Special Seasonal Feature—Wondrous Witness!
Chancel and south wall, St. Stephen’s
Bottom: Women at the Tomb; top: Ascension of Christ
As we lurch through spring, we move deeper into a pivotal liturgical season that many miss. Next Thursday, May 18, Christians celebrate Christ’s ascension to heaven as the awed apostles watch. On May 28 (Pentecost), we honor the Holy Spirit’s fiery anointing of the apostles as Christ’s successors. With these in mind, I’m especially drawn to St. Stephen’s luminous images at and around the altar since they invite us to witness some of these events ourselves.
Welcoming Christ, or Come unto Me
The dramatic scenes conjure Jesus’s gradual return to being Son of God, emphasizing in each instance the prophecies and promises to humankind he made as god-man. Within St. Stephen’s, we travel narratively from the mosaic Last Supper above the altar that leads to his mortal death, to the double windows on the south wall representing the first encounter with the miraculous Resurrection, surmounted by the miraculous Ascension.
The story culminates in the southeast window facing the altar, presenting Christ in heaven who reiterates his offer of comfort to us in life and his welcome at the end of time. View post here.
What comes particularly to mind now are last year’s reflections with Father Peter and Bao Radcliffe about the period of Easter to Pentecost as the Season of Seeing, where the apostles achieved full belief when they saw, and registered, Christ’s escalated miracles centered on his body (like the Transfiguration). The Twelve thus became eyewitnesses to some of Jesus’s most ambitious assertions about his mission and divinity. At the Jewish wheat harvest feast, God invested these witness-apostles with new powers as his emissaries and celebrants of his new rites throughout the world.
In observing that thunderous flame-filled event under Luke’s title (Pentecost), we bear witness to what many consider the birth of the earthly Church following Christ’s departure.
We “re-view” some of what the apostles witnessed during this pivotal chapter through St. Stephen’s stained-glass windows. We become the new witness-apostles: The ascending Christ addresses us in our nave from high on our wall.
The final window, however, the Welcoming Christ, illuminates a scriptural promise rather than an event. Here we experience our own miracle, a vision of the ongoing bond between Christ and us into our time and beyond. This isn’t just the endgame, it’s what shapes the journey and sustains and heals along the way. For me, this illuminated message is as stirring as it is beautiful, shimmering with the light that embodies the divine in our world.
Yet before that reconnection with Christ, a lot happens in Acts to the apostles in stunning episodes that are absent from St. Stephen’s transition cycle. Oh, for windows of the Transfiguration and Pentecost, particularly spectacular scenes that have fueled artistic creativity for centuries. As a modest alternative, I offer last year’s Reflections on the season as we move through it again in new times. Explore and ponder then and now.
— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator