By Nigel Guthrie, Exeter Cathedral Priest Vicar
On our recent visit to Lisbon, Tina and I stayed just off Rossio, a grand square with the National Theatre on one side. And in a street just behind the square was the church of São Domingos (Saint Dominic) which is fronted by a plain, but imposing, façade. The church was dedicated in 1241 and was once the largest church building in Lisbon. Over the centuries, the Church, and the square outside, hosted the Inquisition, associated executions, and a horrible sectarian massacre, as well as royal weddings and, no doubt, many fiestas.
The church was damaged by the Lisbon earthquake of 1531, and then almost completely destroyed by the greater quake of 1755. Then it took almost 50 years to rebuild it. But that wasn’t the end of its woes. A devastating fire broke out in the church in 1959 which took many hours to extinguish. Firefighters had to work hard to prevent the destruction of the neighbouring, tightly packed buildings. It was restored once again and reopened in 1994 and is home, as we witnessed, to a diverse and colourful congregation, including many local people of African origin.
But the present internal appearance of the church is really extraordinary. The restoration after the 1959 fire left much of the damaged stonework in place while the rest of the walls and the renewed vaulted roof are painted in a vivid red/orange colour which reminded me of the flames of the fire. The great stone pillars are dramatically scarred and scorched, lending an almost sinister vibe to the place.
São Domingos now stands as a testament to the resilience of the people of Lisbon, and the resilience of the Catholic faith there, in spite of some of the horrors of the past. It was moving to see the church so well used today, with regular masses taking place and local people entering to pray almost continuously.
The decision not to restore the stonework to its original appearance was clearly a radical one, but it seemed to me to have a powerful spiritual message. None of us get far through life without disappointments, and many of us will have been scarred by our experiences of life: by illness or bereavement, cruelty or failure. Yet, in Christ, we have hope and can experience resurrection. ‘By his wounds we are healed’ and by our faith we can not only learn to live with our wounds, but to find new life beyond them, just as Jesus was brought to new life after his death on the cross. I find it telling that his wounds were still there in his risen body, as if to show us that we can find new life in spite of what we have been through. São Domingos seemed to embody that message of hope: that even beyond physical and spiritual trauma there can be new life. Or, as St Paul assures us, there is nothing that ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’.