Europe in these Times – Things Unfinished

Barcelona, Spain, 31 March 2022

The spires of the Sagrada Familia start to become visible a block or two away from the basilica, above the mid-rise apartment buildings that line the leafy streets of Barcelona. Emerging into a little park next to the site, one must wind around to find the entrance, with its chaotic crush of tourists confused by the entry procedures. Once these procedures (indeed confounding—specified entry times required when reserving tickets are entirely ignored and don’t expedite access) have been worked out, entry is a mere thirty minutes away. Despite the disorganization, though, anyone standing there in the line will be immediately taken by the unique and impressive structure outside of which they are standing.

The exterior, still under construction

Envisioned and initiated by Antonio Gaudí, the Sagrada Familia is one of the most recognizable structures in the world, a massive and multi-spired basilica on and within which every element is painstakingly and purposefully designed to convey both story and feeling. Two façades in particular highlight the range of emotions that a visitor is meant to experience. The first, the Nativity Façade, through which the tourist enters the structure, is intricately textured and bedecked with exquisitely-carved figures, the whole thing conveying love, warmth, and the richness of a world given the gift of Christ’s birth. Directly opposite, where the tourist exits after seeing the interior, is the Passion Façade; all harsh angles, surfaces bereft of texture, and carved figures of blockish, plainly geometric proportions, the scene conveys coldness and brutality, befitting the torture and death that it commemorates.

The Nativity facade

Inside, the church is exquisitely detailed and awe-inspiring. The columns of the apse rise nearly one hundred and fifty feet to the vaulted roof, separating off into branches as they do, giving the impression of a space upheld by trees. The altar’s crucifix hangs down from above, with the crucified Christ looking up to a canopy ringed with light. Most strikingly, an ethereal light of shifting color envelops the space and the visitors that move within it. Warm reds, blues, yellows, and greens flow in through the stained glass on all sides, so that standing in any one spot in the church is a wholly different sensory experience than standing in any other.

One cannot tour the place, however, without being aware of the amazing fact that even now, one hundred and forty years after Gaudí began building this church (in 1883) and nearly a century after his own death, its construction is not complete. Indeed, the crane rising amidst the spires outside makes this fact unmissable, as do the signs posted throughout the space: “We are a basilica under construction.… We apologize for the inconvenience”.

The idea of this incompleteness pervades the visitor’s experience. Walking throughout the premises, one cannot but reflect deeply on the fact that this, perhaps the most impressive church in the world, is, more than a century after it began to take shape, still not the structure it was intended and envisioned to be. At first one simply contemplates, with awe, that there was or can be an artistic vision so elaborate and complex that it has taken several lifetimes of committed work to make real. But then, and logically, thought drifts to that committed and continued work, to the inspiring fact that so many have chosen to carry on in the service of that initial artistic vision. The next questions, too, arise naturally, and linger: will it ever be done? Will this grand vision ever be fulfilled? The church is indeed epic in scale, capturing so much of the Gospel story and beyond; but if it is meant to capture the whole of the faith, should it then not always be in a state of striving to achieve the impossible?

Unanswerable as these questions are, there is, in turning to Aquinas, a way to reach some understanding through them. Only God has “essential existence”, in that it is of His essence to exist. All the elements of the natural world, and humans, and the creations of humans, have only contingent existence; their essences are not sufficient to explain the reality of their being, which can only be perceived and understood as being given from elsewhere. The very fact that one can understand that an inanimate object (a car, say, or a building) exists for a given end is a testament to the existence of a rational mover beyond them. For the Sagrada Familia, Gaudí and his successor generations were (and are) the rational movers that gave (and give) the structure its existence and its purpose; beyond Gaudí and his successors, of course, there is only one rational mover that gave (and gives) them their essence, that made them for their ends.

The nave

If their ends are the appropriate ends—as one surely understands the construction of so awesome a basilica to be—then, perhaps it is most appropriate to view the unfinished work here as the unfinished participation of humankind in God’s work. The Sagrada Familia stands as a testament that Jesus, whose life it depicts so carefully and beautifully, left humankind tasks to do. The Sagrada Familia stands as a testament, in other words, not just to the contingent creation of humankind, but to its duty to engage in contingent creation of its own, as a way to share in God’s work.

The Passion facade

But of course, this is one church in one place, and no matter how awe-inspiring it is now nor in its future states, it is neither sufficient work nor sufficient creation in a world of nearly eight billion souls, of cultures and histories and experiences so vastly and richly diverse. Even should this one project ever come to completion, the work of artistic exploration and expression must and will go on, all over the world. Gaudí and his successors deserve immense credit for the grandeur of what they’ve achieved, and for sustained, century-plus labor to fulfill the vision of a singular artistic talent in service of a conception of religious beauty. But someone, some others, must take up the work anew, must push forward to express and explore the mysteries of faith. And so perhaps this is the ultimate take-away from a visit to this incredible place, of this story of inherited work: that others must continue to create, to explore, to pursue visions of religious art so grand and enduring that carrying them out may require generations of committed talent. It is work that can never possibly be completed, but upon which humankind must ever labor.