On the opposite side of the Cross stands St. John the Apostle, to whom Christ said before He died, “Behold your Mother”, referring to Mary.  To His Mother, He said, “Woman, behold your son”, referring to John {see John 19:26-27}.  By these words, Jesus made all Christians (personifed by the Apostle) the children of Mary.  An old tradition holds that Mary brought forth Christ without the pains of childbirth; but, with much suffering and pain at Calvary she became the Mother of the Church.  St. John, the “Beloved”, wears a red garment, a sign of fervent and victorious love.  The robe he holds around himself is green, the artistic color of rebirth and the liturgical color of hope.  He is the only Apostle who did not abandon Jesus during His Passion, and was the first of the Twelve to recognize the Risen Lord at the Sea of Tiberias {see John 21:7}.  He is also the only Apostle who was not martyred; tradition holds that he was nearly 100 years old when he died.  The Feast of St. John is celebrated on December 27.

    Two angels holding a blue tasseled tapestry with gold trim hover behind our Lord’s Cross, making His image stand out from the brilliantly colored background and drawing our eyes toward Him.  A pair of angels with chalices capture the Precious Blood which flows from Christ’s hands, while another angel captures Blood and Water from His side.  These chalices are Eucharistic references to the Blood we receive in Holy Communion at Mass.

    The Water flowing from Christ’s pierced side was prefigured in the Old Testament when water flowed from the rock which Moses struck at Meribah {see Exodus 17:1-7} to sustain the Israelites.  According to the Catechism, the origin and growth of the Church are symbolized by the Blood and Water which flowed from the open side of the crucified Jesus.  St. Ambrose explained that just as Adam’s bride, Eve, was formed from his side as he slept, so Christ’s Bride, the Church, was born from His pierced side and Heart as He slept the sleep of death upon the Cross.

    Mary Magdalene is traditionally identified as the woman who, sorrowful for her sins, had once anointed Christ’s feet with perfumed oil and her tears, then dried them with her hair {see Luke 7:36-50}.  Here, she is again at His feet, embracing the Cross.  Like the angels seen in this window, she holds a chalice and captures the Blood from His wounds.  The tunic she wears is violet, the liturgical color of penance, which is worn by the clergy during Advent and Lent.  As is traditional in iconography, the Magdalene is portrayed with long, flowing hair and a container of ointment (seen on the ground next to the Cross, partially covered with a cloth).  This urn is a reminder of her previous anointing of Jesus, and also of the anointing He will receive before His burial.  According to one legend (mentioned in this guide’s description of the Epiphany window), the Virgin Mary kept the myrhh brought by the Magi, and this was used to anoint the Lord’s dead body.  St. Mary Magdalene will keep vigil at His tomb {Matthew 27:61}, and after His Resurrection, she will be at His feet yet again, joyfully embracing them {Matthew 28:10}.  She is the patron saint of repentant sinners, and her feast day is July 22.

     In this scene, and in spiritual thought, the Lord’s Cross can be seen as a mystical link between the three realms in which the Church, as a Communion of Saints, exists: Heaven (the Church Triumphant), Earth (the Church Militant), and the world of the dead (the Church Expectant in Purgatory).  The Cross is planted firmly in the Earth, but it acts as a conduit uniting Earth to what is “above” and what is “below”.  The intercessory power of Christ reaches up to the heights into the world of angels, and past the sun, moon, and twinkling stars to God the Father (in the upper portion of the window).  His saving power penetrates through the depths into the world of the dead, reaching Adam and the other faithful (but sinful) departed.

    This latter point is represented by the skull at the foot of the Cross.  According to a legend dating at least as far back as the 5th century, Christ’s Cross was raised at the very spot where Adam had been buried after his death.  Many Eastern rite icons of the Crucifixion show Christ’s Blood soaking through the ground, flowing onto Adam’s skull and washing its sin away.  Some icons of the Resurrection depict Christ (the new Adam) pulling Adam and Eve out of hell, an event described in detail in the apocryphal Gospel According to Nicodemus and alluded to in the Apostle’s Creed with the statement that Jesus “descended into hell.”  Hell, in this case, refers to the state of limbo that the righteous souls of the Old Testament were in after their deaths, rather than the state of eternal damnation.  Another legend, wishing to stress the undoing of Adam’s sin by Christ’s Sacrifice, holds that the Cross was made of wood from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  By that tale’s reckoning, the very tree that had brought us death in Eden also brought us life at Calvary.

    At each end of the horizontal cross-beam, behind the Lord’s pierced hands, appear the sun and the moon.  These may be viewed in several different ways.  They could be seen as symbols of the two natures of Christ: Divine and human.  The sun seen here is dark, rather than bright, and the moon has lost its light, as well (it appears as an eclipse).  This could represent that at the death of Jesus, His inseparable natures (humanity, symbolized by the moon, and divinity, symbolized by the sun) both “faded” from man’s view.  As believers in the Resurrection, we Christians know that this, like any eclipse, is only temporary: Our Lord will rise from the dead on the third day.  With that glorious event in mind, the sun eclipsing the moon also can serve as an image of light (Christ - the Light of the World) triumphing over darkness, or the beginning of a bright Christian era obscuring the darker times before the world received her Savior.

    These celestial orbs can be seen on several other symbolic levels, as well.  As representatives of the beginning and end of day, they can serve as symbols of Christ, “the Alpha and the Omega” {Revelation 1:8}, the beginning and end of all days.  As markers of time, they suggest Christ as chronocrator, triumphant over time.  To the 2nd century Greek apologist, Theophilus of Antioch, the bright sun represented God, while the moon, dull without the sun’s light, represented humanity and man’s need for God.  Similarly, the 3rd century Church Father, Origen, saw the moon as a symbol for the Church, because the moon receives illumination from the sun as the Church receives illumination from God.  Many early Christians also viewed the moon as a symbol of the Resurrection because it is “reborn” each month.

    The actual reason for the presence of the sun and moon in this window may be gleaned from the fact that these disks most frequently appear in those pictures of the Crucifixion which were printed in old Mass missals or on paintings or mosaics which were made to be placed above altars.  Thus, their portrayal obviously have some link to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Their appearance is meant to call to the viewers’ mind an Old Testament passage, Malachi 1:11, which reads: “For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, My name is great among the nations; And everywhere they bring sacrifice to My name, and a pure offering; For great is My name among the nations, says the Lord of Hosts.”  God states this after telling the people of Judah that He will no longer accept their insincere and imperfect sacrifices, but that instead He will be pleased with the offerings of the Gentile nations.  Early Church Fathers such as St. Justin Martyr and St. Irenaeus of Lyons taught that these verses are an anticipation of the Eucharistic sacrifice offered by the Christian peoples throughout the world – the span covered by the rising and setting of the sun.  The Council of Trent {1545-1563} confirmed that this indeed is what the Book of Malachi refers to.  The Mass is one and the same with the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, and therefore the offering of the Mass is the pure sacrifice of the pure Christ – the pure offering the nations now bring, as predicted by the Lord to Malachi.

    Liturgically, one can find acknowledgment of this prophecy’s fulfillment in the texts of the Mass, with such statements as: “From age to age You gather a people to Yourself, so that from east to west a perfect offering may be made to the glory of Your name” {current English translation of Eucharistic Prayer III}.  Psalm 113 was written as a hymn of prayer “that God may be glorified at all times and in all places” {footnotes to the New American Bible}, and states “From the rising to the setting of the sun is the name of the Lord to be praised” {v. 3}.  This scripture, too, is fulfilled in the Mass.

    One Catholic author recently related the perpetuity of the Mass to the rising of the sun.  He wrote that the Sacrifice of Christ exists in eternity, and the Eucharistic Liturgy makes it present to us, just as the sunrise makes the sun present to us.  Just as sunset does not end the sun’s existence – the sun has merely slipped beyond our perspective – so the Sacrifice of Christ remains in eternity, even though the Mass we have attended has “ended.”

    Another link between the orbs in this window and the Mass and the Eucharist may be read of in the Gospels.  After His final entry into Jerusalem, Christ told the Apostles that before the Son of Man returns to gather His elect, “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars...” {Luke 21:25}, and “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light...” {Matthew 24:29}.  It is after the consecration of the Eucharist that we proclaim the Mystery of Faith: Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.  So, at that moment, the People of God at St. Martin’s see the dead Christ portrayed in the window; they see the risen Christ present on the altar in the Blessed Sacrament; and, again looking to the window, the darkened sun and eclipsed moon remind them of the time when He will come again.
This sun-and-moon device also appears on a mural of the Crucifixion which is located high on the south wall of the St. Gregory Chapel.  Although that mural and this window primarily depict the same event - the act which won us our Redemption - it is interesting to note that they each have a different secondary emphasis.  This window, as we have seen by the Blood flowing into chalices, has a strong focus on the Sacrament of the Eucharist.  The mural, however, makes allusion to all seven of the Catholic Church’s Sacraments.  In that painting, seven streams of water flow from Jesus’ side, each stream representing a Sacrament.  These Sacraments are: Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Holy Eucharist, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Anointing of the Sick.  Through these outward signs instituted by Christ, the grace of God flows to us like water from the stricken rock, like the water from Christ’s pierced side.  The longing of the human soul for these graces is symbolized by the drinking deer, which also calls to mind Psalm 42:2-3  -  “As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for You, O God.  Athirst is my soul for God, the living God...”  A similar message is found in Psalm 63:2-3  -  “O God, You are my God, for You I long; for You my soul is thirsting.  My body pines for You like a dry, weary land without water.”

    Refocusing our attention to this window, the fortress-like walls of the holy city of Jerusalem can be seen behind the Cross, between Sts. Mary Magdalene and John.  The twilight sky in the background may be seen symbolically as the sun setting on the Old Covenant, preparing for the brilliant sunrise of Easter Sunday.  It also indicates that Christ’s Body must soon be taken down from the Cross, in accordance with the law that says, “If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his corpse hung on a tree, it shall not remain on the tree overnight. You shall bury it the same day...{Deuteronomy 21:22-23}.”  We know from the Gospels that the entombment was carried out hurriedly because the Sabbath was about to begin {see Mark 15:42-43 and John 19:42}.  Before His burial, tradition tells us that He was held in the arms of His Sorrowful Mother.  This is touchingly portrayed in the Pieta statue near the Divine Mercy Chapel.  
Cedar trees grow in the distance, between Calvary and the city walls.  Because of the cedar’s stateliness, it is a figure of strength, greatness, beauty and majesty, and thus it became a symbol of the Messiah and His Kingdom {see Ezekiel 17:22-24}.  With foilage that persists through winter while the leaves of other trees perish, it also became a symbol of Resurrection and eternal life.

    There is another symbolic link between this tree and Christ.  Cedar wood was used by Solomon in the construction of the Temple.  According to the Book of Revelation, the New Jerusalem will have no temple building, “for the Lord God and the Lamb are the Temple of it” {21:22-23}.  Thus, the old Temple of cedar will be replaced by Jesus Christ.

    An argument could be made that the trees depicted here are not true Cedars of Lebanon, that they more closely resemble junipers or cypress trees.  The word cedar is used many times in the Old Testament.  In some instances, the word clearly refers to the famous trees of Lebanon.  However, in other places, the word is used to describe other coniferous trees with fragrant wood.  Cypress trees are often depicted in mosaics and paintings of Paradise.  An old poem reads:

    These evergreens, as symbols of hope for eternal life, would be well placed in this sobering picture of our Lord’s Crucifixion as a reminder that Christ did not remain dead.  The juniper is a member of the cypress family, and as a symbol of the Resurrection is often found in cemeteries.

    Reflecting on this window can powerfully remind us of the great love God has for us.  He humbled Himself to take on our human flesh with all of its frailty.  He then sacrificed that flesh in His bloody and painful death on the Cross for us.  But now we should reflect again on what was portrayed in the Last Supper window, for we must remember that before He died He gave us the Sacrament of the Eucharist.
Through the Eucharist, Jesus becomes our spiritual food.  Lower your eyes from this depiction of the Crucifixion to the veiled Tabernacle directly beneath it on the High Altar.  Here, in this humble box, the Lord who loved us enough to appear on Earth veiled in flesh now reposes under the veil of bread, true to His promise: “Know that I am with you always, until the end of the world {Matthew 28:20}.”