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The history and significance of the Benedictine Order is uniquely related in the stained glass windows in Saint Benedict Church. One dominant saint along with four other Benedictine saints are portrayed in each window. As the sun illuminates each of the windows and fills the nave with myriads of color variations, the saints symbolically join their voices in prayer with the people of Saint Benedict.
Pope Benedict XVI has delivered numerous homilies on the lives of Benedictine saints, many of whom are portrayed in the windows of Saint Benedict Church. Below are excerpts from and links to the Holy Father's homilies as well as links to the windows.
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Saint Gertrude
"Our catechesis today focuses on Saint Gertrude the Great, a remarkable figure associated with the monastery of Helfta, where so many masterpieces of religious literature were born." (6 October 2010)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101006_en.html
Saint Gertrude Window in Saint Benedict Church
Saint Hildegard of Bingen
Today I would like to take up and continue my Reflection on St Hildegard of Bingen, an important female figure of the Middle Ages who was distinguished for her spiritual wisdom and the holiness of her life. Hildegard's mystical visions resemble those of the Old Testament prophets: expressing herself in the cultural and religious categories of her time, she interpreted the Sacred Scriptures in the light of God, applying them to the various circumstances of life. (1 and 8 September 2010)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100908_en.html
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100901_en.html
Saint Anselm
"The theologian's activity, according to St Anselm, thus develops in three stages: faith, a gift God freely offers, to be received with humility; experience, which consists in incarnating God's word in one's own daily life; and therefore true knowledge, which is never the fruit of ascetic reasoning but rather of contemplative intuition." (23 September 2009)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090923_en.html
Saint Anselm Window in Saint Benedict Church
Saint Bernard of Cllairvaux
Today I would like to talk about St Bernard of Clairvaux, called "the last of the Fathers" of the Church because once again in the 12th century he renewed and brought to the fore the important theology of the Fathers. (21 October 2009)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20091021_en.html
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux Window in Saint Benedict Church
Saint Boniface
"Today, we shall reflect on a great eighth-century missionary who spread Christianity in Central Europe, indeed also in my own country: St Boniface, who has gone down in history as 'the Apostle of the Germans.' "(11 March 2009)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090311_en.html
Saint Boniface Window in Saint Benedict Church
Saint Bede
"Bede was also an eminent teacher of liturgical theology. In his Homilies on the Gospels for Sundays and feast days he achieves a true mystagogy, teaching the faithful to celebrate the mysteries of the faith joyfully and to reproduce them coherently in life, while awaiting their full manifestation with the return of Christ, when, with our glorified bodies, we shall be admitted to the offertory procession in the eternal liturgy of God in Heaven." (18 February 2009)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090218_en.html
Saint Bede Window in Saint Benedict Church
Pope Saint Gregory the Great
Gregory never sought to delineate "his own" doctrine, his own originality. Rather, he intended to echo the traditional teaching of the Church, he simply wanted to be the mouthpiece of Christ and of the Church on the way that must be taken to reach God. (4 June 2008)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080604_en.html
Saint Anselm Window in Saint Benedict Church
Saint Benedict
"Throughout the second book of his Dialogues, Gregory shows us how Saint Benedict's life
was steeped in an atmosphere of prayer, the foundation of his existence. Without prayer there is no experience of God. Yet Benedict's spirituality was not an interiority removed from reality. In the anxiety and confusion of his day,
he lived under God's gaze and in this very way never lost sight of the duties of daily life and of man with his practical needs." (9 April 2008)
"Today, in seeking true progress, let us also listen to the Rule of St Benedict as a guiding
light on our journey. The great monk is still a true master at whose school we can learn to become proficient in true humanism." (9 April 2008)
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080409_en.html'
Saint Benedict Window in Saint Benedict Church
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