The Pelican of Mercy

I've been attending RCIA classes at St. Sebastian Parish in Byron Center, MI for the last few weeks. (RCIA, just to explain, stands for the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults). It's required (for the most part) training for anyone who is hoping to enter the Catholic Church.

At any rate, this past Tuesday, we toured the Historic St. Sebastian Church and I was introduced to the very Catholic world of statues and stained glass and altars and relics.

Amongst all the statues of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, was an image that seemed completely out of place: a pelican pictured in stained glass.

Now, a pelican in a church is weird enough, but it gets weirder. See, the pelican isn't just sitting there doing normal pelican-y things (whatever they might be). Instead, she is pictured striking her breast with her beak and drawing big drops of blood which then are gulped down by three or four young pelicans huddled beneath her wings. Perfectly normal, right? Sure! Of course! I mean really, what says "worship" and "Church" and "God" and "Love" more than a pelican being cannibalized by her young?

Naturally, my first reaction was surprise and, honestly, a little frustration. How in the world am I going to explain the bloody-pelican-window-thing to my less-than-enthusiastic-about-Catholicism wife?

I was wondering about the chances of her really staring at the window long enough to figure out it was a bloody pelican pictured there when I realized the leader of the RCIA class was talking. I tuned back in just in time to learn something.

Turns out, the pelican has been a cherished symbol in the Christian Church for hundreds of years. It was understood, all those years ago, that the pelican would, in times of hunger or extreme need, feed her young with her own body and blood, keeping them alive even at the sacrifice of her own life.

This tradition is evidenced in Christian Art as well as Christian literature. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his Eucharistic Hymn Adore te Devote wrote:

Bring the tender tale true of the Pelican;
Bathe me, Jesu Lord, in what thy bosom ran---
Blood whereof a single drop has power to win
All the world forgiveness of its world of sin.

Because of this association with the sacrifice of Christ, the pelican is also displayed in many early depictions of the Crucifixion. Here she is seen at the top of the cross, feeding her young with her own blood:

Once the symbolism was explained--and once I'd listened with an open mind--the pelican (like so many other things Catholic) became understandable. And more than that: meaningful, profound.

Instead of shuddering at the weirdness of Catholic symbolism and iconography, I found myself drawn into it and appreciating it and letting it speak to me. The vividness of the image--the way it jumps out and shocks you with red blood and hungry young--makes you think. It's not clean. It's not safe. It's not sterile. But, then again, neither was the cross. The cross and the sacrifice of Christ caused Him real pain. The blood that poured from his hands, feet, side, back and head was real blood. The heart that was pierced was a real heart that had been beating just minutes before. The death he died was a real death.

Contained in that vivid, violent symbol of the Pelican of Mercy is the meat of the Christian story: Our Creator, in times of spiritual famine, gives himself to us and feeds us with His body and His blood. We were in danger of starving--still are as long as we are alive--and our Lord, not content to sit by and urge us on to goodness and life with mere words, jumped into the fray, struck his own breast and let the life-giving blood flow to us. It wasn't clean. It wasn't sterile. It wasn't easy. Redemption never is.

An hour or so later, I left that church that night with a new appreciation for the symbols and icons the Catholic Church has preserved and passed on through all the generations of Christians who've gone before me.

And if my wife notices the bird in the window and the blood, I'm not going to worry about what to say. It's the redemption story. In stained glass.