Father Eugene Engels
St. John the Evangelist Church
Plaquemine, La.

Now in these windows at St. John there are several themes that run throughout the Church. In each window of the main nave there are three panels. The upper panel is always an Old Testament scene. The middle panel, with a couple of exceptions, is always something from the life of St. John the Evangelist, the patron of this church. The bottom panel usually is something of modern history of the Church, something of the last one hundred to two hundred years, when Louisiana was being settled.

Along with this horizontal theme that runs through all the windows, the life of St. John the Evangelist, the Old Testament, and modern history, there is a vertical theme in each window. Just by way of example, the second window on the east side is a "Eucharistic Window". In the upper panel there's an angel offering bread to the kneeling figure of Elijah. Elijah was fleeing from Queen Jezebel and of course he walked forty days and forty nights on the strength of the bread that he was fed by the angel. In the middle panel the scene is the last supper scene and of course this shows John the Evangelist leaning against the heart of Christ, emphasizing that the bread that fed Elijah was a prototype of the Eucharist that would feed the Christian Church. In the bottom panel, St Louis, King of France, who is Louis the 9th, and is patron of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, is receiving communion at the hands of a priest. So you have that eucharistic theme running vertically and then, this window picks up the horizontal themes, that is the Old Testament, St. John the Evangelist and modern history.