Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025
This image is a kind of Visita Iglesia of our office projects, of seven churches completed or in construction or, the last one, in design.
The first on the list, on the far left, is our first large church project, Magallanes Church, aka St. Alphonsus Church.
There are aspects of what you see today that were not part of the original design, but were interventions that took place within the window of time that such things could take place in the construction schedule.
From the very beginning, there were always the two brick drum confessionals that anchored the main roof vault, expressing a statement by St. Alphonsus, patron saint of confessors, that “confessing to a priest is like confessing to Christ”. The two confessionals express that equivalency of the person of Christ to the person of the priest during the sacrament of confession, as stated by St. Alphonsus.
During construction we realized that the church could, conceptually, expand to become a study of the person of Christ. This is why we proposed to the client that the main doors, originally meant to be unadorned, become two panels showing wood-carved panels of the Life of Christ on one door and the Passion of Christ on the other. Christ said “I am the door.” The doors at Magallanes say “I am my life” and “I am my death.”
This in turn led to the pews being expressions of “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” making the church with each pew a repeating incantation of that expression.
Soon after we presented that idea of the doors, a new idea of the altar backdrop came to light, different from what we had originally presented. It became the culminating expression of the person of Christ in relation to the person of God the Father, specifically to the “I am.”
This is why the stained glass backdrop is based on the Burning Bush, alluding to the fire that destroyed the original Magallanes Church and containing all the reds, oranges, and yellows of fire, except for the three wisps of white smoke off-center that make up the aleph, the Hebrew letter that begins the “I am who am”.
This exploration of the person of Christ was not there when the parish council approved our design or when the drawings went to bid or when we presented to the Archdiocese of Manila. This is why the April 2005 Architectural Design Statement in our webpage does not mention it. It was not part of original design intent.
Each of my church projects is a canvass of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which we respond to within the constraints of time and budget. Frequent site visits are an essential part of the process, in order for us to avail of the artistic imperative - the inspiration of the Holy Spirit - that inheres in each architectural project. The spirit can not be put in a box.
Speaking of box, another example of the belated inspiration of the Holy Spirit is the tabernacle at St. Benedict Church in Ayala Westgrove.
The original design intent, seen at the altar wall, is the gold-leaf concavity framing the wooden crucifix that is planted on a simple wooden box tabernacle. The idea here was to contrast the glory of the gold concavity with the humility of the wooden cross and tabernacle. On earth, Christ was poor, but in heaven, his divinity is golden.
Later in the process and after original approvals, within the comfort window and at no impact to cost, we proposed - and it was accepted by the client - that the interior of the tabernacle be not just a box.
Today, when the priest opens the tabernacle to retrieve or return the Eucharist, one sees that the interior of this simple wooden box is lined with abstracted golden roots, suggesting that Christ’s cross is the Tree of Life. The act of opening the tabernacle reveals the connection between the golden glory of heaven, channeling through the humility and mortality of Christ, to the golden gift that is the Eucharist.
One could go on about how each church project is a process of continuing inspiration and evolving understanding, stemming from the original design intent, but for now suffice it to say that each project is unto itself a rich world of meaning.
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