By Mary Frances McCarthy
Herald Staff Writer
(From the issue of 10/7/04)

More than 800 square feet of stained glass was installed last week at Christ the Redeemer Church in Sterling. Four years after the church was completed, six windows originally designed to accommodate stained glass are finally complete.

"A church building and the art within it express in visible form who we are as a people of faith," Atonement Father C. Donald Howard, pastor, said in a letter to parishioners. "Hopefully (these windows) will allow us to see who we are and to enter more deeply into the mystery of who we are in our relationship to Christ."

The windows, which cost more than $225,000, were funded by parishioner donations over the last four or five years and by funds raised through the diocesan "Rooted in Faith — Forward in Hope" Capital Campaign.

With time allotted for erecting the necessary scaffolding, the project was completed last week. The installation of 102 panels took three days.

The windows were designed by Annie Dixon and created by Ronald Neill Dixon of Dixon Studio in Staunton.

For the larger windows in the front and the rear of the church, scaffolding was installed and the panels were raised with pulleys by workers in safety harnesses. The peak of the front window is almost 60 feet from the floor.

The Dixons brought the panels in the back of a moving van from Staunton through the driving rain of Hurricane Jeanne.

The center window displays an abstract cross, drawing its design from the crucifix below it. However, unlike the suffering on the crucifix, the cross in the window was designed to be a "glorified cross," and features the rich colors of yellow, blue and red. A halo circles the head of the cross and an abstract representation of Christ’s arms, formed by streams of red and blue (blood and water) flow from it. Two side panels show a continuation of the flowing blue, representing the flowing water of the sacrament of baptism.

The windows to the far right and left of the altar display creation, with the description from Genesis on the left and new creation from Revelations on the right. The window on the left depicts the themes of lightness and darkness, the formation of the sun and the moon, dry land and water. On the right, the completion of creation, Christ as the new creation, (the cross) is shown along with the recurrence of the sun and moon.

At the rear of the church, a window depicts the sending of the Holy Spirit over the church. Bright colors, representing the Spirit, appear to pour over the church.

While there is beauty and meaning in the bright colors of the stained glass, a good portion of the windows is clear, so that there is still clarity and a vision of daily life and continual creation, as requested by Father Howard.