St. Agatha - St. James Church Tour

Confessional at nave entrance

When we move from the narthex into the church proper, past the inner entrance doors, we step first into a low, darkened space. The choir loft juts into the church, just above our heads. At the left and the right are the confessionals, whose pointed arches are of dark wood. In this vestibule-like area, too, are the holy water fonts, or stoups. Here we pause, dip our fingers into the holy water, make the sign of the cross and in effect renew our baptismal vows. Here we prepare to move into the church. Here we acknowledge that the church is a different realm.

At the entrance we look down the nave toward the sanctuary and the high altar. We stand at the threshold of a large, very wide and quite tall room, marked by subdivisions. Two rows of columns separate aisles at the sides from the nave proper, where the central aisle runs. The columns in turn support an arcade of pointed arches and, far above, a lofty zone of windows, the clerestory. Clerestory and nave arcade shape a central volume of tall space, the nave proper, flanked by lower side aisles. Vaults cover the nave, the side aisles and the sanctuary. Toward the sanctuary rises a great decorated arch spanning the width of the central nave. It also marks the zone of the transept, meeting nave and sanctuary at right angles. And what strikes every visitor is how all surfaces are colored, molded and carved. Unlike the narthex, this is flamboyant. We are in a Victorian building.

The nave columns inform us about this space in a symbolic way. There are exactly six columns at our right and six at our left. Their total number is that of the Apostles visited by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). In his letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul the Apostle also speaks of Peter, John and other apostles as columns of the Church (Galatians 2:9). The number of columns here brings out Paul's meaning. So, too, do the frescoes in the nave arcade just above the capitals. There we see little coats-of-arms adorned with emblems, all added in 1912. We can discern, for example, a shield marked with a saw. That is the coat-of-arms of Simon the Zealot (Luke 6:15), who according to legend was sawn apart by the Persians. Presumably the other shields denote other apostles and their immediate followers.

SS. Vincent de Paul and Francis de Sales

Other saints appear in human rather than symbolic form in the side aisles flanking the nave. Each aisle has four stained-glass windows made in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1887. Each window contains two standing saints, marked by haloes and inscriptions. Male saints stand on our left, while female saints appear at our right. In the pews we sit between holy men on one side, holy women on the other. Their segregation by gender echoes the custom of early Christian and medieval churches, where men and women were kept separate from one another (a custom that started in Jewish synagogues in ancient times and still continues in some Protestant denominations). The saints of the side windows, then, present a kind of ideal Christian congregration. The male saints at our left are hard to see because the rectory, built nearby in 1865, blocks out the light. But with some diligence we can make out, as we move from the entrance towards the sanctuary, first St. Vincent de Paul holding a needy child in his arms, along with St. Francis de Sales. Then comes St. Dominic, paired with St. Francis of Assisi. They are followed by St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Benedict. Finally St. Patrick keeps company with St. Joseph who bears his foster son, the infant Jesus, in his arms.

SS. Rose and Teresa of Avila

These are the holy women who keep us company at the right: As we enter, St. Rose of Lima stands with St. Teresa of Avila. Then as we walk toward the sanctuary, St. Catherine of Siena and St. Clare of Assisi form a pair. Next come St. Cecilia and St. Agnes. The last holy women are St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin, and Our Lady herself, the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Standing in the nave, we can discern that the saints are arranged in a deliberate and purposeful way. The sequence of male saints begins and ends, for example, with a man bearing a child in his arms. That visual circumstance alerts us to other connections. Dominic and Francis, for example, form a pair because they are contemporaries from the early thirteenth century who founded the great mendicant orders. Similarly, Cecilia and Agnes bear witness to the circumstances of the early Christian church. There is a much larger pattern, signalled by the Virgin and her spouse, St. Joseph. The saints close to the transept lived two millennia ago. But those near the entrance, like Rose of Lima or St. Vincent de Paul, are the contemporaries of Shakespeare and the Pilgrim Fathers. When we move down the nave to the altar with those saints in view and in mind, we move backwards in time through the history of the Church to its beginnings.

There are other patterns linking the windows. We can make connections from one side to the other, as the Holy Family invites us to do. Mary and Joseph form a couple linking both sides of the nave. St. Francis of Assisi looks toward his neighbour and friend, Clare of Assisi, who founded the order of Franciscan nuns, the Poor Clares. St. Catherine of Siena, a Dominican nun, stands opposite her spiritual father, St. Dominic.

The saints beside us also form a community that is catholic, that is universal. Our neighbours come from Judea, Ireland, Italy, France, Spain and Latin America. Nowadays our congregation is even more universal. Similarly, when we move down the aisles to receive communion, we echo the implied march of the stained-glass saints in time. Across the pews saint calls to saint. We who sit between them join in their mystic community, one in Christ, in whom there is neither male nor female, slave or free, Jew or Greek (1 Corinthians 12:13).

If you have time before or after Mass, the windows repay careful study as testimonies of faith and works of art. St. Patrick, for example, acknowledges the ethnic composition of St. James Parish in 1850, as do the shamrocks of the entrance capitals. A snake wrapped round his bishop's staff, or crozier, recalls his legendary work in Ireland. The lamb that St. Agnes displays across the way plays with her name: "Agnes" sounds like "agnus," the Latin word for sheep. In the darkness at the left, St. Benedict displays the opening word of his monastic rule, AUSCULTA. "LISTEN!" this says, an appropriate message for a church and one fittingly displayed on the side of this church where the pulpit rises.

St. Agatha - St. James Church Tour