Even in darkness, this campus is beautiful.
Soccer practice had ended and the field was dark and empty as I made my rosary stroll before bed. It was half past nine but already the place was August-still. Not a creature was stirring, save the omnipresent rabbits. Father Novajosky’s car stood alone in the front lot, for the principal’s was finally gone. The cleaning crew had departed, but of course there were two police officers in their cars alongside the school.
The leaves, still green, enhanced the hush with their rustle as their shadows flitted gently across the handsome façade of the school. What a good-looking building! Like the convent with which it was built in the mid-1940’s, it is solid as a rock and will stand long after you and I have slipped away. Right after the war, there was an abundance of both labor and construction materials, and plenty of both went into these buildings.
But do you know what else went into them? Sacrifice. The people of the fledgling parish were young, many having just purchased homes. They were not rich, and had no surplus wealth. Yet of their lack they gave to build these buildings. Over twelve years, they would add a rectory and a fine church building, also solid and suitable for their roles, and yet more classrooms for the school. Two decades of sacrifice.
Together these sturdy, stately buildings embrace and define our beautiful grounds where children play in the grass on the ballfield and under trees that with their flaming glory when they die light up the zip code.
The church is consecrated, the school and rectory blessed, but the constant course of divine grace that flows through the sacraments celebrated here is augmented and enhanced by the earnest prayers that are offered not only in petition and thanksgiving by adults, but also and especially in earnest by the children. For help on a test or in a friendship, for an ailing grandpa or an ailing pet, the prayers of children go to the top of God’s inbox, ahead even of those of saintly nuns. Simple and straightforward, they sanctify the fabric of the days and the buildings that bear them.
Having that evening opportunity to see the structures in the stillness, I was also reminded of two people who helped make possible the place we all enjoy. This weekend marks the anniversary of Monsignor William Stricker, who died on 14 October back in 1976. He was our founding Pastor, from Saint Bernadette’s establishment as a parish in 1948 until 1975, and in that capacity oversaw the construction of all these buildings.
On 11 October, Wednesday of this past week, the Church celebrated the feast of Pope Saint John XXIII, “Good Pope John” who called and convened the Second Vatican Council, but died in 1963, before it was completed. He acceded to the Chair of Peter in 1958, and was the fresh new Pope when our church building was built; you can see that same year inscribed on its cornerstone. Because of this, his coat of arms with its tower and lion hangs on the wall behind our sanctuary.
1958 is not all that long ago, historically speaking, though no small amount of water has passed under the bridge in the meantime; 1976 even less so. You will run into people here who remember both Pope John and Msgr. Stricker with both clarity and affection, though they are fewer than when I first arrived, and some of the clarity may be diminished. But these lives, too, are bound up in the fabric of our facilities.
Our parish buildings are durable and beautiful, even at night, and our buildings, our grounds, our entire campus is shot through with sanctity that shines in the valley of the shadow of death. The fruit of selfless sacrifice, every wall and window, every hall is hallowed, conceived, sustained, and ornamented by prayer both public and private. Holy lives have touched and directed the upward reach of our spire and our school, pointing to the gracious goodness of our Creator.
This place, this little corner of creation, God’s Own Twelve Acres, is holy, glowing with grace and goodness, a refuge to the sorrowful and a rebuttal to the arrogant, beautiful inside and out, even in the darkness.
Monsignor Smith
