The National Eucharistic Congress is in full swing, and while thousands are encountering our Eucharistic Lord in Indianapolis, many will also encounter Our Lady of Champion, thanks to a Denverite artist.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Champion recently commissioned Gwyneth Thompson, a Denver native, to depict the apparitions of Our Lady of Champion to Adele Brise. The work is set to be showcased at the National Eucharistic Congress and the shrine. Here, she delves into the inspiration, artistic process, and the significance of this portrayal.
1. What inspired you to focus on the apparition of Our Lady of Champion to Adele Brise for this particular piece of art?
The Shrine of Our Lady of Champion was looking for an artist to depict the apparition, and a mutual friend put us in touch. He was helping to put on the art show at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, so he was hoping the artwork might be exhibited there. That got me thinking about the apparition in light of the Eucharist.
2. How did you incorporate Eucharistic elements into your painting, and why was this important for the piece's theme?
As I read about the apparition — which I knew nothing about before submitting a proposal for the painting — I was struck by just how Eucharistic the apparition was. Adele Brise was a wheat farmer, and she was carrying sheaves of wheat on her way to the mill when she first saw Our Lady. The second time she saw Our Lady was Sunday morning on her way to Mass and Communion. The third apparition was after Mass. Our Lady explained to Adele:
“You received Holy Communion this morning and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them.”
Then Adele was given a particular vocation to catechize:
“Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation. . . . their Catechism, how to sign themselves with the sign of the Cross, and how to approach the Sacraments.”
Adele dedicated her life to obeying Our Lady’s command. It is a very simple message, in line with the apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima, but without their more public and mysterious elements. At Champion, Our Lady said simply: receive the Sacraments well, and teach others to receive the Sacraments well. That has always been the heart of the Christian life — the "one thing necessary," as Our Lord says to Martha — but at times we get lost doing other things, even works good and important in themselves. Our Lady reminded Adele — and through her, all of us living today in this “wild country” — that the center of the Christian life is Christ present in the Sacraments, and especially the Blessed Sacrament. She calls us to make better Confessions and better Communions, just like the Eucharistic Congress is trying to do. It seems that Providence was arranging to bring Our Lady of Champion to greater prominence at this time to aid the work of the Congress. One can almost hear Our Lady of Champion pointing to Christ sacramentally present on the pilgrimages to and at the Congress itself, and saying, “Do whatever He tells you.” That is certainly how I felt while painting her.
3. Can you describe the artistic process and any challenges you faced while creating this work, especially in capturing the mystical aspects of the apparitions?
Struck as I was by the sheaves of wheat Adele was holding in the first apparition, but learning that Our Lady only addressed Adele in the third apparition, when Adele was dressed for Sunday Mass, I made a somewhat daring proposal to the Shrine, and they trusted me enough to let me go for it. I decided not to depict a single historical moment in one of the apparitions, but to depict all three of the apparitions in one image. This is a very traditional way to paint, but one that often feels odd to us today, accustomed as we are to the moments we seen captured in photography. But painting different temporal moments in one visual plane lends itself to depicting the mystical. In our lives, we experience things as a succession of moments in time, but the mystical exists beyond time, and that is exactly what Adele experienced. At Champion, Our Lady called herself by her title the Queen of Heaven, emphasizing that Heaven came down to Earth — or assumed into itself some part of the American frontier — in October 1859. I sought to visibly depict the commingling of eternity and time by depicting elements from all three apparitions in the one painting.
4. How does it feel to have your artwork displayed at such significant locations like the National Eucharistic Congress and the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion?
I am well aware that it is God’s Providence that arranges my commissions for his purposes. I hope that the painting can help to awaken others to America’s own apparition of Our Lady and her simple, essential message to us: confess well, commune well, teach others to do so.
Thompson is currently working on a project for St. Thomas More Catholic Parish in Centennial, which is set to be displayed in the near future. To see more of her work, visit her website here.
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