Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Mary Catholic Church

City: Royal Oak

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Mother of Christ

Brief Description of Subject:
This clerestory window is one of 17 windows illuminating titles for the Virgin Mary found in the Litany of Loreto. The title pictured here is "Mother of Christ."

This window's symbol is a variation of the Marian Cross. The Marian Cross was actually designed from instructions of the Virgin Mary given to St. Catherine Labaure in 1830 for a medal called the Miraculous Medal of Our Lady. It consists of a cross surmounting a large "M". The Marian interpretation of the "M" is Mary, Mother, and Mediatrix. The picture of the Marian Cross was taken by Xhienne.

This window pictures a large "M" which also forms the Greek letter Chi (X) at its crossing point, and the Greek letter Rho (P) surmounting the "X." Chi-Rho (XP) is a Christogram  formed from the first two letters of the Greek word for "Christ." Thus the symbol illuminates Mary as the "Mother of Christ."

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