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Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: All Saints Episcopal Church

Studio Name: Connick (Charles J.), Ltd.

City: Pontiac

Window Shape: 6 (gothic arched, more than 2 vertical sections)

Date of Window: 1954

Subject/Title of Window: Ezekiel

Brief Description of Subject: Ezekiel was a priest deported to Babylon with the rest of the Jewish leaders in 598 BC. Before 586 he preached a message of judgement and doom. After 586 he focused on hope and salvation. The source of his hope in not in any of the political powers of his day, but in God's own nature and purpose. The temple is destroyed, but God is not bound by a temple and has moved into exile with his people. The sins of the past will not keep the present generation from choosing life and salvation.

His figure dominates the central lancet where he holds a torch, the symbol of religious zeal and enlightenment. No emblem could be more fitting for him because, during the hopelessly dark period of the Babylonian Captivity, it was he who emphasized the importance of keeping the Law as being the essential identity of Israel rather than a temple worship and being a territorial nation. By stressing the law and the personal responsibility of each individual (Chapter 18), he was able to establish, within an alien empire, a congregation bound to the idea of its survival as a spiritual community regardless of what its political fate might be. At the bottom of this center lancet is his traditional symbol of the Gateway, recalling that in his writings he often speaks of the "gate" in connection with the City of God.

The medallion in the left lancet depicts his vision of the winged creatures (the same ones in Revelation and used as symbols of the four Evangelists) when God called him to be a prophet (Chapters 1-3).

In the medallion on the right he is shown receiving the scroll with words of "lamentation and mourning and woe," which he ate and which tasted to him "as sweet as honey" (2:8-3:3).

Inscriptions: Lena Hammond Jossman
Alice Treble Guillot


Height: ~82"

Width: ~78"

Type of Glass and Technique: Lead Came

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