The Altar
by George Herbert
A broken A L T A R, Lord, thy servant rears,
Made of a heart, and cemented with tears:
Whose parts are as thy hand did frame;
No workman’s tool hath touched the same.
A H E A R T alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow'r doth cut.
Wherefore each part
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise thy Name;
That, if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise thee may not cease.
O let thy blessed S A C R I F I C E be mine,
And sanctify this A L T A R to be thine.
Altar of Saint John the Evangelist at St. Mark's Church, Philadelphia
The
Altar of Saint John the Evangelist was originally that of the Lady
Chapel, and was given by Rodman Wanamaker, the son of John Wanamaker.
When his wife Fernanda Henry died in 1900, he built the Lady Chapel as a
memorial and she is buried in the crypt beneath it. The original
furnishings of the chapel were of alabaster and carved wood, deigned by
C. E. Kempe.
When Mr. Wanamaker subsequently decided to re-furnish
the chapel in it present style, the altar and reredos were placed at
the head of the north aisle. This altar, which is of carved alabaster,
was rededicated to Saint John - now the arrangement of altars echoes the
traditional grouping around the foot of the Cross with Jesus in the
center and his Blessed Mother and the Beloved Disciple on the sides. The
reredos is of black oak carved in Oberammergau in 1903 and then
polychromed in England. It contains figures representing David, Isaiah
and other Prophets of the Incarnation, as well as great theologians of
the Church: Saints Ambrose, Augustine, and Anselm on the left and Saints
Gregory the Great, Jerome and Bernard on the right. The carved figures
of the Annunciation that are now in the Baptistery were originally in
the center panels of this polyprych.
