FOXFIELD — This Christmas, for the first time, parishioners at Our Lady of Loreto Catholic Parish can gaze up at a host of angels in all their fiery brilliance. The church’s new stained-glass windows, vibrant as jewels, illuminate the nine choirs of angels.
Installed this spring, the windows are attracting attention from the larger community. They’re the subject of the documentary “Angels Alleluia” that airs Sunday on Rocky Mountain PBS, and they’ve just won the 2014 award for religious art from the Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture, a branch of the American Institute of Architects.
“Angels are constantly moving between heaven and Earth, and it’s important for us to have the presence of angels be represented in this building,” said Monsignor Edward Buelt, pastor of Our Lady of Loreto.
With its soaring architecture and sweeping views of the Front Range, the church is a peaceful oasis just off the bustle of East Arapahoe Road in Foxfield, a suburb tucked between Aurora and Parker. Built in 2003, the church is home to 3,250 families. Gov. Bill Owens belonged to the parish during his administration and often sent them Christmas ornaments in shapes of Colorado’s silver aspen and pine — images that appear in some of the new windows to depict God’s glory.
In the documentary, when Buelt talks about the celestial hierarchy of angels in their windows, he details the symbolism of the art and also the specific duties assigned to the nine different ranks, saying that guardian angels are those closest to human beings.
But on a recent afternoon, asked to explain angels in the most basic terms, he hesitates — then uses the example familiar to everyone who has watched the iconic holiday movie “It’s a Wonderful Life,” about an angel named Clarence who reveals to a forlorn man the importance of his humble life.
“We believe God created angels to help us know love. That’s true of all three great monotheistic religions. We all believe that … angels bring the message of God’s love for us, and the best of God’s grace. Like Clarence, they just want to help us live a good life and teach us to get to the Lord.”
Angels are an integral part of the Christmas season because they’re closely linked to the birth of Jesus, appearing to Mary and to the shepherds with messages of good news. And outside churches, angels are everywhere, from Christmas cards to cherubic tree ornaments.
But the Loreto windows are nothing like these pop-culture representations. They’re not even like traditional religious art, where angels look like human bodies with giant wings. They’re abstract, like modern art.
The jury that selected the windows for the Religion, Art and Architecture Design Award praised their visual power, saying that “bright colors, abstract forms, and layers of meaning distinguish these instruments of theology, fulfilling one of the oldest functions of stained glass in a new and fresh way.”
The angel windows speak volumes to parishioners such as Kate Madrid, a poet who attempts to clear up images that have become corrupt through misuse — like the word angel, which means messenger.
“When you read Ezekiel, his image of angels is so bizarre that it makes you stop and wonder at the majesty and otherness of angels,” she said. She reflected on Exodus and how an angel appeared to Moses in the flame of fire in a burning bush. “And there’s the terrifying angel in Genesis, and then you think that this is what showed up to Mary. You understand why angels always said, ‘Be not afraid.’ “
For centuries, throughout the history of art, angels have been portrayed in painting, sculpture, woodcarving, marble and mosaic. Stained-glass windows were particularly popular in the Middle Ages because, before the printed word, they told stories from the Bible.
“They’re very much rooted in Catholic tradition,” Buelt said.
Back in summer 2012, he spotted a beautiful contemporary church window on the cover of “Stained Glass,” the quarterly journal of the Stained Glass Association of America.
He knew his church could never afford such beauty.
But a week later, a parishioner asked if he’d ever thought about stained-glass windows for the church and said he’d happily become an anonymous donor. Immediately, Buelt contacted the artist who had created those contemporary stained-glass windows — Scott Parsons, who had grown up in the Denver suburb of Lakewood, attending the Bethlehem Lutheran School, and gazing at the stained-glass windows in chapel each day.
At first, Parsons was hesitant.
The word “angels” conjured “Hallmark cards, baby faces and wings,” Parsons said. But he was hooked when Buelt began talking about the symbolism of angels.
Together, priest and artist delved deeply into the writings of saints, modern scholars and early church fathers like Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who said that angels should never be depicted in the form of a human body and that perhaps the most perfect symbolism for the angels was fire and heat.
“We talked about how angels are pure intelligence and how they represent the entire range of human emotions,” Parsons said. “We put all that together with what we’d read about how encounters with angels are fearful experiences. We wanted impact and some wow factor, because beauty can transport us out of ourselves to something greater.”
The documentary “Angels Alleluia,” written and directed by Colleen Smith of Denver, describes the process of creation, including Parsons’ trip to the stained-glass studio in Germany where the windows were crafted with centuries-old techniques by a team headed by a fifth-generation stained-glass master.
“Using the wind from their lungs, the glass blowers filled the glass with spirit,” says the narrator, describing how craftsmen shaped the glass, fiery and glowing.
Back in Colorado, the windows were installed in March, and they’ve come to have great meaning for parishioners such as Tom Morroni. He and his late wife, Judy, saw the drawings for the windows before the installation, and thought they “looked like modern art,” said Morroni, who is not a particular fan of that style.
Still, Judy often gazed on the abstract images and their fiery, hot colors.
One day, late in 2013, she was hospitalized during her battle with cancer. At one point, she told Tom she felt like she was dying and stopped breathing.
After a few moments, however, she began to recover.
The next day, while Tom was driving her home, she told him that during the time she’d stopped breathing, she’d felt a huge presence of color and light looming up behind her.
“There were three lights, yellow, orange and red,” Morroni said. “She said, ‘It’s just like the guardian angel in those windows, and as the lights went by me, I was told, “It’s not time yet,” and then I woke up.’ “
She lived another month, devoted to connecting even more deeply with her family and faith.
A year later, Tom still reflects on that experience and on the angels as messengers.
“Clearly, it was a communication,” he said. “These things are mysteries to some extent, and we can’t go beyond that. But she wasn’t particularly enthralled by the windows, and then for this to happen — for her to make that connection, it seems to have some importance, and it reinforced her faith.”
This year, Morroni and his fellow parishioners will attend Christmas Mass, watching as clouds of incense are illuminated in beams of color, pondering the mysteries of faith.
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp
Sunday telecast
“Angels Alleluia,” written and directed by Colleen Smith, is part of the Christmas season programming on Rocky Mountain PBS. It airs at 4 p.m. Sunday on Channel 6.
