Our Lady of the Angels

These nine works of liturgical art glass for the new Our Lady of the Angels Conventual Church are based on the Canticle of Creation by Saint Francis, the Greccio story, the Woman Clothed with the Sun, and the Blessed Sacrament. The overall theme is the humility of God, in bread and holy child, come in light and grace. These windows were developed in conversation with the Liturgical Art Committee and Fr. Mark Joseph Costello to share this community's longstanding hospitality and invitation into the process and grace of renewal.

The major vertical element, visible when one enters the grounds, is the south art glass window. The window is Mary ascending as the Woman Clothed with the Sun, accompanied by angels, surrounded by Hubble-inspired galaxies in a swirling field of color and light. Saint Bonaventure’s image of the circle, with creation proceeding from and returning to its divine source, shapes the entire gesture of this composition. All of creation is called back to the Creator in this vision of the cosmos returning to the divine mystery that made it.

The Canticle of Creation stanzas are distributed in windows throughout the worship space: Brother Wind, Sister Earth, Brother Fire, Sister Moon, the Stars, Those Who Forgive, and finally Sister Bodily Death. Behind the altar, the Greccio reredos glass envisions the humility of Christ and the cosmic significance of his birth with a view of Bethlehem from the shepherds’ perspective coming to witness the universe bending toward a manger. The torches in the tall vertical glass recall Thomas of Celano’s account of that Christmas at Greccio, when the people came with candles and torches: “The night is lit up like day.”

The glass itself is mouth-blown antique glass made in the most traditional manner by Lamberts Glass in Waldsassen and fabricated at Derix Glasstudios in Taunusstein, Germany. You can read more about the process in How Stained Glass Is Made.