Why are we here?

The classic answer to that is, of course, we are here to know God, love Him, and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next. We at Sacro Sanctum Architects embrace our mission as a reflection of that simple maxim.

Through beauty, we can know God, because God is Beauty itself. Part of loving God is to worship Him properly through our highest form of prayer, the Mass. A beautiful space, being a visible sign of the invisible reality of God's Beauty, promotes awe and reverence for our Creator, and can lead to a deeper worship and prayer experience. In essence, small “b” beauty points to big “B” Beauty.

Quoting Venerable architect Antoni Gaudí, “To do things right, first you need love, then technique.” Sacro Sanctum Architects formed out of love for God, our Catholic faith, and the beautiful architecture it inspired in the past, and a frustration with the loss of our beautiful Catholic architectural tradition in so many of our more modern liturgical spaces. We have the love for our tradition, and we have the technique to bring it into our new liturgical spaces.

So, we know God, we love Him, and one of our ways to serve Him is to use our God-given talents to create spaces that help people worship Him. Our phrase—Lex aedificandi, lex orandi (what one builds shapes how one prays)—is a take on the classic lex orandi, lex credendi, which asserts that the way Christians worship shapes and defines what they ultimately believe. The spaces we design can help one pray more deeply, which in turn helps define belief.

And the ultimate goal, as stated at the outset, is to be with God forever in the next life. As mission partners with any Catholic parish or institution, we join in the ultimate mission of the Church—the salvation of souls—and desire to play our part in helping people reach that goal.