The rose and the potato

If it were for God, there would be no need for the walls of a church: “Heaven is my throne, earth my footstool. What house could you build for me? " (Is 66: 1). But man is fragile, he needs matter, praying he wants to see, touch, take refuge, feel welcomed. Even from walls. Yes, but which walls? On the floor of the baptistery of El Kursi at the lake of Genesareth, 6th century, it is written: Photisterion, place of light. In the archiepiscopal chapel of Ravenna, 6th century, an inscription says: "The light either was born here or captured here free reigns".

In Christianity, the church building and light are one thing: entering a church is entering a "different" light, in a space where light cancels darkness. Light is space but also time. Justin, who died a martyr in the second century under Marcus Aurelius, is the first to describe the Christian liturgy and its relationship with time: Christians gather in the same place "on the day we call the Sun [...] because it is the first day in which God from the chaos of darkness shaped the luminous cosmos of the world and the day in which Jesus Christ our Savior rose from the dead ». Light space, light time but also light life: light warms up, light fecundates, light produces variety, roses like potatoes, there is nothing that light does not touch and bring to life, because nothing escapes its heat (Ps 19: 6-7). But the light changes according to the cardinal points: the liturgy celebrates the east and the south, the east and the south, where the light rises and where it is brighter and warmer. The antitheses are the west and the north: as the east is distant from the west, so it removes our sins from us (Ps 102,12). In the ancient rite of baptism, the bishop turned the catechumen to the west to blow three times against Satan and reject the malice of the dark. Then he made him turn towards the east with his hands raised: towards the divine light of Christ, he was the goal of his new life as a child of God.

But the light is also artificial: in order to properly illuminate the Lateran basilica in Rome, Constantine had endowed it with seven large estates whose revenues were used to illuminate the church. In Constantinople, Hagia Sophia was so illuminated that the space vibrated like the sparkles of the gold of the necklace "that the bridegroom wraps around the bride's neck", describes Paolo Silenziario. Today we no longer use candles, but electric light, which should reproduce the effect and functions of natural light as much as possible. Should we worry about it?

Christian enlightenment is not vibration, rapture, ecstasy. It is seeing reality as it is, without discounts, starting with ourselves. It is looking at our holes and our distortions in the face. It is being more and more true. Thus we discover what true light is, the true walls of light in which to live: it is the distance between our West and His East, filled not by our darkness to struggle, but by God's gratuitous love for each of us.

Flaminia Morandi
NP Gennaio 2022