Window 11

The windows on the north side of the church nave picture Gospel readings for the Sundays after Pentecost.  Their story begins at the front and proceeds counterclockwise to the back.

The first window group marks the beginning of the Pentecost Sundays.  At the right, Pentecost 3 illustrates Jesus’ Parable of the Great Banquet in Luke 14:16-24.  Shown is a long table flanked by two gates inscribed at the left with an alpha, at the right with an omega.  The chair at the head of the table is marked with an IHS.  Above the table a pelican is feeding its young.  A Chi Rho appears behind the pelican’s head.  At window’s top, a hand holds a wreath and under it a cross with an earth-girdling band.  At the window’s base appear two rings, several oxen, and a plowed field.

The parable tells of a man who prepared a great banquet (table).  The portals are wide open for guests to enter the banquet room and feast prepared by him who is called the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last.  It is none other than Jesus.  He is the host seated at the head of the table (chair with IHS).  At the table’s far end, the pelican feeding its young recalls an ancient legend.  It tells of the pelican which dies in the act of feeding its young with its own blood.  The legend was adopted in the early church as a fitting symbol of Christ who gave up his lifeblood for the sins of the world.  His monogram (X over P) appears behind the pelican’s head.  At window’s top, God’s hand holds the wreath of everlasting life to all people who have heard the message of the Crucified (cross with globe) and are seated at the banquet table.  Yet many of the guests invited to the banquet found excuses not to come. One spoke of a piece of property he had to inspect (plowed field).  Another needed to try out the five yoke of oxen he had just bought.  A third couldn’t come, he said, because he just got married (two rings).  At parable’s end the house owner’s servant was sent out to gather the poor, crippled, blind, and lame from town and country so that his banquet room would be filled.