Photos of All Souls Church, in Overland, Missouri

HERE ARE PHOTOS of All Souls Church, in Overland, Missouri. The church is located about 15 highway miles northwest of downtown Saint Louis and is about two miles south of Lambert-Saint Louis International Airport.



This church is built in honor of the Holy Souls, those souls of the faithful departed who need our prayers. Most traditional religion, including Eastern Orthodoxy and Orthodox Judaism, pray for the dead, although the theology of this practice is more highly developed in Catholicism.

This photo was taken at sunset.

Overland is built on what was the Spanish colonial "King's Road" to Saint Charles, dating from 1772, which was an overland trail to the West that bypassed treacherous parts of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The route was renamed Saint Charles Rock Road in 1865 when it was paved with crushed stone macadam.

ERECTED 1950

✝CHURCH OF ✝
ALL SOULS

MOST REV. JOS. E. RITTER S.T.D.
ARCHBISHOP OF ST. LOUIS

REV. WALTER J. TUCKER PASTOR

According to the 2007 parish census, this church has approximately 1,834 Catholics.







On the altar are the Greek letters Α and Ω, alpha and omega, the first and last letters in the alphabet:

Ego sum Alpha et Omega principium et finis dicit Dominus Deus qui est et qui erat et qui venturus est Omnipotens .
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. (Apocalypse 1:8)

☧ is a combination of Χ (chi) and Ρ (rho), the first letters of 'Christ' in Greek.



The tabernacle.



Liturgical vessels, ready for Mass.



The communion rail.



Detail of communion rail. Perhaps the bird is a pelican chick, drinking from the Precious Blood, as in the allegorical story of the pelican who smote his own breast to feed his dying chicks. Note the use again of the Chi-rho emblem, and a basket of loaves. Other symbols on the railing include the fish and torch.



Mary's altar.



Joseph's altar.



Mosaic icons of Mary and Jesus.



Elaborately dressed Infant Jesus of Prague, under glass.



One of the confessionals. The use of confessionals are a way of guaranteeing the anonymity of the Sacrament, since the priest typically cannot see the penitent. While most associated with the Counter-Reformation, an early kind of confessional in women's monasteries dates from the Middle Ages, where the priest was separated from the Sisters by a grille. Sometimes the grille was in the outside wall of a church. A form of confession still practiced in the East has the penitent kneeling in front of the priest, under his cope.

Sigmund Freud noted that Catholics who regularly received the Sacrament of Penance did not need his new therapy of psychoanalysis; ironically, in recent decades, a new practice of face-to-face confessions was encouraged by some theologians, in imitation of psychoanalysis.



A view down a side-aisle. In the back you can see a crowd forming, waiting for a wedding rehearsal.



Abstract stained glass window.

Address:
9550 Tennyson Avenue
Overland MO 63114