Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

Click any image to enlarge.

MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Mary Catholic Church

City: Royal Oak

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Mystical Rose

Brief Description of Subject: This clerestory window is one of 17 illuminating titles for the Virgin Mary found in the Litany of Loreto. The title illustrated on this window is "Mystical Rose."

Pictured is a thornless rose branch. The word mystical means a quality that is hard to explain. The title for the Blessed Virgin Mary as "Mystical Rose" has much to do with the writings of Saint Ambrose on the Immaculate Conception as explained in the 2020 article by Laura S. Lieber, professor of Religious Studies at Duke University:

According to Ambrose of Milan, the Church Fathers who lived in the fourth century ... roses first grew in the Garden of Eden, and those first roses were entirely without thorns. Only after Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were expelled from the Garden did these blossoms acquire their prickly defenses [Genesis 3:17-18]. Rose blossoms, with their beauty and aroma, serve as enduring reminders of Paradise, even as roses' thorns remind us that Paradise has been lost. According to St. Ambrose, the Virgin Mary is "the rose without thorns": born free of Original Sin, she was free of the thorns --- the sins --- that had pricked humankind since Eve ate from the apple.

Height: 10'

Width: 4'

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.

If you have any questions, additions or corrections, or think you can provide better images and are willing to share them, please contact donald20@msu.edu