As the interior of the Immaculata develops, we take this opportunity to explore aspects of the meanings and symbolisms of the liturgical art which will be prominently featured in the church, beginning with the cupola scene.

May is the month specially dedicated to Mary.

This update offers a first glimpse of the Immaculata’s focal Marian painting, as well as more about the Immaculata statue crowning the cupola exterior.

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Transcript of the Video

Welcome back to the Immaculata Church Project here in St. Marys, Kansas. Today we’re going to give you a construction update on the exterior and interior.

On the exterior, since our last video, we have all the bricks installed. The masons are still installing the cast stone pieces on the west façade and around the door entries. We have gotten almost all the windows installed and we've got a percent of the stucco work done on the back of house. Now let's go inside and see what we've got done in there.

So since our last video we’ve had a lot of the framing done inside, as we didn't have any sheetrock on. Since then, we've gotten all of the insulation and most of the vapor barrier over the insulation, and about 40% of the sheetrock is now installed. We do have about 25% of that sheetrock finished and some of it primed. The cupola is all primed; they are installing some finish trim work and getting the surfaces ready for the liturgical artwork. We are going to go now up into the cupola and Father Rutledge is going to start talking about the liturgical paintings.

[Meeting conversation] [Bill Drew] Good to see you, Father.

[Fr. Rutledge] Thanks, Bill. Thanks a lot for the update.

So here we are up in the cupola. We have a whole scene of artwork that's going to go on the ceiling up here in the cupola. So in this scene, up at the very highest point in the church, we will have an image of God the Father looking down over everything else that goes in the church. And it's a fitting thing to have God the Father up there since all these other beings, all these other realities that we will see in the artwork throughout the church come from his fatherhood, come from his benevolence.

So we have two scenes in the church. The two central scenes in the church are both coming from the book of the Apocalypse. Up here we will have Apocalypse chapter 12 mainly; down behind our main altar is going to be Apocalypse 7 which we will explain in a later video. But when we mention this book of the Apocalypse it often conjures up in people’s minds, well, scenes that are apocalyptic or eschatological. But the reality is it's a very beautiful book because the whole book is about the defeat of the enemy, the defeat of the devil and his kingdom by the kingdom of heaven. So it's a very victorious and triumphant book.

The whole scene of Apocalypse chapter 12 which go up here in the ceiling, the whole theme will be set in fact by the wording that will go around the entablature in the cupola. The words which will be in Latin, but in English are: “A great sign appeared in heavens: a woman clothed in the sun”. And so you will see actually right over there on the ceiling a 16-foot tall image of Our Lady depicting that very scene: this woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary, clothed in the sun with gold behind her. Gold in art has always been a symbol of divine glory, so she’s clothed in the sun, she’s clothed in divine glory. And she holds in her arms her Son, who holds in His hand a cruciger (this is an image that He is the ruler of the world). Then she has under her feet the serpent who she has crushed, whose head she has crushed, as was announced by God at the very beginning of the Bible and Genesis chapter 3. And then she also has the moon under her feet which is a symbol that all that changes, all that is earthly and material that's constantly changing is under her rule. And so this scene of Our Lady in Apocalypse 12 is echoed in fact in the whole message of Fatima; it speaks of the victory of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the victory of her Immaculate Heart. But it also speaks to us Americans a little bit more too because it is echoed as well in the whole image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the tilma. This, even though it's not the exact same image, still represents again the victory of Our Lady because through that tilma millions of pagans were converted to the Catholic Faith.

Now radiating around this scene of the Blessed Virgin Mary in her triumph we see seven [Ed: five] different angels from the book of the Apocalypse who are mentioned specifically there. We will have Saint Michael who it’s one of two times in scripture where his name is mentioned where he is slaying the dragon. We also have other angels: two who are handing palms and crowns to the elect that represent their victory, other angels who have trumpets who are again calling souls to judgment, a sound which will be a happy one for those who are victorious with Our Lord; and then we have these four small cherubs who are blowing wind, and that again represents these angels that God the Father sends to protect us, blowing away the winds: it’s an image of the subtlety of the devils, of the bad spirits, who come to attack us – they are blowing these winds away from us.

So all these images that will be going up here in the cupola have been painted already on canvas in a studio in New York, and they will be bringing them here and applying them to the cupola within the next month.

So lastly, you might ask why did we relegate this scene of Our Lady, which is a central theme in the church, up here to the cupola? Well, the main altar is the focal point but we have another beautiful scene that we've left there and we'll explain in a later video; but up here we have truly a heavenly scene: Our Lady in victory in heaven, we have the stars, we have the angels, this whole scene that is a heavenly scene that we have to lift our heads up to, lift our heads up off of this earth and look up and see this victory which will be ours someday.

[Bill Drew] And that's really only about 15 or 20% of the amount of artwork that is in this church, so in the following videos we will have more. Father, let’s go on outside and talk about the statue of Our Lady.

[Fr. Rutledge] Sounds good.

So here we are outside looking up at the cupola which in last August’s video we explained the lifting of the cupola. We also explained a little bit about the statue of Our Lady that will sit atop the cupola, but now we're going to go into a little bit more detail. First of all, where did we get this image, the prototype for the statue of Our Lady? The statue is actually a replica, as it were, of a statue that is in Lyon, France. In the town of Lyon the people had been protected many times against different plagues and wars and so the people built a church in honor of Our Lady called the Fourvière. What's interesting about this church in Lyon is that the spot where Our Lady’s gilded statue went atop that church originally there was a large turret which was atop that church. Well, that turret fell down in 1848 and that same year they began production of this gilded statue of Our Lady. Now, 1848, if you watched our August (2021) video, is the exact same year that Father Verreydt brought the Potawatomi Indians here to St. Marys and founded this town and named it after Our Lady.

Some of you may have seen some of the pictures of the statue Our Lady going atop the church and perhaps you've noticed that she's not facing the west façade of the church nor facing directly south. We have her positioned in fact to face town, to face downtown St. Marys to show that she's not just the mother of our campus, but she's the mother of this whole town and that she protects us. We drew inspiration from a church in Pittsburgh where the statue of Saint Joseph was sort of cockeyed like that, facing over the steel mills and all those steel mill workers were very happy to know he was watching over them and in fact they were quite upset when the statue was eventually taken down.

[Bill Drew] So the statue will be made of marble. Not solid marble; if we carved the statue out of solid marble it would be way to heavy for that pedestal. She will be made out of a technical marble, so the marble dust from the quarries mixed with resin, and it will be a hollow statue. The statue is about 12 feet tall. It will be delivered here and be gilt in 24-karat gold. Once the statue is lifted in place atop the cupola, on each one of our parapet walls and on each back side of the tower there's lights. One of the statue makers in a conversation talking about the 24-karat gold said on a cloudy day 24-karat gold glows, on a sunny day it glistens. She will truly be the “beacon on the plain” here in St. Mary's!

[Fr. Rutledge] The last few details about this statue of Our Lady: just to look at the image and what you can see is a clay model of what she will look like. You can see that we have designed her so that her face is very maternal looking. She looks down on us, protecting us. She has twelve stars surrounding her crown on her head, again making reference to Apocalypse chapter 12. And lastly you can notice her hands are turned downwards and two of her fingers, her two middle fingers are united; this is a very traditional artistic style wherein the artist depicts a silent message from the silent statue. The two fingers joined together represent the union of the divine and the human nature of Our Lord in the Incarnation, the other three finger fingers representing the Holy Trinity. And so she's making an act of faith in the use of her hands. But she also has her hands pointed downward towards us: this was something she very much wanted to express especially at Rue du Bac where the Miraculous Medal image came from, where Our Lady showed her hands pointed down towards her children showing all the graces that she, who is full of grace, pours down on us.

Lastly, we are very excited to announce to you that on September 10 of this year, so mark your calendar, September 10, His Excellency, Bishop Fellay, will come here to St. Marys and consecrate our five liturgical bells that have been produced in France and that will be arriving here in St. Marys soon before that event. We will give you more details about that event in due time but it surely will happen here in front of Immaculata.

[Bill Drew] So we have about eight months left of construction. Please continue to support the project. We thank you for your support of the project. For more information you can visit our website at anewimmaculata.org