As I sit in the Reconcilation Room to the right of the altar in Church every week, waiting for you to come home to God, I can't help noticing the changing seasons and the lowering of the sun in the sky at 4:30 every Saturday afternoon.
The days are growing shorter. Now sunset is at 4:30, when confessions begin, and I have to turn the parking lot lights on. It seems like this last year went at warp speed. So many great people are making so many great things happen, that the time between the never-ending meetings seems to just whisk by at the speed of light. The millenium is ending. We are racing to the finish line of the twentieth century. After a few computer glitches (at least on Windows machines - my Macs and keyboard palmtops are y2k ready!) we will begin the adventure of the twenty-first century that we used to only talk about in sci-fi movies!
That new century, and that new millenium, are going to bring significant changes in our lives. These changes will not only be technological, but will hit us at our core as well - changing the ways we celebrate our faith and our preconceptions and assumptions about the Church.
There are going to be fewer priests and more Catholics needing them. That means there will be fewer Masses, with more people at each Mass. The Cluster Planning process initiated by Cardinal Bevilacqua has been looking towards the future, using the best available demographic and statistical research to try to paint a picture of what the Catholic Church in Chester County will look like in that exciting new century and millenium.
The picture includes one-priest parishes, and fewer Sunday helper priests, like Fr. Richard S. Wyzykiewicz, Sch. P., of Devon Prep, and Fr. Karl A. Gersbach, O.S.A. from Villanova University, whom we are so blessed to have on most Sundays now. Fewer priests means fewer Masses, with more people at each Mass.
Because of this reality, the Archdiocese has mandated that all new Churches built in the Archdiocese must seat a minimum of 1,000 people. This directive is especially relevant in Chester Chester County where development is bringing a growing Catholic population to our area every year. For liturgical reasons, the Office for Worship also suggests a fan-shaped design for all new Churches in order to have the people closer to the altar than is possible in the traditional long, narrow design of church naves. Again, a wise and good move.
However, when you combine these two directives from the Archdiocese - both of which show the wisdom of planning for the future, you greatly increase the cost of construction. It is very costly to support 1,000 people, plus furniture, on a floor that can span 250 feet in width and length. With the need for a hall under such a large width of building, the price jumps another $1.6 million.
Without a hall, a Church of the size required would cost $4.7 million. With a hall, such a large structure would cost $6.3 million. The numbers sound staggering, and they prompt some to say, "Well, we don't need a Taj Mahal, just tone the project down to make it cheaper." But the price is just the base price for a building that large. We have included no luxuries, no padding, just basic construction! It cannot be toned down, except to eliminate the partial excavation under it for the hall.
But, if the hall is not built, you must keep in mind that the current project will exhaust, if not exceed, the allowable impervious soil on our 20.73 acres required by East Pikeland Township. That means, once the Church is built, we can never build another structure on this property. We cannot say, "build the Church now, and the hall next to it later when we can better afford it." If we don't build the hall now, it can never be built. If we don't build the hall now, where do we send our children for the Children's Liturgy at the 9:15 Mass? Do we send them down to the other side of the property to the school in the rain and the snow? It will no longer be a ten-yard run as it is in the current situation. How can we ever have any kind of socialization time after Liturgy without a space to meet? Folks simply will not walk the long distance to the present hall from the new Church. And the CYO will have the gym/hall booked for practices and games a good deal of the time, causing enormous scheduling conflicts, which already are happening with our limited facilities and increasing activities. We would cripple the next generation of parishioners by not building the hall, and be cursed by them for our lack of forsight.
But these changes will not only alter the Mass schedule. They will significantly change old habits. A young man asked me what Masses I preach at every Sunday, since he often misses me and can't figure out the rotation of celebrants. I explained that all of our helper priests are in education, and Saturday is the only possible day they can have off. So, I am very hesitant to ask any of them to give up their one day off to cover the weekly confessions at 4:30 and the Vigil Mass at 5:30. That means I have the 5:30 almost every Saturday night, except in rare circumstances when there is a conflict in my schedule, and I can get someone to cover for me. As far as Sundays go, I cover whatever is not covered by one of our helpers. They tell me when they can be here, and I fill in the holes. So there really is no standard rotation plan. I try to rotate around the availability of our helpers.
So, I explained to the young man that if he liked my preaching so much, he should come to the 5:30 every week, since odds were in his favor I would have it. "But I go to the 9:15," is the usual reply I get! Now, if your favorite TV show gets moved from your favorite night to another night or time slot by the network, you simply rearrange your calendar to allow the time to see it. But folks will not give up "their Mass" time or "their pew." For all the years we lived in St. Raymond of Peñafort Parish, my mother went to the 8:00 A.M. Mass and sat in the third pew on the left. Any other Mass or any other pew would invalidate the Mass! Folks are still like that and that is one reason so many people don't know many other parishioners. They know the crowd at "their Mass," and not the folks who go to the other three Sunday Liturgies.
This is the type of habits that will have to be broken in the new millenium. There will come a day when I will not have the help, and cannot provide four Masses with a half-full church. There will be two Liturgies, with a full house at each. That is the future, unless we start doing a much better job promoting and supporting vocations to the priesthood. In the 34 year history of St. Basil's, we have had only one of our sons ordained to the priesthood, and that was for the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and the Military Ordinariate Father Matt Lee. Father Matt was one of my most faithful altar boys here 20 years ago, a graduate of St. Basil's School and St. Pius X High School. It was my thrill to be at his ordination in Washington, D.C.
But with without more like Fr. Matt, the future means less help and more work, and so a bigger church. Actually, the plans for a 1,000 seat church are not out of line at all. In fact, that is 500 less seats than the original plans for the permanent Church at St. Basil's. The original architect's drawing shows a 1,500 seat church in-between the convent and rectory. If you look closely some day, you can still see the water line near the parking lot that was intended to serve the Church that was never built. When those plans were drawn up in 1965, the Church was to be long and narrow, which is why it could be squeezed in between the buildings. The front door was to be on Kimberton Road, because the Archdiocesan Building Committee in 1965 thought that some day there would be bus running on Kimberton Road. Neither that nor a sidewalk ever happened on Kimberton Road, so an entrance facing that direction would not make much sense today. That shape of Church is no longer desirable or permissible. The fan shaped Church could not fit in that narrow strip. Hence the need to buy the parcel of land that cut deeply into our field along 113. We now own that land, which clears enough space to build a new Church.
This Church would sit with its back (altar end of the Church) along Rt. 113, behind the current ball field, right where the privacy fence is placed behind the former Straub residence. All along 113 would be the magnificent, 11.5 foot high stained glass windows. Lit from the inside at night, they would make a beautiful and magnificent statement to travelers on the highway. Lit by the rising sun, they will make a wonderful statement and mood for the worshippers within. The stained glass windows are over a century old, and were crafted by the finest studios in Bavaria, Germany. The Stations of the Cross were created by the plaster masters of Paris over a century ago, and there is only on other copy of the classical sculptures in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
The front doors of the Church would face the parking lot and E. Seven Stars Road, with a tree-lined walkway from the front door, all the way through the parking lot, to the greatly enlarged and beautified entrance where the Dobson residence now stands. We now own that property as well, and have possession.
On the Southwest side of the Church, there will be a daily Mass chapel that will seat 100. It could also be used for smaller weddings and funerals. It will also be the Chapel of Reservation of the Most Blessed Sacrament. It will be separated from the main Church by a glass wall, so that the tabernacle will be in plain view from anywhere in the larger Church. This glass wall would also enable the Chapel to be used as a crying room on Sundays, affording a good view of the main altar. This chapel will have two outside entrances, and it, two reconciliation rooms, a bathroom and a storage area can be open to the public 24 hours a day, if permanent exposition is ever possible here, while the main Church can be secured and the heat set back when not in use.
The design of the Church incorporates ancient, sixth century Church architectural concepts. Instead of the highest point of the building being centered over the people, as it is in most modern churches, with the altar against an eight foot wall, this Church has a secondary roof cupola directly over the altar of sacrifice, and a much simplified roof line rising to the cupola from the other ends of the Church. Clear story, deeply recessed windows in the cupola and recessed gables, will give good ambient light without direct sunbeams to blind worshippers, brightening the whole interior of the Church.
The accompanying pictures show a Church of simple elegance and stunning beauty. A Church that reaches back into our ancient past to look like a Church, instead of the tanneries and industrial park-look-a-likes that are being built as Churches today. It costs no more than an ugly modern church. Any building the size we have to build would cost exactly the same. So, if we have to do it (and I think we do, and have to do it quickly), we might as well do it right! So get ready to roll up your sleeves, join in the excitement, dig into your pockets, and invest in the future of the past!
Not is the design from the ancient Church, but it is actually designed around some of the beauty of the nineteenth Church in Europe. In July of 1999, the very beautiful parish church of St. Anthony of Padua in the Grays Ferry section of South Philadelphia, sadly, was closed. Rather than see the magnificent stained glass windows and gorgeous stations of the cross wind up in a restaurant, as many a church treasure has in the last decades of the twentieth century, I arranged to get them with the express purpose of designing St. Basil's permanent Church around these treasures of the ages.
The stained glass windows were crafted by the finest studios in Bavaria, Germany near the end of the nineteenth century. They are hand painted, hand etched, hand silvered, and baked at 2,000 degrees F, rendering extraordinary colors and scrolling details.
Here are a few samples of the extraordinary quality and clarity of these magnificent stained glass windows. It would be impossible to get this kind of quality in a modern stained glass window.
The Stations of the Cross were crafted by the master plaster artists of Paris in the late nineteenth century. Each station is a full, 360 degree, free standing, classical-syle sculpture, standing on a separate sculpted shelf, which has the name and number of the station. They look like bass relief off the wall, but are actually free-standing on the shelf. They are made with plaster, but treated with milk to have the finish of marble. There were only two sets made - this set, and a set currently in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. They are huge, and truly magnificent.
We are tapping local artists, to make sure that the new church has a definite Kimberton, Chester County flair that represents the wonderful people of this parish. We are also tapping icon artists from as far away as the Balkan States to capture the Byzantine traditions of St. Basil the Great, one of the four great Doctors of the Eastern Church, and founder of Eastern Monasticism. We have the artists studying the writings of St. Basil the Great, to be inspired by his insightful teaching on the Trinity and the Holy Spirit - the greatest of his many works.
Unlike most Churches built in the last few decades, this will be preeminently a "churchy" church - one with a very definite focus on Blessed Sacrament, the altar and the pulpit, not on architectural statements. Clear story glass, deeply recessed in the cupola and in four gables will give ambient light for reading and a bright, airy atmosphere, instead of the dreadful darkness of modern, big-roofed churches. The prayerful tone and atmosphere will come from the 11.55 foot high stained glass windows of exquisite beauty.
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