Wordless Wednesday: The Banishing From the Garden

This a beautiful work of art, however only fig leaf in the picture is with Adam? Eve seems to have clothing as does God. I always imagined them to be beings of a blinding radiant light, and only upon disobedience did they became aware of their physical forms. I remember God asking them how they knew they were naked. Perhaps they had become aware of each other’s bodies in a way which indicated a loss of previous innocence.

Beautiful window! I’d like to see many more of these.

It is significant that an image of Mary, the Second Eve, is present in this picture. Mary is the first person born after the Fall to be free from its consequence of Original Sin. She is the promise of the Redemption, it is her offspring that crushes the Serpent and reverses the consequences of the Fall. If Adam and Eve opened the gates of death it is Mary who opens the gate of Life in the person of her Divine Son, our Saviour.

You’re in luck, Anne–I have four more for future Wordless Wednesdays!

Spot on, AMGP. The other four windows in this series focus on scenes from the life of the Blessed Virgin, all of them drawn from the Protoevangelium of James.

Beautiful image…the cathedral must be just lovely.

Oh, Nancy, I wish that were true. It’s an imposing structure, which took two years to build–begun in 1911, completed in 1913. The stained glass throughout is stunningly beautiful and exquisitely crafted. But outside of the glass, the cathedral is devoid of ornamentation. It clearly underwent a “renovation” at some point; I suspect that, before that, it was more visually interesting. However, I’ve never found photos of the interior that are more than a couple decades old, so I can’t say for certain.