Greetings in Christ, all! I have lots of joyful news to share with you and it all starts with our organ pipes. The process of moving the pipes will begin very soon. The project will probably take a few months and the greatest volume of time will be spent on them preparing the pipes. Interestingly enough, the part we will all see where pipes are installed won’t take long at all.
This will be one of those stretches where we may encounter situations that will require us to be patient with the process. Obviously, our Masses will not be affected outside of the time when there will be holes in the wall.
There are a number of other small things that will be worked on in the sanctuary to improve the dignity and beauty of our church. It’s going to be quite an exciting time. Outside of the pipes moving to the front of the church, I hope you remember what we are going to do with the area where the pipes are right now: we’re going to create a beautiful structure (reredos) to house statues of the 12 apostles.
You may remember that some time ago I talked about this and I was really touched that six different families stepped forward and asked if they could donate the cost of a statue. If you would like to be a part of this project, please let us know. While we can’t give you the final cost estimates for the statues right now, we will have that available very soon. This part of the project is very time-sensitive because of the time it takes for us to receive the statues once we order them.
Great news: we are going to be able to reuse much of the wood you already see in the gathering space to create the reredos. Praise God. This means we will move Saint Michael, and when we looked at where to move him, the best idea seemed to be to get a matching Saint Gabriel statue and place one over each of our doors to enter the church. I can’t wait for this!
In addition to these two projects we spent time planning other things: tiling the space below the rosary window so our tabernacle stands out, ways to enhance the confessionals, as well as improve sound exchange, where to place the ambry (the place where the holy oils are kept) and how the ambry should look.
We also looked at ideas for making practical updates in the sacristy, including making the Holy Water more easily accessible and redesigning the storage drawers and cabinets in that space to be functional.
It would be hard to explain how excited I am about these things. There are so many things we weren’t able to do when we built the church (to save money) and we have been diligently setting money aside so that when the organ pipes go in, we can do a lot of the other work that will help beautify our space.
Please pray for our efforts, pray for all the people who will be working on these projects and pray that everything happens in God’s time.
For all of you who sacrifice for our parish, please know how terribly grateful I am. It’s important to give God our best and every day our church gets closer to that. None of this happens without you.
In great gratitude and joy,
Fjk