“Lift Up Your Gaze!”: A Review of Heaven in Stone and Glass

O gates, lift high your heads; grow higher, ancient doors—
Let him enter, the king of glory!
Psalm 24:7

Every day as I make my way to work at an architecture firm in Georgetown, I weave through the masses at the metro station and try to wiggle my way to a coveted open seat on the train. I like to bring a book to read, but sometimes I simply sit and look at the people around me. I am sure you would not be surprised at my simple, daily observation: the vast majority are quietly looking down, glued to the flashing, ever-changing screens of their “smart” phones.

In his new documentary, Heaven in Stone and Glass, Bishop Robert Barron proposes a remedy: looking up. He employs the vertical, soaring orientation of the Gothic cathedral to lift our gaze upward and turn our attention to enduring things, giving shape and direction to the earthly realities we find here below. As he will show throughout the documentary, the Gothic cathedral in particular, with its structural character and handcrafted details, is uniquely imbued with a profound meaning that facilitates the connection between “here” and the “beyond.” It palpably speaks to the present shaping of our souls as things set upon an ascending journey toward God.

We often only understand the true value of something when it becomes endangered, and indeed, the world “looked up” in shock as Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris burst into flames in 2019. Barron’s documentary opens with an examination of the world’s reaction to this destruction: why was everyone so arrested by this event, and what exactly were we in danger of losing? In search of deeper answers, Barron turns to reflect on his own experience, from his first encounter with the cathedral in photographs and slides in an art history class, to finally seeing Notre-Dame in person when pursuing his doctorate in Paris. Here the film focuses on the older Barron sitting and reminiscent, fingering his rosary, while reflecting on the cathedral’s impact from afar. Recalling the many details of the high north rose window, he recounts how it inspired contemplation and prayer, how the beauty of the place served as a real point of encounter with heaven.

Life is moving, unpredictable, and changeable, yet like the tall, stone cathedrals in the background, the God above always remains as the steadying point, the buttress, and the north star of our journey. 

Barron helps remind us that to make art at all is an astonishing thing, something that should prompt us to wonder from whence this desire and capacity springs. For as John Paul II once taught, art is a special participation in God’s own creative power. Although much of ourselves is in our temporal, material, and created works, these also speak to us of our divine origin and the Creator who first made the earth, skies, seas, and all the beings within them. In a sense, we could say that these tall, vertical cathedrals, which are both grounded in earth but also stretch to the heavens, join a truth about ourselves that we analogously share with God, bringing us into contact with him in and through the object of artistic beauty. This is what the world stood to lose as it witnessed Notre-Dame’s destruction: the memory of our being made in the image of God, and the idea of human life being directed upward and outward in a telos toward him.

Barron highlights the unique brilliance of Gothic cathedrals by showing how the structure’s language of vertical unity and logic brings about the meeting of heaven and earth, God and man. The origin of this architecture has its roots in a largely unknown figure, Abbot Suger from the Abbey at Saint Denis. What began as a renovation in the twelfth century became a radical blueprint for a flowering in sacred architecture in the centuries that ensued. Barron delves into a wide range of themes that contribute to the profoundly rich expression of the Gothic: the structural elements that allow for its dramatic and weightless verticality; a Dionysian “theology of light” in the soaring, stained glass windows; sacred geometries and the importance of divine and trinitarian numerology; and symbolic elements, such as the rose window, labyrinth, and “wheel of fortune.” Slender, attenuated stone columns lead the eyes up amidst stained glass full of colorful imagery and shimmering storytelling, while the pointed arches and ribbed vaults create structural height and volume so that illumined intellects, souls, and angelic hosts might soar. The whole interior opens up along these elegant ribs, tall thin lines along which we are gracefully raised to the airy ceiling above. Barron masterfully weaves structural principles, traditional crafts, history, and materiality with philosophy, theology, Scripture, and even astronomy, to show how every part of a Gothic cathedral forms a grand, well-ordered, and symphonic whole. 

At its core, Gothic architecture is intended to integrate all aspects of earthly reality to the divine in a vertical, ecstatic movement that joins man to God. Communion with God is its ultimate goal. For this reason, the film lingers on the hyper-focused details of a structure that “lives” dramatically, where every nook and cranny evokes the reality of time: earthy, wet, moss-covered stone facades; bedazzling medallions of figures and historical scenes set within window tracery; and myriads of stained, stone-carved angels and saints, all of which reinforce the sacramental convergence of time with eternity. Even comedy and tragedy, heaven and hell, find their place together, for amidst the hundreds of grotesque and comic gargoyles are people feasting, laughing, and crying, so that all of these together form the drama of human life. Here, the earthly world has everything to do with the heavenly. They are part of one reality pointing to the same thing, all of it culminating in a chorus of praise as a setting for the Mass in which our eyes and hearts are drawn upward in worship to God. 

Architecture has a unique task among the arts, being something that surrounds us and the only art we inhabit. Buildings, whether we realize it or not, affect the domus of the soul, our very embodied selves. As Sir Winston Churchill wisely observed: “We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.” A central aspect of Gothic architecture is order, found in the integration of its elements, both physical or structural (such as its pointed arches, rib vaults, and buttresses) as well as symbolic (its geometries, images, and sculptural reliefs). The order found within the architecture itself both mirrors and inspires the “vertical” integration of the human person’s life and soul in relationship to the Heavenly Father. Every aspect of our life on earth should find its proper place and ground in God, its eternal source and organizing principle. The documentary provides an interesting visual combination to illustrate the idea of order and durability: numerous images of fast-forwarded, ordinary scenes (such as people hurrying along the street, teenagers eating ice cream together in the plaza, or families pushing strollers) with stunning, fixed perspective shots of the cathedral behind them. Life is moving, unpredictable, and changeable, yet like the tall, stone cathedrals in the background, the God above always remains as the steadying point, the buttress, and the north star of our journey. The cathedrals quietly speak of God’s structural permanence in the cosmos, providing the proper orientation that will bring us true joy and fulfillment. Experiencing this in the building itself should, as Barron hopes, encourage us to analogously re-order the elements of our earthly lives, consecrate them to God, and “buttress” our souls in him.

I’d like to address a potential concern, that at times, with its wealth of imagery and information, the film may feel as though it is attempting too much in an hour and a half. The constant movement and lack of opportunity to delve deeper into each theme ironically contradicts the film’s message to slow down and rest in contemplation. It is fair to notice the tension here, and while it may seem at odds with the clarion call of the film, this could just as well be an impetus to move away from the film toward these places themselves. 

Consider for a moment Beauty as an excess, a joyful overflowing in the vein of Plato or Dionysius. The film’s plethora of images communicate Barron’s personal enthusiasm for something that has touched him, and to which he has returned over and over to study in person. The profound abundance of meaning he has found in these structures can only begin as a suggestion, serving as a spring point for the viewer to go and touch the ancient stone for himself, to spend time studying every detail high and low, and to immerse himself in the real space so as to be personally drawn upward by its beauty. 

Returning to my experience on the metro, most of our world is engrossed in an overloaded “doom scroll” of meaningless images, memes, and chaotic videos. Barron instead “bombards” us with images of meaningfully ordered art, craft, and peaceful spaces. These examples of the beautiful and true, so clearly encapsulated in the Gothic cathedral and its intentional emphasis on verticality, awaken our hearts to the transcendent, leading to the face of Beauty himself. 

Ultimately, for Barron, this film is both an invitation and a mission. He gives us a rich feast for the eyes that whets the appetite, for every truly good work of art allows us a glimpse of heaven that leaves us with a desire for more. Inspired, the viewer leaves the theater with a task: go and look up. Seek out true beauty in all its forms, and share its impact on you with others. It is not by chance that our hearts were made with an infinite longing. In lifting our gazes amidst all that stone and glass and reading its meaning, we find that everything about our earthly life here below may be drawn together in the heights and heart of God.

Alejandra Gutzeit is a practicing architect in Washington, D.C., and currently studying as a Leonine Fellow. She earned her Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Notre Dame, studying and working abroad in Italy. More recently, she earned an M.T.S. from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family. Alejandra is also an artist, a lover of languages, and an equestrian enthusiast.