This Lent we will post pictures from inside St. Anthony Church, highlighting places that can lead you to prayer and deeper worship.

The Baptistry

This week's Place of Prayer is our old Baptistry. Have you ever stepped into that curious space before to look up and around?

In the wintertime, the sun seems to illuminate these windows with a particular kind of brilliance. This beautiful, one-of-a-kind feature of our church building used to be where baptisms would take place! The windows, saturated in deep colors, are significant because they depict all seven sacraments.
 

Seven Sacraments, Eight Windows

You'll notice that the Sacraments of Initiation are next to each other, directly above as you first walk in (Baptism, Eucharist, Confirmation). You might be wondering why there are eight windows when there are only seven sacraments. The eighth window signifies the 8th Day, when the Kingdom of God, which the sacraments aid in bringing forth here on earth, comes to fulfillment. Next time you're in the church, step in and look up. Spend a few minutes of silence and offer this prayer. 

Pray

"And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness." Acts 4:31 

Lord, I thank you for the sacraments of the Church. These beautiful signs and symbols that we can see, taste, feel, hear, and live-out are the ways we here on earth experience your divine love and mercy and receive a foretaste of fully resting in you. Help me to open my heart more fully this Lent so that the Holy Spirit may fill me abundantly with your grace through the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist. Amen.