Looking for the Light : Parish Hopes Cross Will Return to Dome When Work Is Done

At the intersection of faith and physics something wholly unexpected happened here six years ago.

A symmetrical cross of light suddenly appeared on the golden dome atop Saints Constantine and Helen Greek Orthodox Church as soon as the construction scaffolding was removed.

The cross of light was instantly visible from near and far in this community 25 miles north of San Diego. Motorists could see it from Interstate 5, a half-mile west.

The cross shone on sunny days and on nights with a full moon. It was visible from various angles and seemed to “travel” as you circled around the church.

Tourists flocked to see the dome and its cross of light. A newspaper from Athens did a front-page story and the curious came from as far away as Europe. Some hailed it as a miracle.

But now a project is under way that will test whether the cross of light was just a serendipitous manifestation of a scientific principle discovered by a 17th-Century Dutch mathematician, or whether it was something more mysterious that cannot be duplicated.

Because of a construction defect, the porcelain tiles on the dome have had to be stripped away and are being replaced. Church faithful are concerned that the cross may not reappear.

“Naturally we’re all worried,” said Clementine Yesulis, who bakes and sells Greek pastries to fatten the church coffers. “If we lose the cross, there will be a lot of disappointed people.”

The disappearance of the cross late last month during the renovation project brought a flurry of inquiries from the public. Manchester Avenue, where the church is located, is a major thoroughfare to I-5.

When it first appeared, parishioners had interpreted the cross of light as a sign that their effort to build a church was blessed, despite money problems.

A physicist told the congregation that the cross was the result of light hitting the spaces between the tiny golden tiles, spaces that, by pure accident, were an exact multiple of the wavelength of light. He referred to the principles of refraction and reflection established by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), a contemporary and scientific rival of Sir Isaac Newton.

Still, the men of science and industry who built the church across from San Elijo Lagoon have never been sure of the explanation.

“In truth we have absolutely no idea why the cross appeared,” said the consulting architect on the project, Harry Anthony, a retired professor from Columbia University. “Thousands of churches in this world have the same dome but nowhere else is there a cross of light. If people want to see it as a miracle, who am I to disagree?”

Even while the populace came to ooh and aah at the dome, which is 60 feet in the air, and its cross of light, the tiles began coming loose. The church won a lawsuit against the tile company.

A new tile company, Klaser Tile Co. of National City, has been hired to install new tiles on the dome. The first chore was to strip away the 230,000 tiny tiles from the 30-foot-diameter, 1,600-square-foot dome, ending, at least temporarily, the cross of light.

Once a new wire-reinforced substrata is applied to the dome, new porcelain tiles will be applied to the dome with a special, trade-secret adhesive. The new tiles, each with 24-karat golden glaze, come from the same tile artisan in Japan who made the originals.

That a cross of light should have appeared on a church named for St. Constantine, known in the secular world as Constantine the First or Constantine the Great, is fitting.

The Rev. Theodore Phillips likens the light to the cross that appeared in the sky to Constantine on the eve of battle in AD 303. That cross, which, according to legend, had the words “In His Sign, Conquer” beneath it, caused Constantine to become the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity.

Phillips is confident the cross of light will reappear when work is finished next month.

“I have a good feeling,” he said. “The architect says it will reappear. The physics is just the same. But I’m still praying, just to cover myself.”

The tile problem, however dramatic, is not the only misfortune to befall the church.

A lack of money has stalled work on the interior. This Sunday’s Holy Easter service, like all other services for the 425-family congregation, will be held in a temporary facility.

(Because it uses a different calendar, the Greek Orthodox church is celebrating Easter a week later than Catholic and Protestant churches.)

After a lull, fund raising has picked up, and Phillips is hopeful that Easter, 1996, will be celebrated in the new church.

Bill Klaser, whose firm has been doing church domes for 20 years, has no doubt that the cross of light will again shine. But like Phillips, he is willing to ask for assistance.

“We pray every day,” he said.