THE PARISH CHURCH OF SAINT PAUL,
BRIGHTON
Engraved glass doors to the memory of
benefactor Joyce Rolf
The design the artist Mel Howse has produced has
come from our desire to recall the fishing community that for centuries lived
in what has become our Parish and for which the church was built, and the local
fishing family to which we believe Miss Rolfe had originally belonged. The large fish in Christian art and
literature is seen as a symbol of Christ and associated with both Baptism and
the Eucharist, and the smaller fish are referred to in Tertullian’s ‘De Baptismo’ as the neophytes following the large fish. The symbols are used in this way, and those
fish not in the stream of following Christ can be considered as those yet to be
brought to Christ, and a cause for the Church’s continued mission. Mackerel has been depicted as it is the fish
long associated with Brighton (the City’s Mackerel Fayre
is held on the Parish’s seashore every May, when the boats and nets are blessed
by the parish priest). The abbreviated
quote from the Book of Genesis 28: 17) reflects not only the beauty of the
church’s interior (‘how awesome is this place’) but the doors lead into ‘the
house of God’ which - because it is in the celebration of Mass we experience
the foretaste of heaven - is for Christians ‘the gate of heaven.’