STATIONS OF THE CROSS
CHAPEL WINDOWS
ST. JOSEPH’S HEALTH CENTRE, GUELPH
EXPLANATORY TEXT

These simple abstracted images use pure colour and form to tell the story of Christ’s journey of suffering. The deep blue vertical band of the cross is present in all but the first and the last stations, as Christ takes up the cross in Station 2, and is taken down from the cross in Station 13.

Christ is represented by a deep blue rectangle, whose proportions are in the ratio of the Golden Section, often called the Divine Ratio – a rectangle that can subdivide or expand infinitely into a square and another rectangle of the same proportion. This profound ratio is found over and over again in the structure of natural form and growth patterns, and has been used to create ‘ideal’ proportion by artists and architects since the time of Pythagoras in ancient Greece.

The colour gold is used throughout the windows to represent Spirit – it is often glowing and calm, is sometimes viewed in the foreground or background, but becomes very agitated and powerful at the Crucifixion in Station 11.

Various other figures – Mary, Simon, Veronica, the women of Jerusalem – appear as additional rectangles of varying sizes and colour modifications. In Station 4, for example, Mary is shown as a paler blue rectangle – pure pale blue being a traditional symbolic colour for Mary’s robe throughout art history. We see a fine line of turquoise piercing her form, as it was foretold that ‘a sword’ would pierce her heart.

In Station 8, Christ speaks to the women of Jerusalem, saying ‘don’t cry for me, cry for your children’ – and the ‘piercing sword’ reappears to connect these mothers back to Mary in Station 4.

In Station 3, Christ stumbles for the first time, and the staggered repetition of the rectangle shows this action. In Stations 7 and 9 we see similar representations of the ground plane and the Christ figure stumbling/falling, with increasing heaviness and starkness.

Veronica, shown in Station 6 as a small, delicate figure, wipes Christ’s brow with a cool, wet cloth. The legend that Christ miraculously leaves his image on her cloth is represented here.

In the final Station, we see the tomb, as the golden square of the first Station becomes a dense black form. The Christ rectangle, set within the tomb doorway, is darkly luminescent. We feel the despair and darkness of this moment - yet the golden power of the Spirit, emerging out of the darkness, seems to point to the future, to the tomb-shattering power of the Resurrection.