Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Stained glass at St. Augustines

With a rose window over its main entrance and its neo-gothic architecture,Saint Augustine's Catholic Church looks from the outside as if it might have some interesting stained-glass windows. Below is what the rose window looks like inside. If it has symbolic meaning, and it probably does, I do not know what it is.
The picture above was taken in the choir loft. Below is another picture taken from there, showing the main body of the church. It has the spartan decoration that became popular after the Second Vatican Council.
This window is above the main entrance. It has the chi-rho in the center.
I usually take pictures of plaques when I see them. The present church was erected in 1939.
All the big windows of the nave either look like this one below or are slightly smaller versions of this window. The main symbolism in the window refers to the rosary, a popular Catholic devotion. Each of the lower panes has ten roundish images, and they represent the ten Hail Marys in each decade of the rosary. The colors represent the three sets of mysteries, the joyful, the sorrowful, and the glorious. (Pope John Paul II added another set, the luminous mysteries in 1992, but since the window is far older, they are not there.) The crowns represent Mary Queen of Heaven. The person who told me how to interpret the windows, which I never would have figured out on my own, did not know what the little guy at the top was supposed to be.

St. Augstine Church is working on a website. It is still under construction.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Is "the little guy in the middle" St Dominic, frequently credited with receiving instructions from Mary for the rosary?