The famed St. John Cantius parish in Chicago is the founding site of the Catholic Art Institute—a non-profit that aims to promote “the essential need for beauty to elevate our senses and illuminate our souls.” The organization hosted William Newton, an art critic based out of Washington, D.C., during a May 2018 event. 
Newton blasted the ignorance and outright hostility in the secular art realm, in both media coverage of exhibitions and the realm of auctions. But he also lamented the limited knowledge base of the Catholic faithful about their artistic patrimony. Too many Catholics have also been left in the dark about their own art history in recent decades. He encouraged people to educate themselves—particularly, to do some background reading (he listed the Bible, the Catechism, and the lives of the saints) so they can readily identify who is being depicted or what is depicted in sacred art.
Entering Heaven on Earth: The Signs, Symbols, and Saints of Catholic Churches, a new book by Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP, is a powerful tool for educating the Catholic faithful about their artistic heritage. Fr. Lew uses his vast collection of photography, which he has taken over many years, as a means to decipher the built-in “signs, symbols, and saints of Catholic churches,” as spotlighted by the subtitle of his book.
Back to basics on church architecture
Father Lew, a convert from Malaysia and a Dominican priest of the English province, follows the example of the Catechism of the Catholic Church by dividing his book into four parts. The leading section is about church architecture.
He gets right to the point in emphasizing that the singular purpose of any church building is “always, first of all, a place for the Christian people to assemble for the Sacred Liturgy and thus house the celebration of the most holy Eucharist.” He adds that “a church is built for the worship of God, for that human and divine action of the liturgy wherein heaven and earth meet. It is only fitting, therefore, that the church’s very structure and form point to this reality.”
Fr. Lew details the essential and oft-used elements used on the exteriors and interiors of churches. He doesn’t get sidetracked into discussions about the various styles over the centuries (letting his photographs “speak” by including examples of many). He starts with the familiar vertical elements on the outside—domes, spires, and towers—and continues with other common features among churches—the shape/floor plan; the orientation; and spaces outside of the nave and sanctuary. Before moving on to the interior of churches, he pauses briefly on an aspect that often gets lost amongst larger details: the use and symbolism of colors in churches.
The Dominican spends the most space on the altar and tabernacle when writing about the interiors of churches. Catholics are so used to the presence of an altar that we often forget that it is the “primordial liturgical symbol” and a “primary symbol of Christ.” Fr. Lew cites Scripture, the Fathers, and the Catechism to underline this key point about altars. After this, he touches the most on the sanctuary and its adornments (of course, this is the place where the altar sits), while only giving brief details about other interior features—such as Stations of the Cross and confessionals.
Sacred beauty taken from living and non-living sources
The following three sections of Fr. Lew’s book give direct answers to Newton’s call to action from 2018. He underlines that “often the symbols and stories within the church building do not communicate as fully as they could, because the people looking at them do not understand or know what they are referring to. This affects not just my non-religious friends, even practicing Christians may not appreciate what they’re looking at.”
He expresses his hope that his “exploration of church architecture and the symbols of sacred art and the saints will inspire you to read and understand the Bible more deeply and to examine the lives of the saints and to befriend them.”
The author devotes the second part of his book to the living and non-living signs and symbols. Some in the former category are obvious: a dove as a symbol of the Holy Spirit; fish as a symbol for Jesus; and wheat and grapes as symbols for the Eucharist. Others are more obscure. Who, for instance, has heard of the “Green Man”? It’s a strange adaptation from northern-European mythology—“‘a man’s face, with oak leaves growing from his mouth and ears, and completely surrounding the head’…it was incorporated into the carving of some churches as a sign of a new life in Christ.”
There is a similar split amongst the non-living symbols listed by Fr. Lew. The chalice and the Cross are among the most common symbols found in churches. However, a set that appears less frequently is the zodiac. Their use in Christian art is a “symbolic way of depicting the twelve months of the year, and they show that all time belongs to God.”
Depictions and symbols of the history of divine revelation
The author devotes Part III to how biblical and other scenes from Catholic Tradition are depicted in art, along with embedded symbols.
Fittingly, the Dominican priest starts with the fifteen traditional mysteries of the Rosary, along with the more recent Luminous Mysteries introduced by John Paul II.
Fr. Lew has significant experience in promoting the most well-known of Marian devotion beyond the formative years in his order. He released Mysteries Made Visible, a book on the Rosary, earlier this decade (published by Ignatius Press). He is also the current Promoter General of the Holy Rosary for the entire Dominican order.
The Rosary mysteries are typically depicted in a straightforward manner. However, there are sometimes variations or different emphases for each. Artwork of the Annunciation includes the Blessed Virgin Mary and Gabriel the Archangel. However, a lily is often part of the scene—either as an indicator of the messenger angel’s heavenly abode or as a symbol of Our Lady’s purity. There are also several ways of depicting the Resurrection of Our Lord.
The author devotes an entire chapter to the typology and symbols of various scenes from the Old Testament. One of the lesser-known depictions is of the three young men in the fiery furnace from the Book of Daniel. This account points to the redemptive actions of Christ the King “delivering souls from death or a sign of the victory of the martyrs who would not succumb to the powers of the world and who are saved by their trust in the one true God.”
The second half of Part III focuses on how the Most Holy Trinity is portrayed, along with the angels, the Last Judgment, and the sacraments. For God the Son, he gives brief descriptions of the Good Shepherd, the Lamb of God, the various monograms of Our Lord, and the Sacred Heart.
The many artistic symbols that identify the Saints
Back in 2018, Newton gave an anecdote during his lecture (interestingly titled “Cloudy Witnesses: Sacred Art in a Secular World”) that underlined the dire state of Catholics’ knowledge of their artistic patrimony. A young priest had said to him about the identity of a pair of statues in his parish: “I don’t know who they are, and no one in the parish knows who they are. But they’ve always been there, and we don’t have any record of who donated them—and we can’t tell who they are.”
Fr. Lew uses the same reference from Hebrews 12: 1 as a launching point for the longest section of his book—the symbols and depictions of the saints. He hopes the reader gains a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the saints through their portrayals in churches.
The Dominican gives prominence to the Blessed Virgin Mary and the apostles, as they’re the most frequently depicted. He details the significance of Our Lady with a veil versus without, along with her common motifs, such as the Immaculate Heart. The twelve apostles, as well as the evangelists, each have their own symbols, often with the instruments of their martyrdom. When Jesus fed the five thousand, it was St. Philip who asked about how they were going to accomplish this feat. Thus, the apostle is often depicted with loaves of bread.
A common feature of most depictions of the saints is the halo. But this is where they all part company, in terms of their symbols. Fr. Lew details the habits of the different orders founded by saints or their prominent members. He continues with the same division of symbols that he gave earlier—living symbols of saints versus inanimate ones.
Most practicing Catholics are familiar with St. Anthony of Padua, and can readily identify him due to his Franciscan habit, along with his carrying the Christ Child in his arms. The author points out that the saint is sometimes depicted with a donkey, as the animal was key to an Eucharistic miracle that the Franciscan performed. St. Anthony is less frequently shown with fish due to a separate miracle he performed on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
A third—and very obscure—animal symbol is the otter. An Anglo-Saxon bishop, St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, is depicted with otters due to an account by Saint Bede the Venerable. Fr. Lew also makes sure to note that Blessed Jordan of Saxony, St. Dominic’s successor as master of his order, is often shown with a weasel, which is a member of the same family as otters.
Other saints have non-living symbols. Among the most famous is St. Blaise and his association with candles due to the blessing of throats (his feast day on February 3rd is the day after the feast of Candlemas as well). At the other end of familiarity is the whip. While this instrument is most frequently depicted at Our Lord’s Scourging at the Pillar, it is also a symbol of St. Ambrose, as he “successfully whipped up the people” of Milan against the Arian heresy.
Fr. Lew’s book is highly recommended as an essential resource for deepening one’s knowledge and love for the Faith. Our lives should be full of constant education, not only of Scripture and doctrine but also of art, which supports and expresses both. All three can lead us to one of the key features of Dominican spirituality: contemplation of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful—all of which emanate from God Himself.
Entering Heaven on Earth: The Signs, Symbols, and Saints of Catholic Churches
by Fr. Lawrence Lew, OP
Our Sunday Visitor, 2024
Paperback, 256 pages
U.K. Edition from Catholic Truth Society to be released in April 2025.
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About Catholic architecture, at the beginning of my five-year undergraduate architecture training, in a secular university, one of our first studio classes was mentored by a non-conformist and near-genius professor.
As one of several assigned teams, our task was to construct a large model of Rheims Cathedral, a full five feet in length. In cardboard, Medieval stone masons (!) celebrating symbolic light passing through soaring flying buttresses and stained-glass windows to illumine the cathedral’s soul within the body of the physical structure. Also, about the professor’s home: it too was unconventional and symbolic, designed around a diagonal corner ceiling high enough to house his 18-foot-high pipe organ. The symbolic exterior echoing parts of Brunelleschi’s Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral in Florence. Besides being an architect, our mentor was also an organist and an artist. A three-part vocational decision he had made at the age of only five while visiting from Fargo, North Dakota, with his father, the Catholic Cathedral of St. Paul, in St. Paul Minnesota.
Many years later, I bumped into the professor at a local fast-food restaurant. He had fallen on hard times, and had lost everything. Except…in a rented storage locker he still retained only the deteriorating models, with the hope that someday “I again will still have students, who can restore them.”
Yes, there’s something about Catholic architecture as part of humanity and remembered history…
Incompletely, this professor did not fully get the full mystery of the concrete Incarnation within history: he was stuck as a non-Eucharistic “student of Christian Science.” Still, he instructed us that “you have no business aspiring to be an architect if you do not study metaphysics,” and then, “the heart of all good architecture is love.”
As I say, in the distractions of a post-modern world, “a non-conformist” in the best way.