Virtual Visita Iglesia

“Faith is an oasis in the heart…”— Khalil Gibran

Churches are awesome and awe-inspiring edifices. Not only because they are built on the bedrock of faith, and therefore they cradle the innermost yearnings of a people’s prayers to their God; but also because they are prayers and incantations recited through stone and steel. The more elaborate, the seeming more fervent the expression of praise. And when starkly simple, it is no less expressive of an innermost prayer.

In worshipping their God, the people who build churches and other places of worship make the edifice as grand as their God. Their effort to build a church or a temple is as devout as a prayer. A church isn’t just brick and mortar, it’s praise and prayer in concrete, or timber, or steel.

Left: Inside Matthias Church is a wall lined with swastikas. Photo by Joanne Rae Ramirez , right:Inside Santiago de Compostela Cathedralin Galicia, Spain. Photo by Büm Tenorio Jr.

Most places of worship make you look up or walk up, symbolic of how we look up to the heavens when we refer to our God…or whenever we praise Him.

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My late mother-in-law Lutgarda Quintans Ramirez once told me, “To travel is to see God.”

I remember the first time I beheld the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, I just knew it. There is a God, for how could someone be so inspired as to create — with a paintbrush and some plant dye — masterpieces that would defy the test of time?

Inside St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Passau, Germany is one of the largest pipe organs in the world. Photo by Büm Tenorio Jr.

It was my first trip abroad, and perhaps the Sistine Chapel as well as St. Peter’s Basilica’s splendor simply engulfed me. But I would be no less struck by simple wooden churches as the church of St. Catherine in Honfleur, the largest timber church in France. Its roof resembles the overturned hull of a ship and its interiors are made of wood. Since Honfleur is by the coast, its people used their shipbuilding skills to build the church.

I’m still humbled and awe-struck whenever I visit churches, whether in Bohol or in Barcelona. For in each church you see faith, history, culture and art intertwine, like the notes in a song of praise.

Today, Holy Thursday, Filipino Catholics traditionally visit seven churches and go through the 14 Stations of the Cross in each church.

Let me take you vicariously to seven memorable churches I have visited abroad, and how each of them further strengthened my belief in a God who has bestowed man with the genius that made him capable of creating amazing places of worship.

Here are four other churches that, if I could fly from one city in Europe to another in a day, I would visit as part of my Visita Iglesia. (In no particular order.)

Outside the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona in 2012 are Rita Dy, the author and Inquirer’s Thelma San Juan.

1. The 13th-century Matthias Church in Budapest, whose colorful roof is a palette of over 100,000 handpainted glazed tiles. The church is a cross between a place of worship and a fairy-tale castle, and inside, one wall is lined with swastikas! According to online sources, the swastika is actually a symbol of divinity despite the fact that it has become associated with Adolf Hitler and therefore strikes terror in those who have lived through World War II in Europe.

2. The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, a symbol that faith and worship is dynamic, and never ending. An architectural marvel by renowned architect Antoni Gaudi as well as a place of worship, the Sagrada Familia is an unfinished work of art that fuses man’s genius with divine inspiration. From 1883 to 1926, Gaudi worked exclusively on the Sagrada Familia, which is expected to be completed around 2030. Several Holy Water fonts inside the church are giant clamshells from the Philippines. The interiors of the church, typical of Gaudi’s style, are quirky and unconventional. Yet its façade is quite traditional.

3. St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Passau, Germany. Known as the Bavarian Venice, Passau is also called “the city of three rivers” because the Danube, the Inn and Ilz rivers all converge here. Do not fail to visit St. Stephen’s Cathedral, home to one of the largest church pipe organs in the world, with 17,774 pipes and 233 registers. To me, St. Stephen’s nave, with the frescoes and white trim on the ceilings that look like sugar icing on a wedding cake, is the most elegant I’ve ever worshipped in.

4. For those who seek the high of being in a place whose sheer architecture is already a monument of praise to an omniscient Being, then Santiago de Compostela Cathedral is the place to kneel in. You get a high, literally and figuratively, when you visit the 11th-century Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the biggest and most outstanding edifice of Romanesque art in Spain. The Cathedral is also famed for its 62-kg. “Botafumeiro,” a giant censer used since the Middle Ages to purify the air. According to Galician folklore, the  “Botafumeiro,” which was swung virtually from end to end inside the cathedral, was needed because of the smell emitted by thousands of unwashed pilgrims. The most dramatic part of the cathedral, the part that sets it apart from other jaw-dropping places of worship in Europe, is its roof. The steep tiled granite rooftop, 30 meters above the square, is not just the cathedral’s cover. It is like an intricate piece of sculpture mounted on top of the church, like icing over a multi-tiered cake.

One of the Holy Water fonts inside the Sagrada Familia. The Philippines donated six pairs of clamshells to the cathedral. Photo by  Joanne Rae Ramirez

(To be concluded)