Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Mary's of Redford Church

Artist Name: Walter G. Ball

City: Redford

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Ezra/Celebration of Passover/Daniel

Brief Description of Subject: One of four sanctuary windows, each featuring three medallions, showing the roots of the Mass in the Old Testament.

The Catholic Mass consists of two parts:

A) The Liturgy of the Word --- which consists of readings from the Bible. The bottom medallion will illustrate this with an Old Testament major prophet --- one that wrote an Old Testament book.

B) The Liturgy of the Eucharist --- bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ and offered to God for our salvation from sins. This is made clear in the Eucharistic prayer, referring to the "Holy Bread of Eternal life and the Chalice of everlasting salvation", the priest prays "Be pleased to look upon them, as you were pleased to accept the gifts of your servant Abel, the just, the sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith, and the offering of your high priest Melchizedek". The middle medallion will depict this with offerings and sacrifices from the Old Testament.

The Catholic Mass is performed by a priest as were ceremonies in the Old Testament. The top medallion will depict a priest from the Old Testament.

The border of these windows will be made up of a floral pattern of stylized flowers.

The bottom medallion pictures the prophet Daniel whose name is inscribed. The words on the tablet he is holding are MENE MENE TEKEL (UPHARSIN) which come from an episode covered in the 5th Chapter of Daniel and are the actual words on the wall that led to the idiomatic expression "handwriting on the wall". The King of Babylon had a great banquet and was using the gold goblets that had been looted from Solomon's Temple when a hand appeared and wrote those words on the wall. The king's wise men could not figure out their meaning so they called in Daniel. He said the words meant that the king's days are numbered because he had set himself against the Lord, and that the Medes and Persians would soon divide up his kingdom.

The middle medallion picture comes from the celebration of Passover also known as the "Feast of Unleavened Bread". With the building of the Temple in Jerusalem the people were required to come to Jerusalem and the sacrifices of a lamb or kid would be done at the Temple. The blood would be caught in gold or silver cups and sprinkled on the altar. This is the part of the Passover celebration that is pictured here.

The top medallion is inscribed "Ezra". Ezra is seen wearing the breastplate of a high priest. When the Persian defeated the Babylonians, the Israelites, including Ezra, that had been exiled from Palestine, were allowed to return. Ezra was instrumental is reestablishing the Mosaic Law and rebuilding the Temple.

Inscriptions: John A. McDace Family Memorial


Height: 10'

Width: 3'

The MSGC is a constantly evolving database. Not all the data that has been collected by volunteers has been sorted and entered. Not every building has been completely documented.

All images in the Index are either born-digital photographs of windows or buildings or are scans of slides, prints, or other published sources. These images have been provided by volunteers and the quality of the material varies widely.

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