Above Father Philip repairs the donated stained glass from the Chapel of the Novitiate in Marcy, New York. The Chapel was the place were many US Marianists prepared for their profession of vows.
The benefactor donated the many stained glass windows which will be installed in various parts of the Marianist residence and school.
The third new window for this world out there is a new stained-glass window, the stained-glass window for the 21st century -- the computer screen.
This new world will not get its inspiration from carefully manufactured stained glass windows.
Today, however, the way people carry on the fastest communication and obtain their most important information is no longer from the pages of a book or a colorful window. Instead, our postmodern culture is turning toward a new kind of stained-glass window for one of its sources of light. There is a very good chance that you look at that "window" at some point every day. When you boot up Microsoft Windows '95, what is the first visual you see? The colored panes of a software stained-glass window.
Christianity is now undergoing a visual metamorphosis. Our image of images must be altered. I grew up in a world where texts were better and images, or pictures, were held in lower esteem. A book with pictures in it was inferior to one without pictures. In fact, if you had a lot of pictures in your book you had a (gasp!) "coffee table" book.
Christians of the 21st century will be Christians who experience God in a variety of ways, including a sensory web made possible through powerful new visualization technologies.
