This is how you design a sanctuary. No double altars! The stunningly beautiful reredos does not contain an additional altar and the altar of Sacrifice looks like one unit with the reredos, although free-standing. It looks like the main altar, not the reredos if it had another altar attached and higher!
Perhaps my only critique would be that the six candlesticks should be behind the altar on the reredos and only lit for Sung Masses on Sundays or Holy Days. Then the altar would have only two candlesticks with the crucifix in the center.
I vacillate on that though.
6 comments:
One look at this and the committee(s) would say, "Oh no, we could never justify the cost....". And then turn around and give us a modernistic monstrosity at twice the cost.
LOL!
Pius XII had this to say about "innovators:
In 1933, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) gave a prophetic warning concerning the tampering of the liturgy:
“This persistence of the Good Lady in face of the danger that threatens the Church is a divine warning against the suicide that the alteration of the Faith, in its liturgy, its theology, and its soul, would represent.
I hear around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her ornaments, and make her remorseful for her historical past.
Well, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must affirm her past, or else she will dig her own grave.
I will fight this battle with the greatest energy on the inside of the Church, just as outside of it, even if the forces of evil may one day take advantage of my person, my actions, or my writings, as they try today to deform the history of the Church.”
-Cardinal Pacelli, Secretary of State.
The Sancta Maria Stella Orientis chapel at Opus Dei's University of Asia and the Pacific in Manila.
Interesting... At first, I think, "It works, this juxtaposition of contemporary and the historical styles." But then, I'm not sure.
There is no shelf on the reredos on which to place the candles. The celebrant's and assisting ministers' chairs are there in the middle behind the altar. I don't think the candlesticks work - wrong color, competing with the reredos, overly large - just a distraction.
A brief video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Z8_1Q3XKI
The candlesticks seem nicely proportioned against the reredos. Way better than the ashcans placed on many altars - but I guess they use those to highlight the entertainer in chief on the altar. So humble!
I disagree, Father. if the altar is going to be freestanding and Mass is going to be facing the people, it looks much more dignified to have everything on the altar mensa. If there's one thing that pains me in a versus populum Mass, it's a bare altar. Putting the candles behind on the reredos gives the impression that the altar itself isn't important or worth decorating.
All of this is set up exactly as St. Josemaria wanted the Work to celebrate the Novus Ordo--with altar candles on the mensa of the altar, with the crucifix in the middle. And before anyone points out that he continued to celebrate the older form in the 1970s, the point is that he personally directed and implemented how the Novus Ordo would be conducted in Opus Dei oratories, directives that remain in effect to this day. One thing that may not be obvious here--in Opus Dei oratories where the altar "faces the people," and the tabernacle is behind the altar, before mass a tryptich containing an image of Our Lady is put in front of the tabernacle to "hide" the tabernacle during mass so that the priest never turns his back on Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. This was not something St. Josemaria originated--it was customary in Spain for centuries, where the altar faced the people with the tabernacle behind it, to "hide" the tabernacle this way during mass as a sign of respect for the Blessed Sacrament.
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