One who sees the deserts of stone in our growing metropolitan areas, who detects the surrender to that anonymity and manipulation that all but suffocate both physically and psychically those who live in them, such a one might well say: if there did not already exist the idea of cathedrals, of a space for reflection, for stillness, if there did not already exist a finger pointing to the mysterious, the eternal – then we should have to invent them because we have need of them.
As Christians, we need a place for recollection, which, generally speaking, cannot exist unless we ourselves are interiorly recollected. If Christians are to pray together, they must first be able to separate themselves from all the distractions of this world and to enter into the stillness that does not separate but unites. For nowhere is man so totally near to self and to the manifestation of self to others, as in shared silence then yields to meaningful speech.
Where the silent prayer of the faithful no longer exists, we might as well close the churches because they are becoming unsafe. Open churches were once the common property of all Christendom, the breath of the Eternal One in the midst of our busy world; they benefited the whole Church in a way that is indefinable but real. A church that merely “functions”, that is merely “functional”, no longer provides what was special to it: a space in which to be, a space in which to leave the world of goals and to enter ino the freedom of God. To erect such spaces is, especially today, a rewarding task that becomes all the more pressing the more we are isolated in the towering domiciles of our cities.
From: Dogma und Verkundigung, pp.266ff.
