Only by starting from the Church we can create something for the Church. To us Christians, the main meaning of any church building is that we are a community of baptized people, we are the body of Christ. Materially building a church must be the genuine expression of the ecclesial consciousness of believers.
Mosaic itself is not and individual but a common undertaking. There is a ‘choir director’, an artist to whose vision the work is entrusted. But the work can come to life only if he closely cooperates with some other ‘chorister’ artists. The design will not be planned in theory by the choir director, because planning itself involves the choir. Each artist finds its proper place in the choir. In it, he can express himself to the best of his ability; in it, he can forcefully create and let life flow freely from him, or, better, from the choir, and into the work which is being produced. The choir director has mainly to ‘weave’ the creative relations together, considering the possibilities of each and every chorister. Thus the spiritual and ecclesial principle of starting from real people and taking into account their respective vocations, trying to make them create something beautiful, is actualized.
This method is very different from the one our contemporary world is used to: to draw a plan, then to look for the people and the best ways to carry it out, as faithfully as possible. The ecclesial principle is based on communion: therefore, its very foundations must be different, as well as its actualization. And the results are different too.
The ascesis the artist is demanded is not only professional and technical, but also ecclesial: he has to live up to communion. And this communion must be positively real: of course he has to sacrifice his own self, he has to be selfless. But the Passover is exactly what can guarantee him life. Sooner or later, anyone searching for the meaning of life finds out that life comes from the Paschal mystery. There lies the very foundation of communion.
The artists that make up the ‘choir’ come from different countries and different Churches. Our communion will be more real, the less we take it for granted. Therefore, whenever we start working, we pray to the Father for the gift of His Holy Spirit, who is the only One who can pour into our hearts that love, thanks to which we can love one another as well as create.
In the Byzantine liturgy, before saying the Creed, the Deacon addresses the congregation and say, “Let us love one another so that with one mind we may confess the Father…” The Holy Spirit is the life-giving Lord. For this very reason we cannot start creating unless we have begged the Father to send His Holy Spirit. That is the necessary condition for the work to be not only perfect from a formal point of view, but also alive: liturgical art must not be just descriptive; it must also be inhabited by the Mystery.