Gaudi, the architect of God

society

170 years since the birth of the architect of the Sagrada Familia

“Life is love, and love is sacrifice. At any level it is observed that, when a home leads a prosperous life, there is someone who sacrifices himself; sometimes this someone is a servant, a servant. When two people sacrifice themselves, the life of the core becomes brilliant, exemplary. A marriage, in which the two spouses have a spirit of sacrifice, is characterized by peace and joy, whether there are children or not, wealth or not. If those who sacrifice are more than two, the house shines with a thousand lights that dazzle anyone who approaches. The reason for the spiritual and material growth of religious orders is that all members sacrifice themselves for the common good ”. They are words, not written, but spoken by the known architect of the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí, reported in the text Ideas for architecture. Writings and thoughts collected by the students (edited by I. Puig-Boada, Jaca Book, Milan, 1995).

A spirituality that converges upwards, always, that of Gaudì, a good man and genius of architecture of the past century. He was born on June 25, 1852, in Reus, near Tarragona (Catalonia). Joan Mirò called him “the first of the geniuses”. A genius at the service of God, it could be defined as follows: works that remain in history due to his charge of faith; beauty and faith, eternal dialogue with the Eternal. It is certainly no coincidence that he was called “the architect of God”, so much so that at the end of the 1990s the initiative was born – by a committee of ecclesiastics, academics, designers and architects – to propose him for beatification and canonization; the archbishop of Barcelona Ricardo María Carles Gordó initiated the canonization process in 1998 by defining Gaudì as “a lay mystic”.

Its first construction dates back to 1878and the Vincens house in Barcelona, where you can already appreciate his love for Gothic architecture but also his love for decorations. But we know that his name will remain famous over the centuries for the construction of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, ​​which began in 1892 and is still unfinished. A work to which Gaudì dedicated the entire last phase of his life. God’s architect will write about this magnificent work: “In the Sagrada Familia everything is the fruit of Providence, including my participation as an architect”. He knew he could not complete the work during his life and for this reason he always repeated: “It is Providence who, according to his designs, completes the work”, also because as he himself affirmed: “My client does not is in no hurry. God has all the time in the world ”.

When in 1914 there was no money left to continue in the work, he even decided to improvise (without much success) as a beggar for a few months. A vocation, a mission his: beauty, vehicle and instrument to reach God. Those spiers, those architectures are testimony to this. Gaudì’s architectural work really looks like a stairway to Heaven, reminiscent of the texts of Spanish mystics; it is the trace of a spirituality that took its sap from the earth, from that earthly horizon in which Gaudì was immersed, but which turned his gaze to the new ones; it is the oxymoron of art.

In 1926, leaving the construction site to go to the church of San Filippo Neri, Gaudì was hit by a tram and died shortly after in hospital. It is said – it is now a legend – that at that moment no one in the street noticed that it was the famous architect Gaudì: his clothes were those usually worn by craftsmen on construction sites.

It was really true: Gaudi, the humble craftsman of God.