As seen in the bulletin from December 25, 2022 – HERE.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

There have been a couple questions about how we arrived at our beautiful new sanctuary design. With the Archdiocesan Synod and the Eucharistic Revival, it gives us a wonderful opportunity to dig deeper into the question of “why?” we do the things we do at Mass and our sanctuary is meant to be laid out in a particular way. Just as we have Church Dogma to teach us about the articles of our faith (like what is in the Creed), and just as we have the Church’s moral teaching (about how we live as Catholics), the Church has a lot to say about its architecture, art, and music, and how they help us enter more deeply into our faith and participate more fully and actively in the liturgy. Everything we do in the Mass, and the way our parish is physically laid out, reflect deeper theological truths.

There are predominately three documents that helped us come to the current design. There are two documents from Vatican 2, namely the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) and the Instruction on Music in the Liturgy (Musicam Sacram). The US Bishops have also released a document called Built of Living Stones which is a sort of commentary on the two documents from Vatican 2. We will highlight various elements of these documents in future bulletins, but these documents provide not only the guidelines the Church has in renovating or creating places for Sacred worship, but also the theology behind those guidelines. This will help us continue learning more about our Catholic faith and how it is reflected in our sanctuary and liturgies.

Prayers for a blessed Christmas for you and your family! Please continue to pray for our parish and for the success of our capital campaign!

In Christ,

Fr. Peter