Missions Designed to Shed Light on Liturgy

The Catholic Voice ^ | Albert C. Pacciorini

[marshmallow]

Early American Catholic churches may have been built using geometry and sunlight to highlight liturgical and religious events.

Ruben G. Mendoza, an archaeologist and chair of the School of Social, Behavioral and Global Studies at California State University Monterey Bay, contends these "illuminations" were intentional, perhaps part of an evangelization effort by New World missionaries during the Spanish colonial period.

They were first noticed at Mission San Juan Bautista in 1997. Mendoza and others have spent the last 20 years researching the illuminations.

"This is not coincidence," Mendoza told about 200 people crowded into old Mission San Jose in Fremont on Oct. 4. "How they did this is anybody's guess.

"People used to accuse me of using Photoshop until they saw these illuminations themselves."

A ray of sunlight through a window above the choir loft focuses light on an altar cherub.

Saints' paintings, statues and parts of the altar can be illuminated, he said, often to coincide with a feast day.

"Mission San Jose has spectacular alignments," Mendoza said, especially around March 19, the feast of St. Joseph.

On the evening of Oct. 4, sunlight from a window above the choir loft shot a beam of light directly onto a cherub carved on the altar. In March, the sunlight directly hits a statue of St. Joseph atop the altar.

[livius]

There are a number of medieval churches in Spain that have similar features - a window or opening through which light hits a figure of the Virgin on a Marian feast day, for example.

[Mercat]

Wow. I’m attending a Catholic Bar Conference this weekend and one of the presenters is a licensed architect as well as a lawyer. I’ll show him this tomorrow.

[faithhopecharity]

even the cathedral uses sunlight to enhance the spiritual experience:

http://baghdadbythebaysf.com/2011/01/49-mile-drive-stop-two-cathedral-hill/#sthash.HUt8I7uj.dpbs