Basilica of the Sacred Heart
“If church was always like this I’d go every Sunday” whispered one of my teammates. Our hockey team was in South Bend for a hockey tournament and had taken a group trip to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart for mass. Catholic and non-Catholic alike packed into the pews, soaking in the magnificent building and the art surrounding them. And, if my teammate's quote was any kind of consensus, it was an experience they’d never forget.
The space of worship has been carefully understood to be crucial, throughout Christian history and even before, stretching back to the complex and specific descriptions and instructions for the Temples of the Old Testament. The building orients the worship of the faithful in the grandest way, beyond the reach of a singular piece of art.
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart was built in the Neo-Gothic style, in the midst of the Gothic Revival. Featuring the traditional cross shape, the building itself depicts the cruciform nature of the Kingdom of God. At the center of the cross is the altar, the focus of the church — a reflection of the Sacramental nature of the church, according to medievalist and scholar of church architecture Richard Kieckhefer. Kieckhefer notes that “the sacrality and significance of the altar should be marked by its prominent position, its clear presence as the heart and center of the church” in the “understanding of a classic sacramental church” (64). The longitudinal nature of the main orientation of the church (the “vertical” part of the cross) invites movement and procession within the liturgy: “the altar and its environment exert a kind of visual and psychological pull throughout the service. Yielding to this attraction marks communion as the culmination of liturgy” (Kieckhefer 30).
While Christ crucified is at the center of the Basilica, reflecting the motto of the Congregation of Holy Cross (Ave Crux Spes Unica — Hail the Cross, our only Hope), the church as a whole is a presentation of the Kingdom of God, and of the union of the Church on earth and the Church in heaven through the mass. The space is vertical, keeping in the Gothic tradition, and lined with pillars, seemingly processing toward the altar. This leads the eyes to the heavens, where images of angels and saints are presented upon a ceiling of deep blue, a color reflecting both the heavens and the Marian devotion of those at Notre Dame. Kieckhefer holds that “entering a church is a metaphor for entering into a spiritual process,” and the Basilica of the Sacred Heart does this in an excellent way, leading the person entering the Church to approach Christ at the altar horizontally yet simultaneously lift their eyes in contemplation vertically (21). The angels and saints provide a sense of festivity, of coming together as an entire Body of Christ — not separated even by death — to worship God in the liturgy and contemplate the mystery of the cross.
The eyes finally land on a painting of the coronation of Mary by the Holy Trinity above the altar, reflecting the salvation of the Church and the adoption of mankind as children of God — precisely through the same sacrifice that is re-presented in the liturgy of the Eucharist occurring right below. Beyond and beside the altar is a reliquary, side altars, and even the final resting place of Cardinal O’Hara, reminding the Christian that veneration and private devotion are in their proper place when done in reference to Christ, represented in the high altar. The art and architecture together present the union of heaven and earth in the Mass: those below worship at the same liturgy as the angels and saints above, and the same salvation that is gloriously presented above — depicted also in the Exultation of the Holy Cross mural on the ceiling at the end of the Basilica — is the one that we participate in in the Mass.
The church is filled, inside and out, with paintings, carvings, sculptures, relics, and icons, celebrating the festivity and life of the Kingdom of God. The focus is unabashedly non-communal: instead of focusing on each other, we turn together as the faithful to focus on the Kingdom of God presented in festivity all around us. Through unchanging art and architecture, the liturgy is presented as eternally occurring, whether or not it is presented on Earth at the time. Architectural historian Dennis McNamara celebrates this ornamental aspect of traditional church architecture, writing that ornamentation reveals that “the wedding feast of heaven continues eternally even when we do not specifically reveal it liturgically, and the church building keeps that continued witness in its architectural ornament” (113). In contrast with a communal style church, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart presents the Kingdom of God vigorously through iconic imagery and architecture: though there may be no people present, the church is never empty, just as even though we may not be in mass the eternal sacrifice of Christ is always present in our lives. The entire building is itself an icon, presenting the invisible reality of the Kingdom of God visible.
