Rt. Rev. Adrian Parcher, O.S.B., "On Stained Glass Windows"

Rt. Rev. Adrian Parcher, O.S.B. Homily: Explaining the Stained Glass Windows June 14, 1998 The windows are a gift to the parish from four or five parishioners who on their own donated the money for them. If you start back at the organ, you will see the window of St. Anne instructing the Blessed Mother. Then as you come forward there is that scene from the third chapter of Mark's gospel where suddenly Jesus finds himself being stripped of all support groups. The scribes and the Pharisees claim that he is possessed by Beelzebub; the townspeople finally reject him because they find him too much, and then Mary and the relatives of Jesus go out because they think he is overzealous. He is not stopping to eat, He is not stopping to sleep, and they feel he is going to run Himself down, so they go out to bring Him home so that He will rest, so he will eat. Then in the latter part of Chapter 3, you find the famous saying of Jesus when he is told, "Your mother, your brothers, your sisters are waiting outside," he says, "Who are my mother, my brothers, my sisters? They are those who hear the word of God and keep it." So what is happening and what Mark wants us to see is happening is that gradually Jesus is forming a new fellowship, and it's not a fellowship based upon race, town, blood, family relationships, it's a relationship which is centered around the altar, around the Eucharist, and that is the new family that Jesus has formed, and so that's what that window depicts.

The next window is the Blessed Mother meeting our Lord on the Way of the Cross. The artist has sort of combined the Veronica veil and the Blessed Mother into one window. And then of course the fourth window is the coronation of the Blessed Mother as Queen of Heaven and earth, angels and human beings and all creation.

Originally I had suggested to the artist that he put images or representations or symbols of all the saints in the fourth window. But then he, in meditating on the scenes, dispersed the saints throughout the windows. If you go to the first window again, Mary being instructed in Revelation. Two people who listened to Revelation, St. Joseph, who was the just and the wise man, the patient man, as Matthew's Gospel tells us, one who listened and obeyed. Then you have St. Anthony of Padua. Now you might say, what is St. Anthony of Padua doing in there? Most of the saints represented in these windows were represented in the sanctuary of the little St. Mary's, which was up at the corner of Liberty and Ralph, which was the original parish in this area, but primarily for the Italian- speaking people, the people who came here from Italy who did not know English. It was a mission, St. Aloysius. St. Anthony of Padua was one of those saints. But according to the story of St. Anthony of Padua, and there's a marvelous 14th- 15th century song which Mahler has set to music about this, St. Anthony went to church one day to preach and there was no one, not a soul, in church. So he decided he would not preach in vain, he went down to the river, clapped his hands, and all the fishes, the animals in the river, came up to listen. And they listened very attentively; they wagged their tails, they clapped with their fins, and the crabs with their clappers, and as soon as they had heard him they went back to doing exactly what they had been doing before. So it is a lesson that one can listen to the word of God, as Joseph did, but then not carry out the word, as did the fishes and the crabs in the sea.

The next window, as you see the new family of Jesus, the new fellowship of Jesus being created, and gradually the old lines of connection being, how shall I put it, flattened down by the word of God, by the message of Jesus, you have people who left their own country, to come here, Mother Cabrini, to take care of the Italian immigrants. She had wanted to go to China, and I think it was Pope Pius XI, or maybe an earlier one, who said to her, "Mother Cabrini, go West. They need you in America." Also, Mother Cabrini was not in the original St. Mary's, but it's possible that Mother Cabrini was indirectly responsible for the establishment of St. Mary's and therefore for the establishment of this parish when Bishop Toepel decided to raise St. Mary's to full status as a parish. He met with Mr. Albi one day for lunch, down in his home on one of those avenues in the shadow of St. Aloysius, he said, "You'll never preserve the faith of the Italians in Spokane until you minister to them in their own language. Have a place where they can be married, buried and baptized in their own language, and have someone preach in their own language." So it's very possible that Mother Cabrini is the one responsible for this parish today. As far as I know it's the only parish in this state that you can claim a saint was indirectly responsible for the founding of it. She's also the first American citizen canonized as a saint.

The next saint is St. Rita, an Italian nun who wanted to be a nun at a very early age. Her family persecuted her because she wanted to be such. They dictated that she marry and they even picked out the husband for her. She was a subject of domestic violence, because of the terrible temper of her husband. Her two sons went the way of the husband. Eventually her husband was killed because of his temper. The two sons wanted to retaliate; she prayed to God that somehow or other it would be stopped, and God provided an illness which took them off, and St. Rita said to God, "I didn't expect you to take those drastic steps." But if you notice, Jesus in turning away from his mother and relatives, looks to St. Rita and she's carrying a crown, and in the crown you will see thorns, and already the artist shows you Jesus looking to the next window, to suffering through which He will do the will of God.

The next window is St. Roc. The early Italians had a great devotion to St. Roc. Robert Calistro tells me that they used to have a festival for St. Roc; they would block off the streets around the little mission church and they would have a procession carrying St. Roc in procession, and then after the procession they would clear the streets, they would have dancing and sort of a pot-luck barbecue. St. Roc is another one of those saints who suffered terribly, but he was very much a part of that early St. Mary's parish and the people of that parish. Incidentally, he is also the patron of Gremaldi, which is on the instep of the "foot" of Italy. Many of the members of the original parish came from Gremaldi.

The next saint was not in the original St. Mary's, and I will give you three guesses why St. Benedict is represented, and it is not fair if you guessed any of the three. He's there because I decided he should be. After I go I want something you will remember me by. I'm not leaving tomorrow, by the way. But Benedict points out, as the artist says, a very simple but very effective way to follow in Jesus' footsteps.

The next window is St. Therese, the Little Flower. She was in that original sanctuary at St. Mary's; but also most of us, as I've mentioned to you before, are not called to do heroic things. We are called to do ordinary things. But the secret of the Little Flower is twofold. First of all, she came to the realization, which was a great theological insight, that everything is gift, total gift. Our status as children of God is complete gift. The second thing she realized is that it is not by doing extraordinary things, heroic things, that we gain Heaven, but it is by doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. That's the whole secret to sanctity, to do the day-to-day actions extremely well, for the love of God.

And finally, in that window you will see two buildings. One is St. Aloysius, which from 1912 to 1915 was the mother church of this parish. The little church is the original St. Mary's. And so you have some of the history; one should never forget history, the character of the people who make up a community. It is the marvelous touch with continuity. The church has been present in Minnehaha 86 years--a long time in the history of the Diocese of Spokane, in the history of Spokane itself. And you have little St. Mary's. It's not only a lesson in history, but they represent the universal church, present [in the coronation?]. And then if you simply follow, you come to the Eucharist, which is the closest to the beatific vision that you and I can come to in this life.

As you go out you might want to look at the cry room. Originally I though in the cry room we would have symbols of the seven sacraments. And then I thought, it's used as a cry room for young children, it's used for religious education classes, so I said to the artist, do the story of Noah, Noah and the Ark. I said, "Let your whimsy carry you. So it's the story of Noah and the ark. The windows were designed by Richard Kremer. The artist of the back windows was Adelle Prather, who's now in a nursing home and no longer able to design. The fabricators of the windows, and the installers, were Conway Studios, Winona, Minnesota, the same ones who installed the first stained glass windows. And as you go out the church on each side of the main door you will find the symbols of the Blessed Sacrament, a reminder that we come to church for the Eucharist, and today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, and when we go we take that Body and Blood of Christ into us. Let us stand and proclaim our faith.