand before the good and ask why it must be done, and not rather its alternative, evil.   For this too is a possibility, and even the more exciting one:  Why not investigate Satan's depths.  In a world that no longer has enough confidence in itself to affirm the beautiful, the proofs of the truth have lost their cogency.  In other words, syllogisms may still dutifully clatter away like rotary presses or computers which infallibly spew out an exact number of answers by the minute.  But the logic of these answers no longer captivates anyone.  The very conclusions are no longer conclusive….

Beauty is the word that shall be our first.  Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good, and their inseparable relationship to one another."

Beauty is the word that shall be our first.   But what beauty?   Von Balthasar goes on at great length in his immense corpus of writings to show that the beauty in question is the beauty of God, the beauty of love, the glory of God that we see shining on the face of our Crucified and Risen Lord:  Love that is stronger than death, light that no darkness can vanquish, no hatred can harm.

The new seminary and college are not just any sort of buildings, and far more than simple non-descript gathering spaces.    They are church buildings - and a Church building is first and foremost a sacramental thing.     Liturgical art and architecture is "faith's grammar in built form" (Dr. McNamara, Catholic Church Architecture and the Spirit of the Liturgy).  

As such, the Church limits itself to no particular style or epoch, but rather seeks always and everywhere to be contemporary to its time.  Faith's grammar is not confined to any particular style, either modern or traditional.  The same faith is proclaimed anew in every generation and must be so.

Donna Clare, our architect, reminded me of this.   We had taken a trip with the Archbishop, to look at some new Church construction and renovation projects, to see examples of liturgical architecture.  At one place we visited, they had renovated a very traditional basilica, flipping it around such that you now entered at the sanctuary end, through the apse, and its beautiful mosaic dome.   Unfortunately, you found yourself looking at what was the back end of the church, where a large ugly box-like organ was located - a not too happy renovation.   The Priests and others who lived there weren't too impressed by the success of the renovation, referring to it as "apse-backwards".  At another of the places we visited, we saw the replica of a Romanesque Church, that clearly wasn't.  Speaking to Donna about the building, she shared what disturbed her:  the building was not Romanesque, a style she loved, though it guarded the façade of being so.  It was not built of the same materials, in the same manner.  It was not hewn of stone, but made of gyproc.   And there was something disingenuous in simply aping an ancient look with modern means.   After our conversation I looked at other construction projects, where they had tried to create a certain look by mere imitation and replication, and I too found it false.  Lego-land.  The white church steeple, and small town balconies were there - but it was all, somehow, plastic, false, not organic, not real.

Donna made a convincing argument that architecture is always contemporaneous to its time, and must be so… inspired by other times, by classical principles, by the aesthetic of the Golden Ratio - but always contemporaneous to its time.  And so we have here around us modern church buildings, that are at once very modern in their use of certain materials, in the use of light and glass, for example, and yet very classical in their form, a basilica, an enclosed garden, and by the use of traditional materials of stone, wood, even concrete.

This mix of ancient and new is something that I particularly appreciate about our new buildings - and it is appropriate for that beauty that is ever ancient, ever new.  Faith's grammar in built form.

The heart of the seminary is  clearly the chapel, the Eucharist - something that is not closed in on itself, but the bonum diffusive sui, the good that goes out of itself.   Archbishop Smith put it simply, "I want the chapel, the Eucharist, to be the heart of the seminary.   I don't want it to be a building set off by itself, visited occasionally, but otherwise forgotten.   I want the guys to know that they're not in a frat-house."    Donna Clare, our architect, captured this brilliantly, I think, by having the chapel spill out of itself, through this glass skin that surrounds it, into the other areas of the building.  Everywhere in the building, you're in relationship to the Chapel, to the Eucharist.  It's an integral and integrated part of every space, every time.  Faith's grammar in built form.The courtyard, this beautiful green space at the heart of the seminary - the enclosed Garden, a sacred and significant symbol of the Mystery of the Incarnation, and Mary ever-virgin;  with our Marian garden of lilies and roses.  This garden that speaks of the alpha and omega,  recalling the original garden at the dawn of creation, and the tree at its center, that points already to the new paradise, the tree of life, that is at the very heart of the chapel. Faith's grammar in built form.

The chapel with its ceiling, the modern suggestion of a classical dome, the vault of Heaven, and the concentric circles emanating from the sanctuary - the message of God's love, proclaimed in the Eucharist, and the word of the Cross, that goes out to all the world… Faith's grammar in built form.

The reconciliation chapel…..central to the Christian life and its death to sin and self, and living to love and the other - central,  in the sanctuary of the chapel, yet discreetly tucked between the sanctuary walls, encased in glass - signifying the  transparency that is the heart of the sacrament, that is the basis for our Communion with Christ, whose sacramental presence, with its promise of communion,  is already in view.  Faith's grammar in built form.

Our formation lounges, the patron saints of Priests - St. Jean Marie Vianney - and of seminarians - St. Charles Borromeo, the great theologians St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, and their iconography that has St. Thomas counting off his 5 proofs for the existence of God; St. Augustine encountering the child Jesus on the seashore as he ponders the Trinity,  who tells him that such a task is like trying to fit the ocean into a hole in the sand.  St. Therese, the Doctor of the Church, and her little way of love - St. Jerome in his study, who reminds us that all theology is nurtured and has as its heart the love of the Scriptures.  

Each space - a place of beauty, but beauty of a particular kind:   the beauty that will save the world!  

The beauty of Christ, the Word made flesh.    And so we see that Word- first and foremost in the Chapel - in infancy, in the arms of his mother, under the protective gaze of St. Joseph, his guardian and foster-father; we see that Word spoken on the Cross, and on the way to the Cross;  we see that Word resounding in the sacramental life of the Church and every Christian, and in the preparation and path to Priesthood.  

But we see that Word elsewhere too!  Christ the visible image of the Invisible God, the Image of the Father, surrounds himself with images of himself.   Christ, in his parables, describes common things, rocks, wheat, sheep, and his use of them causes "even the rocks to cry out".  These stories provide a key part of the Image of the Father that Christ represents.  The Church too, as the body of Christ, acts as an image of Christ.  Parables, Christian art, the lives of the saints, are thus images of the Image Christ - images that we see everywhere in this building.  Faith's grammar in built form.

The nature of these images depict the whole Christ… Christ  depicted in a vision that is as whole and multisided as possible.   True, no architectural form or program can depict the whole Christ…  As Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman noted, about the greatness of God's revelation:  " there is no one aspect deep enough to exhaust the content, no one term or proposition which will serve to define it…"  

And yet, the various elements come together, and the various aspects speak to each other - together forming a picture, an image, a mosaic, blending and melding together to form a chorus, a symphony, a hymn in praise of the glory of God.

So many people are part of that symphony - but none more so, than its architect and inspiration:  our architect, Donna Clare.  To her, our most heart-felt thanks and gratitude!