Martyrs, Miracles and Midland.
One morning a colleague mentioned that I had been remiss in my duty to write about the Martyrs’ Shrine.
As luck would have it, a line from a movie surfaced, “If you build it they will come.”
Kevin Costner was right about that baseball diamond and so were the missionaries who built the Shrine in Huronia.
I can’t think of any culture that did not build something to reflect and express their belief on the earth and the skies above them.
They measured the paths of the stars, determined where the centre was, the sphere and a few other helpful bits of math and geometry. This enabled them to measure the phases of the moon, planets as well as distant stars relative to the sun, which was at the centre of their worship.
As a kid, I marvelled at the Pyramids and other great shrines to faith and divine proportion around the world.
Today, I regard church architecture as the delineation of a sacred space. The marking out, the formation of a ground plan, and the embodiment of the sacred Word in stone, has been carried out for centuries.
Some scholars refer to the style as Art Gothique, not Gothic Art, but something akin to “argotic.” Same root as Argot.
That we should have the great good fortune, as pilgrims, to live in this sacred precinct is cause for wonder. With wonder comes understanding.
Commenced in 1926, the land around what was to become the Shrine, was acquired by the Jesuit Fathers. It had already been deemed sacred since the early 17th century….a place of suffering, death, and eventual beatitude for those who sacrificed their lives for their faith in something entirely invisible.
Spirit they call it, but it has many names.
The enduring mystery, which sustains us, in spite of nation states, in spite of political creeds and in spite of extreme partisanship, lies at the very centre of this shrine.
How could the exterior expression of this faith not have as its perfect and bodily expression, an edifice of such perfect proportions?
I rest my case. Location is everything. Now, can I close you on this deal?
Top of the hill, already a sacred mound built by those who were here before the Natives, identical in many respects to Notre-Dame, Lourdes, Amiens Cathedrals.
All were sacred spaces and springs of water where worship had already been practised. God has a covenant with all his people, not just one faith.
The claim to possess Jerusalem, either symbolically or otherwise is a myth.
All of us possess this city in our hearts, and guess what? This peculiar sacred architecture to which I allude to, has all manner of expressions, Parliament in Ottawa is one of those sacred spaces. I attach a photo of the Parliamentary Library for our readers’ edification.
René Hackstetter, Feb10, 2022.
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