Greetings in Christ, all and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Okay, so why the Happy Birthday? Because this week we celebrate the birthday of our Church building. On December 12th, 2020, we celebrated our first Mass here, a Mass of dedication with Bishop Earl Boyea.
I would like to thank you with all my heart for your generosity, patience and prayerful support: those are the things we needed for this to happen. God gave us the means and we built Him a Church where we could worship Him, have our sins forgiven, baptize our kids, bury our dead, join together in eternal matrimony…all kinds of happy.
I’d like to take a moment to remind us of some things about our Church building that are important.
Our Church was designed and built in a classical manner: confessionals and baptismal font at the door, with the altar in the East. This is the way Churches were built for most of the history of Christianity. We enter through baptism and confession, we move forward to the altar. When I thought of this, I used this Scripture verse:
“Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance of sin and press forward with our eyes fixed on Jesus, who inspires and perfects our faith.”
The goal is for us to think of heaven here, so I made sure we were “surrounded by the cloud of witnesses,” the saints who we represent by the crosses in the floor (each one has a saint medal underneath it) and the saints represented in our statues and, someday, in our ceiling art.
We used the Jerusalem Cross throughout our Church, as a reminder that Heaven is our “Heavenly Jerusalem.”
Our windows give us the liturgical feasts for each year, as well as the Corporal Works of Mercy and the Spiritual Works of Mercy.
There’s more within our Church construction, but I’m running out of room and want to remind you of our future projects, as well:
· Our baptismal font was funded by an anonymous donor and should be going in relatively soon. The supply chain troubles in our country are a big problem and the reason for the delay.
· We will have new, more colorful statues of Our Mother and St. Joseph up at the altar, as well as a statue of Solanus Casey where we currently have the Sacred Heart of Jesus statue.
· We will soon have a beautiful Reliquary in the front of the Church to the right of the altar. This area will host our Five First Class Relics of saints and give us a place to pray there. I still can’t believe we are doing this!
· Our Organ Pipes will be moved to the front of the Church. Hopefully, you remember that we have the space set aside for them and all that is left now is to move and install them. This will be a lot of money and we will work hard to secure the funding.
· There will be some decorations and paint work around the Blessed Sacrament as soon as we have the money.
· We will tear down the house where we serve the poor and move that elsewhere. This will honor our agreement with the city and provide us with about 11 more parking spaces.
· We will add an overhang outside the Church’s main doors which will allow us to drop off our families and park our cars during bad weather.
What I hoped for in putting the Church together is a place that is unique in our culture, a place that inspires in us the warmth of familiarity, the message of hope and a focus on Jesus. I pray that each year, we grow in love of God and each other by our worship here.
Thank you for letting me be your priest.
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