Stained Glass Windows Tell the Story

Pope Benedict XVI used the splendor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to offer what may turn out to be the metaphor that best pictures his message to America.

During his homily today, he pointed out the beauty of the Gothic-style cathedral’s stained glass windows, "which flood the interior with mystic light. From the outside, those windows are dark, heavy, even dreary. But once one enters the church, they suddenly come alive; reflecting the light passing through them, they reveal all their splendor."

The pope told the clergy and religious gathered before him that their task is to draw the people on the outside into the mystical light within. But, he said, "Even for those of us within, the light of faith can be dimmed by routine, and the splendor of the Church obscured by the sins and weaknesses of her members."

That’s essentially been his message to Catholics: that sexual scandal, divisions, and the influence of secularism have prevented the church from carrying out its mission as well as it should.

Continuing with his metaphor about the light filtered through the cathedral’s jewel-like windows, he said: "It can be dimmed too, by the obstacles encountered in a society which sometimes seems to have forgotten God and to resent even the most elementary demands of Christian morality."

He cast the world outside the church’s windows in dark tones, badly in need of redemption. "This is the message of hope we are called to proclaim and embody in a world where self-centeredness, greed, violence, and cynicism so often seem to choke the fragile growth of grace in people’s hearts," he said.

Against this dark vision of the modern world, Benedict offers a mystical light that is expressed in the name given to his trip, "Christ Our Hope."

Pope Benedict’s metaphor soared, but I could not help thinking about the way another pope referred to church windows to make his point. That was Pope John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council to renew the church. For Pope John, the church needed to open its windows to let in the fresh air. He saw something to be gained by opening the church to the modern world.

That is not to say that Benedict would have Catholics lock themselves indoors. "Perhaps we have lost sight of this: in a society where the Church seems legalistic and `institutional' to many people," he said, "our most urgent challenge is to communicate the joy born of faith and the experience of God’s love."

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The pope drew his metaphor from the writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who sent characters in his novel "The Marble Faun" on a tour of Italy’s grand cathedrals. At one point, one of the characters muses: "Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors." Hawthorne's Puritan ancestors might not have appreciated this. But his daughter, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, converted to Catholicism. Cardinal Edward Egan submitted the cause for her canonization to the Vatican, where it is under consideration.

Photos: Top, AFP/Getty. Below: AP.