Antoni Gaudi

If you have ever been to Barcelona, Spain you might have seen the magnificent Church of the Holy Family.  It’s architect was hit by a streetcar, mistaken for a beggar, taken to a charity hospital where he died three days later.  His name was Antoni Gaudi.  A young creative genius, he was given the task of the design and incorporated various materials and works of art in his ambitious approach.  In all this Gaudi gradually grew in a relationship with God.  He adopted an ascetic life, dressing as a workman, though he had once been a bit of a dandy, a guy who liked clothes.  He attended daily mass and even slept on a cot in the church as he was working on it.  Then he got hit by the streetcar.  The church is an architectural treasure, designed by a man whose heart expanded into the fulfillment of his talents and care for the Holy.  What he was on the outside, though it ended tragically, was not so important to him.  We too may suffer a bit from working more on our spiritual insides rather than in how we appear to others, and we might suffer some consequences.  Anyone who says, “Clothes make the man/women,” might want to take a look at that church.  Beautiful outside treasures come from the beautiful insides of a person.