When you’re travelling on a budget, there’s nothing like finding out that there’s a cathedral in town. Not only are they free to explore, but the architecture, the artwork is almost always breathtakingly beautiful. Unlike everywhere else you might go on vacation, the church will likely fill you with awe and invite you into a sacred silence that hangs in the air.
There’s this basilica in St. Louis that has the biggest mosaic in the Western Hemisphere, one of the biggest in the whole world. It is 83,000 square feet. As you might imagine, a lot of artists worked together to make this happen. In the early days, Tiffany’s was involved. There was a father and son team who spent almost their entire careers just crafting this mosaic. Work on the mosaic started in 1914. It finished in 1988. The mosaic has 41.5 million glass pieces that are more than 7,000 different colors.1
If you have never been, imagine entering this cathedral with its cavernous sanctuary and shimmering mosaics. It’s not just the grandeur of the art and the stunning depictions of Jesus and the saints and more. Well, it wasn’t just that for me. No, for some reason I was struck by the thought of a hand taking each individual piece, searching for its anticipated home, and placing it there (one by one by one, 41.5 million times).2 I’ll tell you, I was pretty deeply humbled when I sat in the basilica looking at those mosaics all those years ago.
[1] https://aleteia.org/2018/05/24/in-images-this-spectacular-ceiling-mosaic-in-st-louis-cathedral-is-the-largest-in-the-world/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Basilica_of_Saint_Louis_(St._Louis)
[2] https://aleteia.org/2018/05/24/in-images-this-spectacular-ceiling-mosaic-in-st-louis-cathedral-is-the-largest-in-the-world/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_Basilica_of_Saint_Louis_(St._Louis)