6 – THE MAGDALENE WINDOW

The Magdalene Window – a large modern stained-glass window – was designed and installed by Melbourne artist David Wright in 2001. It is in stark contrast to the God’s Love window opposite because this Magdalene Window acknowledges the role of women in the scriptures and in the history of the church.

On Easter Day the three women who had come to anoint Christ’s body find his tomb empty except for two angels – a potent moment. The tomb is symbolic of the womb. The pain of the crucifixion precedes the joy of the resurrection. From death comes resurrection then new life. Around the perimeter new life is shown in the form of foetus and red-tailed sperm.

Mary Magdalene is depicted on the right in green. She wears a bishop’s mitre and at her feet lies a stylised bishop’s pastoral staff, spiralling tendril-like and flowering at its tip. Mary holds, womb-like, an egg that is turning red. Tradition has it that when Emperor Tiberius challenged Mary about the risen Christ saying that it was no more possible than an egg turning red, she picked up an egg that promptly turned red in her hand.

In their moment of crisis the women stretch out their hands to each other, forming a circular supportive link. Arms outstretched, Christ, half hidden in the garden, completes the circle.

The shroud that was around the crucified body of Jesus unwraps in a spiral coil, suggesting the power that has taken place in the resurrection. A needle hangs from the shroud, symbolic of the work that women have historically done in the Church.

The design of this window contains two main circular movements; one is the circle of the earth that embraces the figures around the tomb. The other is the sweeping circle that takes us from the entrance of the tomb, through the heavens, and leads us back to Christ. The circles cut across the long vertical mullions of the lancet panes – contrasting to the verticality of the male-dominated window opposite. The circles and spirals symbolise the potential for action, like a clock spring, from the coil within the seed, to the spiral stars and planets swirling in space. God is shown at the centre of the design as a single point. All potential spirals out from God, all possible ways of being. There are two gentle allusions to Aboriginal spirituality in the design. One is the movement of water through the landscape. The other is the rainbow that winds up from the earth through the heavens and back to earth with a deliberately serpentine quality.