Vaulted Cathedrals

I attended a friend's mother's funeral yesterday at St. Wenceslaus' Church on the west side of Chicago, just south and west of the Kennedy as it arcs into the loop. The church commemorates King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia.

The church was awesome in the word's proper sense: large, vaulted, with arches lifting one's gaze to the great crucifix at the center, amid gold patterns interlaced with wood, and many stylized symbols of the workmen and culture of pre and post-war Polish life. The church was quiet and reverent, formal and stolid -- a fixture in a now-changed neighborhood, its catholic school rented to the City of Chicago, its long aisles empty and silent on this funeral morning Tuesday, its pews polished and shiny, with Polish-language missals neatly stored. The left-hand altar boldly proclaims, "Cor Jesu sanctissimus miserere nobis," and atop the crucifix, "Introibo ad altare Dei".

I thought, why would anyone want to leave this church, and move to the the suburbs!

This, I thought, is how a church integrates a culture, how it draws the city into a meaning larger than the city, into a City of God! (see attached photo by Scott Mutter, Church Aisle from his Surrational Images.) The microcosm united with the macrocosm.

Listen to "Good King Wenceslaus"

The lyrics of "Good King Wenceslaus" show how Christianity embraces the city in its care.