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The Lady Chapel is the most iconographically complex window in Our Lady’s Church. It has symbols of Creation (thematically linking to the nave windows) with the yellow sun (panels nine and ten), crescent moon (panel six), and stars (panels one, three, six and ten). In traditional Mariology, Our Lady is represented by the moon and Jesus by the sun; Jesus is commonly referred to as the Son of God. Our Lady stands atop the crescent moon (she also does in St Peter's too) and this imagery can evoke the image of Our Lady of Gualalupe. The crescent moon is also clearly echoed in the glass in The Baptistery. The repetition of the crescent motif is a recurrent religious reminder of Our Lady's importance and visually links together different areas of the Church - the Clerestory and the Ground-Floor Chapels.
Rather appropriately, the window depicts various titles and symbols of Our Lady: Morning Star, Gate of Heaven and Tower of Ivory.[i] Titles also relevant are the Tower of David, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady Queen of All Creation, Our Lady Queen of Heaven, Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and Our Lady of the Star. Devotion is evident with the rosary in panel two. Panels five and eight both depict hearts, referring to the First Saturday Devotion to Our Lady and the First Friday Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The First Saturday Devotion originates from the 1917 Apparitions of Fatima - also depicted in Norris’ work in the beautiful Church of Our Lady of Fatima (Harlow, Essex), built a few years before Our Lady’s. Both churches depict hearts on panels five and eight, a likely reference to the five decades of the rosary and the eight feast days dedicated to Our Lady. There is similar iconography and imagery to Our Lady’s with depictions of the rosary, spikes emanating from one heart, and spears attacking another heart – emblematic of First Friday and First Saturday Devotions.
The First Saturday Devotion originates from one of the Fatima apparitions to three shepherd children. During her July apparition at Fatima, Our Lady said to Lucia ‘I shall come to ask... that on the First Saturday of every month, Communions of reparation be made in atonement for the sins of the world’.[ii] As people pierce Our Lady’s heart by sinning there is no one to remove the pierce without an act of reparation. Our Lady said to Lucia: “I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, in order to make reparation to me, on the First Saturday of five successive months, go to Confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for a quarter of an hour, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary”. Thus, the glass in the Lady Chapel is designed to encourage contemplation and devotion to Our Lady, to spur us onlookers to pray for her intercessary prayer and to engage in First Saturday Devotion. All for Jesus through Mary!
[i] Lillington Church, The Church of Our Lady, Lillington, Leamington Spa: A Magazine to
mark the Opening of the New Church (Leamington: Courier Press, 1963), 8.
[ii] Mr Hobson, “The Five First Saturday Devotion,” Marian Prayers and Devotions (2005-2016) para. 2, accessed Mar 14, 2020, http://www.themostholyrosary.com/appendix2.htm.
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