The Cathach 2011 - Volume II (PDF) - Sligo Libraries

S a c r e d S pa c e
Young death is a savage thing, like an act of war. The mind, rightly, refuses at first
to accept it. A year and a half ago, there was a car accident, one of many that
night, in the city of Chicago. Over several days, a thread slowly and inevitably
pulled from a tapestry, tearing my world, and the world of my family. Time began to behave
erratically and people repeated phrases as if words might somehow help.
Solvitur ambulando: walking solves it, is one of the few dictums I have generally
found to be true. This time walking will not solve it, but walking is all I can do. I walk
the town and tired, find myself in Middle Street. The Augustinian Church is quiet. A
man sits on a chair. A woman prays, seeming agitated. This is no San Sulpice, with
it’s dark lowering Delacroix painting of a desperate Jacob wrestling with the angel,
whose face is that of someone everyone would love, if only they could meet him. This
church is neither Old Testament, nor enslaved to the functional. White statues, white
altar, white faces of the little corner angel shaped like a capricious heart. This is
sacred space, the trick of stone and geometry made light, drawing the eye upwards,
through the arches poised elegantly along both sides, echoed in the high windows
where the late evening is lined up, like so many packets of blue.
I go to the small side chapel. Our Lady of Good Counsel, drawn by a glint of gold,
needing the lustre of those remnants from an older church. I miss the candles, but I
make my offering and make do with their poor electric shadows.
This alchemy is not, of course, purely architectural, but this is what Philip Larkin
calls ‘a serious house on serious earth’ in his poem about an unbeliever’s compulsion
to seek out churches. Reading it brings a shock of recognition. The need for churches
has not left us with the departure of both faith and superstition. They were where
people congregated, where communities worshipped and wept, where some still do.
They are what all good civic space should be - for everyone, of any creed and none.
This church stands the test of time. Here, the tabernacle, the nave and the apse allow
the idea of values beyond concrete. They legislate for the sacramental. They provide
little chapels of adoration, nooks and crannies of comfort in an age of nihilism and
brutalist design:
…In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized and robed as destinies.’
Four men, one of whom may be a priest, enter and recite a short liturgy, then leave.
Paul Walsh’s stained glass windows, situated behind the altars and in the side chapels,
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