A Celebration of Love and
Freedom
Expressed in Art and Architecture
The Meaning of
the Sculpture Program in
Our Mother of Africa Chapel
At the Annunciation, Mary accepted the angel’s invitation to become the
Mother of God. Because she cooperated in giving the Redeemer to the world, the Church has taught that Mary represented
the redeemed human race at that moment when she said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to
Thy word” (Luke 1:38).
Because of the Incarnation, Christ’s Passion and Death, and her assumption
into heaven, Mary participates in the distribution of God’s grace by her maternal intercession to her Divine Son.
It is through the life of grace, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, that we are united in the Mystical Body of Christ
and receive the spiritual resources we need to work out our eternal salvation.
Mary’s mediating role in
this sacred drama is uniquely embodied in
the African American experience and eloquently
expressed in the sculpture program of Our
Mother of Africa Chapel.
A Sacred Conversation
 The
statue of Our Mother of Africa holding the Christ Child faces a
bas-relief in the nave, which chronicles the African-American odyssey,
and draws us to the Crucified Christ in the sanctuary These three
sculptural components constitute a sacra conversazione, that is a sacred
conversation, in which the spectator participates with Our Mother of
Africa, her Crucified Son, and the African-American children in the
sacred drama enacted here.
The sacred
conversation, a representation of sacred personages in a single scene
rather than in separate compartments, originated in the early fifteenth
century. It is derived from altarpieces composed of three separate
panels hinged together. By integrating all three panels, artists
achieved a new realism in representing sacred space. The practice
extended to sculpture; artists reached new levels of realism in which
the spectator became an active participant in the sacred conversation,
as in the Our Mother of Africa Chapel.
Our Mother of Africa,
holding the Christ Child, looks down upon us. She strides forward toward
the narrative relief in the nave, and her Divine Son gestures for us to
read the relief, which spans the African American experience from
slavery to emancipation.
Our Mother of Africa Chapel
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