About Our Stained Glass Windows
Saint Stanislaus Kostka
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Saint Stanislaus Kostka died at the age of seventeen. He belonged to a noble Polish Family. At the age of fourteen he went with his elder brother, Paul, to study at Vienna. They boarded in the home of a man who was bitterly anti-catholic. While there Paul and this man treated Stanislaus shamefully. They mocked his religious fervor and when he became dangerously ill, they refused to send for a priest. It was then that God sent two of his angels, and from them the sick youth received Holy Communion. Our Lady herself appeared and because of his love for the Infant Christ, she presented her Divine Child to him. After curing him completely, she told him to become a Jesuit.
His brother did not want him to become a priest; neither did his father who was a rich prince in Poland. To avoid their opposition he fled from Vienna and walked all the way to Rome. The head of the Jesuits, St. Francis Borgia, told the saintly boy that he could become a novice. That meant he could begin to learn how to be a Jesuit.
When his father found out that Stanislaus had joined the Jesuits, he threatened to put every Jesuit priest out of the Kingdom of Poland unless his son came back. But St. Stanislaus wrote his father: “God and His Blessed Mother told me to do this. I will pray for you and the family all my life, and that is far better than becoming a prince of Poland“.
He was just seventeen when he joined the Jesuits. He lived with them for ten short months marked by a rare piety and obedience and devotion to our Sacramental Lord and our Blessed Mother. Although in the best of health he predicted the day of his death: “How gloriously the saints in heaven must celebrate our Lady’s Assumption. When they celebrate it this year, I shall be with them”. Two days before the Feast of the Assumption he fell sick. He asked for Holy Communion and Extreme Unction. On her Feast Day, Mary came to take him to Heaven. It was the 15th of August, 1568.
You will notice that in the stained glass window St. Stanislaus is holding a lily in his right hand – the emblem of purity and the Infant Saviour in his left, Whom he had received from the hands of our Lady. The chalice at his feet refers to the Holy Communion which the sick youth miraculously received from the hands of the angels. The book and oil lamp represents his love of divine Truth – which brings light to the mind.
St. Stanislaus, whose relic lies in the Main Altar, teaches us in every trial of life to pray to the Mother of God, and to trust without fear in her aid. And like Saint Tarcissus, he teaches us to love the Blessed Sacrament.