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Archdiocese of St. Louis

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"As opposed to Philip, we have some information about Bartholomew after the gospels conclude. According to Catholic Forum, which has a wonderful online database of saints, St. Bartholomew was probably a good friend of Philip's, and maybe wrote his own gospel (it is lost, but referred to in other writings). Some early disciple went to Armenia, India, and Asia Minor, leaving writings behind, and tradition holds that it was Bartholomew. Often he is equated with the apostle in John's Gospel called Nathaniel--since he fills a similar role there (friend of Philip, no other reference to Bartholomew) as he fills in the synoptics.

But what we remember best about Bartholomew, or at least I do from my days in Catholic school with Butler's Lives of the Saints, is that Bartholomew was flayed alive. Not dead afterwards, he was then beheaded. Because of this, most depictions of St. Bartholomew involve a tanner's knife, and sometimes more graphic depictions of a man with his skin draped over one arm.

Here, he is a fig branch. Bartholomew, known as Nathaniel in John's Gospel, was brought to Jesus by his friend Philip. He doubted that anything good come from Nazareth, but came with Philip to meet Jesus. Upon meeting him, Jesus told him that he knew who he was--he had seen him under the fig tree. Nathaniel immediately believed in him, but Jesus told him to wait--there would be so much more he would come to see. (I paraphrase from John 1:45-50)."

"Philip is often represented by two loaves of bread, indicative of his comments at the feeding of the 5,000. At St. Pius, he is represented by the patriarchal cross with a spear laid atop. We don't know much about St. Philip outside of the gospel accounts, but his feast day is May 3 on the Roman calendar, and he is the patron of pastry chefs. This last bit is interesting in case you choose to take that day and make symbols of the apostles cookies. I think their interpretation of Philip is a little loose--I would go for a patriarchal cross since it is more distinctive.

I just discovered that the clerestory windows at St. Pius were clear when the church was completed, due to a lack of funds. The new cathedral in town was being built at the same time (timing is everything) and so donors were sapped dry. These were completed later in the parish's history. There are still several I have not deciphered, but I am hopeful that as we make it around the church their meanings will come."

Jesus Teaches in the Temple

"I can just imagine the conversation afterwards to the rabbi who had been out of town or otherwise disposed, missing Jesus teaching in the temple at the age of twelve. I see these old men trying to explain what it was like--being drawn to what he said, but puzzled and having a hard time seeing past his age. Yeah, but...What you say is true, except...That's fascinating, however, I can't...just like when we find ourselves facing a truth we cannot deny, but feel as though we must with every bit of ourselves because that truth will force us to change.

They pose their questions and check their scrolls. Then the one in the back starts to ponder the words--the Word. Could this really be happening?"

"This is the first of the clerestory windows that I figured out, without a doubt: St. Matthew the tax collector, represented by three purses of money. Tax collectors were of course not the folks you'd want to hang around with if you were a social climber. And Matthew gets represented not by however it was he was martyred (if he was martyred at all), but by the job he held that his culture perceived as sinful. Makes me wonder what my clerestory window would look like, in the end."

"St. Thomas. Thomas the Doubter. Here he is depicted, as many apostles are, with the symbol of his martyrdom, the spear, but also with a carpenter's square, perhaps indicative of how he earned a living before he became an apostle.

This picture was taken from a slightly greater distance and on a bright cloudy day. The colors in the stained glass are more vivid and true when the light is not direct.

These windows are up high--at the very top of the church along the north and south walls. In order to decipher some of them, we've had to take photographs and then bring them home to my computer to make them large enough to see the details. From a distance, the three stones (on the north side; coming soon) look perhaps like loaves of bread. The ram's head is indistinct. The beehive--could it be the pope's tiara instead? Seeing them in the photographs clears up the mystery, although it prompts other questions: did the congregation understand what these windows depicted when they were installed? Was it obvious to Catholics in the 30s or 40s in a way that it isn't obvious now?

I'm beginning to see that our church was meant to be read, like a story book."

"The crown of thorns and three nails, the symbols of Christ's suffering. This clerestory window, one of the larger middle ones, is Our Lady of Sorrows, or, in Latin, as Sr. Cathy pointed out to me when we were trying to decipher them, Mater Dolorosa."

"The traditional symbols for James the Less are usually a fuller's bat or a saw. He was pushed off the top of the temple into thin air when he did not deny Jesus. The fall didn't kill him, so the crowd stoned him. Not dying fast enough, he had his brains dashed with a fuller's bat, which was used to fluff wool to make into clothing or felt.

So he's he patron saint of fullers (and pharmacists, who use mortar and pestle, of course). It's so interesting how the martyrs become patrons of the people who use the same instruments that killed them. St. Apollonia (a deaconess), whose feast day is today, February 9, was burned to death--but before that, she had her teeth broken and extracted with pincers. She's the patron saint of dentists. And toothaches.

Don't know why St. James the Less has a windmill. Resurrection Church in New York City had some windows commissioned and this same symbol came back for James and they were worried it was a mistake until I wrote and let them know we had one too."

"This is my very favorite window at St. Pius. It may be my favorite stained glass window, period. It is probably done more for my understanding of Jesus' humanity than any other depiction of him I have ever seen. I apologize for the lack of good lighting here--I hope to include closeups in the next few days.

Jesus and Mary, his mother, stand below and arch. Are we seeing them from inside her home? Their faces are very close, and full of emotion. He is leaving--and she is pulling him close. His feet though, are already turning away. When Sr. Mary and I were looking at this window a few weeks ago, she said, "he's pushing off," and that's exactly what he's doing. This is a real goodbye."

"The sky is blue, partly cloudy. Any other day like this, it would be laundry or cabinet building or taking care of a garden. It looks like the blustery March day that's outside my window right now. A clear, cool day with wind blowing the winter away. This more than just a spring day, however. This day is one of those that Mary will hold in her heart--not happy, but important. Heart pierced by a sword indeed. She and her son stand beneath an arch under this blue sky, wishing there were better words to say. This is her son--but after 40 days in the desert, how has he changed? He's leaving for good this time, although she will see him along the road. Still, there is this moment when she realizes that he is her son, but he belongs to someone else."

"This window depicts them as barefoot. All the other windows show them with shoes on. Everyone wears shoes--to not be able to afford shoes, or to be stripped of ones shoes, was shameful. But to choose to go barefoot was a sign of mourning. Their shoes are off; his left foot is planted near her, but his right is already on the road. Notice the little clover, or shamrock, planted next to that foot. Emil Frei leaves no detail out."

"This last picture, however, once I got these home and looked at them larger on the computer screen, is the one that made me gasp. I had always seen her hand on his heart, his right hand holding the edge of her cloak. But look where his other hand is. I never ever noticed it until this close up.

I cannot overstate how much this window stirs something within me. Until I started really looking at this one, I had an image of Mary in my mind that was cool, almost passive. My image of Jesus had him detached from those around him--he had apostles and friends, but not relationships like this. Raised in Catholic churches, most of the time I see him as a child, or crucified. But there is so much in between that is human. Of course he was going to miss his mother. And he must have known what the separation was going to do to her.

Good liturgical art, good church art, isn't for art's sake. It's not so we can have a pretty building to gather in. It's to communicate ideas of the divine to those gathered. It's to meditate upon, ruminate upon, be there day after day until suddenly you see it."

"So he says goodbye.

The window of Jesus saying goodbye to his mother is flanked, as all the large windows are, by windows of two angels. Above are three small angel faces. But below him is this: the road ahead.

Most of the large windows has some sort of symbol below it, either of what just happened, what's coming, or something of importance. The ones that don't are sitting above confessionals--but this one has the road. Green fields, trees, a town in the distance. He's on his way."

"Three in One, Triune God. Here depicted as Patrick did, according to legend: in the shamrock. Of course, the Irish were already pretty hip to the idea of gods with several faces or personas--he probably didn't have to use the shamrock.

Up close, it looks hastily done. Emil Frei stops by the workshop and says to the assistant, "oh, and it's an Irish church."

"Ja, ja, the shamrock," is the reply, and he scribbles one in on the window he's working on at the moment.

According to Dale Preston, who taught me a couple of things about stained glass, even though lead is what holds these windows together, it doesn't pose a great risk to folks who work on it. He used Emil Frei's assistants as the example--decades of exposure to daily lead (give us this day...) and they never had ill effects. Of course, that was in the days when they couldn't test precisely, and frankly, you have to have a bellyfull before an adult will show symptoms of poisoning. But this was our reassurance that we weren't going to keel over in our introduction class.

It sure didn't negatively affect the product."