The Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery came to this commission with a clear and beautiful vision. They wanted the last meeting between Saint Benedict and Saint Scholastica retold for today, not with the trappings of a Byzantine icon, but in a way that young people could recognize and feel. They wanted the figures to be present, human, emotionally true. They were struck by my design’s rendering of the shaft of light, which is a detail of the story not widely known, and the dove.

At its heart, this window is about love: agape, fraternal, friendship. Love and remembering, love and healing, love and loss. Love and eternal hope. The gesture of wanting to be together one last time, to say goodbye, to recognize the hope we have for eternal life, this is a story that is so readily recognized in a hospital chapel. Moments like this, an embrace of gratitude, a miracle, or a goodbye happen every day.

The window is 12 by 13 feet, and carries a quality rare in architectural glass: it is designed to be experienced from both sides—from within the chapel and from the hospital hallway outside. The glass is painted by hand throughout with vitreous enamels on plate glass, without lead lines, The seamless surface allows light to move through uninterrupted, shifting with the hours of the day.