BEHIND THE SCENES: NOVEMBER 2021 UPDATE
As we are celebrating the feast of All Saints today, we take a look at the exterior statuary of the church and discuss our five liturgical bells and their patron saints.
This month’s behind the scenes tour offers a unique commentary about the statues, side chapels and bells which will be in the Immaculata.
Transcript of the Video
Today is the feast of All Saints and tomorrow is the Feast of All Souls in which the church focuses on and celebrates the unity within the Mystical Body of Christ. So today I'm going to walk you through the exterior statuary of the church and the saints that these statues are named after; we’ll go inside the church and look at the various devotional spaces and lastly we will talk about our five liturgical bells and their patron saints.
So on the exterior of the Immaculata we will have eight statues which will greet the faithful as they come to Mass. We’ll have the great statue of Our Lady up on top of the Cupola as we already discussed in the August 1st update video. That statue will be 12 feet tall. The other seven statues that will be all around the church on the exterior will each be 6 feet tall.
On the north side we have decided to place a statue of Saint Cyril of Alexandria who was the great Father of the Church known for defending Our Lady's greatest title, Mother of God, The Theotokos. On the south transept right underneath Our Lady, we will place a statue of Saint Louis de Montfort, who was known of course for his devotion to Our Lady and whose method so many of our faithful here have used to consecrate themselves to Jesus through Mary.
On the west façade of the Immaculata we will have five exterior statues. Up at the very top we will have a niche in which we will place a statue of Christ the King for whom the Society has been fighting for many years. We really believe that a lot of this crisis in the Church revolves around the figure of Christ’s Kingship.
Whereas down below, right above the main arches and portals of the Immaculata we will have four niches in a row. And here we wanted to show the transition from the Jesuits who owned the Immaculata and built the first Immaculata on campus and the history there, developing through to the Society’s acquisition and presence on campus and rebuilding of the Immaculata.
So therefore we will have on the far left Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. We will have then Bishop Miege who was the first vicar apostolic of this great territory (this Indian territory west of the Missouri state line) who actually established on campus the first cathedral of this area before it moved to Leavenworth and when in fact that Cathedral which was a little log cabin was taken apart, they wanted to have another building on campus which represented and was a remembrance of that cathedral and that's what they did when they built the Immaculata. Next to Bishop Miege we will have a figure of Archbishop Lefebvre, our Founder, who of course only bought this property because of the Immaculata and because of its priestly significance. And lastly next to Archbishop Lefebvre on the far right we will have our six-foot statue of Saint Pius X, the patron of our order.
So we're passing now from the exterior of the church, we can enter into the inside and we’ll show you on the interior some of the various devotional spaces in the church and spaces where we can unite ourselves with the victorious members of the Mystical Body of Christ.
Over the past months we've been probably expressing to you how grand this church is, how big it is. But actually as you come into the inside we wanted to make sure that the faithful had some very small and intimate places as well to pray. As you come into the church just to the right you'll see the first of our side chapels. This side chapel here is going to be a combination of two very beloved spaces down in our current Assumption Chapel. In this space we will bring up all the relics, over 1300 relics that we have of various saints and martyrs, bring them up and put them in the different case-work around the interior of this chapel, separated by a little communion rail. But we will also put in this chapel the Queen of Martyrs, the Regina Martyrum, Our Lady. The beloved Our Lady of Sorrows statue that exists on campus and to whom so many of our faithful are devoted. So we’ll combine the two in here and call this the Regina Martyrum Chapel, the Queen of Martyrs Chapel.
Further up the Nave on the Epistle side of the church we have the next side chapel which will be devoted to Saint Joseph. As you walk into the church you'll notice when the Immaculata is completed that the main body of the church will be very unified, it will be very cohesive. All the artwork and coloring will work together. These side chapels though will be a little bit different. We don't mind if the spaces will look even quite different from the main body of the church. So we are devoting this chapel to Saint Joseph. We want to honor this great saint who has helped us so much not only on campus over these many years, but who has helped us on this specific project - sending us the right people to help us build this church. And so this interior space will probably have a lot of beautiful specialty carved woodwork to honor Saint Joseph the great Carpenter. Directly across the Nave from Saint Joseph’s side chapel we have The Our Lady of Guadalupe chapel.
So here we decided to have a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe. We have an image down in our current chapel that a lot of people pray to and there are many people here who are devoted to Our Lady under this title of our Lady of Guadalupe. We also wanted this chapel in honor of her because she's the only image of Our Lady where she's appeared to men where it is obvious, from the cultural traditions, that she is expecting. So she has also been taken as a symbol of the Pro-Life movement and because of much of the Pro-Life work that we do here in Saint Mary's we wanted this chapel dedicated to her as well. And this can also be the space where after a baptism a mother and father can bring their newly born and consecrate their child to Our Lady. So let’s head up to the bell tower now and consider the various bells and the saints they are named after.
So as we come towards the top of the bell tower here, you can see up into the belfry, where there is still yet to place the structural steel, but up in those towers both on the south and on the north we will have almost 20,000 pounds of bells.
So between the two towers (the north and here in the south tower), we will have five liturgical bells. Over in the north tower there will be two bells. The largest bell which will be dedicated to Mary Immaculate, Maria Immaculata and will have written on that bell Our Lady’s words from Fatima, “In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph.” That bell will be over 7,000 pounds and over 6 feet tall.
Also in the north tower, we will have the third largest bell which is named after Saint John the Baptist and will have written on it in Latin, ‘A voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord.’ because we will use that bell (like Saint John the Baptist so often drew souls to Our Lord) we will use that bell to call souls to Mass.
Here in the south tower we will have three bells. The second largest bell will be dedicated in honor of the brother and sister Saints Benedict and Scholastica. Saint Benedict is a great patron against wicked spirits, and Saint Scholastica is the patron saint against storms. We will use that bell as a symbol of driving away wicked spirits as sacramentals do, and also if there is ever a storm headed this way will come up and ring that bell to ask for God's protection.
The second smallest bell will go in this tower which will be in honor of Saint Gabriel and it will have written on it, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us.” That bell we will ring not only to announce the daily Angelus three times a day, but it also can be used to announce the Consecration at Mass. God Himself, the Word, coming down on the altar.
Lastly, in this bell tower we will have our smallest bell which will be dedicated to Saint Lazarus. We will use this bell to ring as the death knell as we carry our loved ones into the cemetery. It will have written on it, “Lazarus, come forth!” The words that Our Lord said to his good friend rising him from the dead, and it will be a reminder to us in that sad moment as we take our loved ones to the cemetery, that one day they too will be resurrected by Our Lord just as his good friend Lazarus.
And as we and our loved ones finish our pilgrimage on this earth we can imagine bringing their bodies from the church, out these portals, over the plaza and directly up this road, which will go straight into Our Lady of Peace Cemetery where we will lay them to rest, to await the final resurrection.
So as we enter into this month of November when we would typically consider the Mystical Body of Christ, I hope that this project can help all of us to meditate more deeply on our unity between the Church Triumphant, to the Church Militant, to the Church Suffering in Christ.
