On the Beauty of Christ the King Chapel

BY DR. DANIEL MCINERNY

According to time-honored tradition, a bridegroom on his wedding day refrains from seeing his bride until the wedding begins. Why does he do this? Would it compromise the validity of the marriage if he were suddenly to see his bride at the end of the wedding hotel bar a few hours before the ceremony? I’ve heard of such things happening, if only by accident, and know for a fact that the couples have gone on to enjoy very happy marriages. So why does the bridegroom refrain from seeing his bride? Presumably, because he prizes that moment of supreme revelation, that moment of high symbolism, when the organ cranks up and she appears—there!— at the back of the church, and he can gaze on her in all her magnificent and overwhelming beauty, ready to be given to him by her father.

It was with something of the same spirit of restraint that, in recent years, I refused all invitations to take an early tour of Christendom’s new Christ the King Chapel. From left and right, voices would call out to me: “Come and see how wonderful it is! You can’t even begin to imagine it! Just put on a hard hat and come!” But, like Odysseus’s men, wax stuffed in their ears, I resisted these siren songs. I passed on, biding my time, letting the construction workers and craftsmen do their work. I waited until all was perfectly finished. Why? Because I, like a bridegroom, prized that moment of supreme revelation, that moment of high symbolism, when the organ would crank up and she appeared—there!—herself a church, and I could gaze on her in all her magnificent and overwhelming beauty, ready to be given to me by the Father.

And indeed, it was quite a moment when, right before the start of the Dedication Mass in April, my wife and I walked into the new chapel for the very first time. As a matter of conscience, I must admit that this wasn’t, strictly speaking, my first glimpse of the chapel interior. Once, in a moment of weakness, I had watched a few seconds of behind-the-scenes video showcasing the interior construction of the chapel. But it was early days, and the video didn’t show much. Nothing, in fact, could have prepared me for the shock of first seeing the splendorous interior of the chapel on that bright spring day.

But now, it occurs to me that I had the symbolism all wrong. It wasn’t so much that I, like the bridegroom, was waiting upon my bride, the Church. It was, rather, that the Bridegroom, symbolized by the new chapel, was waiting upon me, the bride, to walk up that aisle and give my life and my love to him.

Plato once wrote that education is learning how to fall in love with beautiful things.

His point was that education is not a mere matter of grasping concepts and arguments. However important concepts and arguments are, they are nothing if they are not part of the experience of falling in love with a subject matter. For what happens when we fall in love? We become one with the beloved. We become like the beloved. Our whole being conforms to the object of our love. Education, Plato knew, was about falling in love with what is true and what is good. But he also knew that we can fall in love with the true and good only insofar as we see them as beautiful.

The new Christ the King Chapel at Christendom College is a work of immense beauty. The ancient Greek word for beauty is derived from a verb meaning “to call.” A beautiful thing is a calling; it beckons us to it and invites us to conform ourselves to it. Whenever I drive down I-66 and see the Gothic tower of the new chapel peeking above the trees, I cannot help but feel the tug of Beauty’s call.

What is it about beauty that we find so attractive? St. Thomas Aquinas says that beauty has three characteristics: integrity or wholeness, harmony or proportion, and clarity or radiance. Talking about beauty in this way is, of course, very abstract. These three characteristics of beauty are found in everything beautiful: from a smile on a child’s face to the stained glass window featuring Aquinas himself high above the right transept of the new chapel. But we do not fall in love with abstractions. We fall in love with particulars. The new chapel gives us so many particulars that are whole, harmonious, and radiant. Consider, for example, the wholeness of the cruciform structure itself; the harmonious relationship between the two towers on the façade; and the golden radiance of the altarpiece.

To visit the chapel only once is to accumulate many favorites. Among mine are the side altar dedicated to the Divine Mercy; the stained glass windows featuring St. John Henry Cardinal Newman and the Legolas-like St. John the Evangelist; and the statuette at the back of the doughty St. George defeating the Dragon.

In loving the beautiful art of the chapel we become one, in a way, with the true and with the good. But this is to talk about the union that beauty makes possible only at the level of human art. As a place of worship, the chapel in its beauty promises a far more intimate union. In one of his central texts on the theme of beauty, Aquinas speaks about beauty as a characteristic of God the Son. The Son’s Beauty, above all, is what calls to us from the chapel. As the Bridegroom he is truly present—there!—in that moment of supreme revelation at the Mass, beckoning us to join him at the altar.

Daniel McInerny, Ph.D., is an associate professor of philosophy at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia. His scholarly work focuses on questions at the intersection of art and the moral life. He recently published a new novel titled The Good Death of Kate Montclair (Chrism Press, 2023).