CHARLOTTE — The Third Sunday of Advent was truly a time of rejoicing at St. Peter Church, which welcomed Bishop Michael Martin on his first visit since the historic church completed a $2.7 million renovation effort.
“It’s really an honor for me to be here today with all of you in this beautifully historic church that has been so recently and beautifully restored to its original beauty,” Bishop Martin said at the start of Mass, which he celebrated with the parish’s clergy, Jesuit Father Tim Stephens and Father Paul Campbell.
“It's always wonderful” to have the bishop visit, said Father Stephens, noting that while Bishop Martin had visited St. Peter Church during the Eucharistic Congress in August, Sunday was his first time offering Mass there and seeing the renovations.
Established in 1851, St. Peter is the oldest active parish in the diocese, staffed in early times by the Benedictines and by the Jesuits since 1986.
Renovations to the Gothic-style church, which dates from 1893, were designed to preserve its historic beauty by shoring up its structural and technical features.
Parishioners only recently returned to the church after the extensive renovation work this summer and fall forced Masses to be celebrated in the parish’s St. Benedict and Biss halls.
The seven-month renovation project included replacing or improving the church’s ceiling, hardwood floors and subflooring, as well as the brick façade’s exterior weatherproofing.
Working with the parish and the diocese was Charlotte-based Edifice Inc. as general contractor, Vincent Ciccarelli of Insight Architects, and Melissa Countryman and Sandra Grzemski of JLL as project managers.
The church’s historic pews, a gift from St. Katharine Drexel in 1910 – who donated them with the requirement that some seats be reserved for African Americans – were also restored and reinstalled as part of the renovation.
Lighting was retrofitted and accessibility improvements were also made to the interior and entryway. The church’s sound system, which was last worked on in 2008, was updated to improve the experience for Mass-goers and to accommodate new technology that streams the church’s audio directly to people’s hearing aids.
“We're grateful to the Benedictines for building it, so we tried not to mess it up too much,” Father Stephens joked about the renovation, which faithfully preserved the feel of the space while lightening and brightening the interior. “I think it'll be here for at least another 130 years.”
“The acoustics of the church are so much improved post renovation,” noted Darien Clark, who along with his wife cantors at St. Peter. “It makes such a difference to have the renovated worship space, to have it closer to what it was when it was originally built.”
Parishioner Caitlyn Cano has been coming to St. Peter for about a year. While she loved the closeness she developed with fellow parishioners attending Mass next door in the parish’s St.
Benedict Hall, she is thrilled to be back inside the church. “Music means a lot to me,” Cano said. “That's all the Lord wants from us, is to make some joyful noise. Here, it gets to be beautiful.”
During his homily, Bishop Martin emphasized the call for every Christian to actively rejoice, during Advent and always. “Not just the noun joy, but the verb rejoice,” he said.
Rejoicing is not “a lame sort of optimism” like you often find in a Hallmark card, he said. “It's hard core: I know my Savior lives.”
One way of rejoicing is to sing, he said. “God gave you that voice. He deserves to hear it.” And singing together is important, he added, because “when I hear others rejoicing, what am I filled with? Joy.”
“The world needs to see us rejoicing,” he said. “The world needs to see our joy. Otherwise, why would they ever, ever follow us?”
Bishop Martin, himself a religious order priest with the Conventual Franciscans, encouraged members of the Jesuit-run parish in uptown Charlotte to deepen their commitment to discipleship, connecting with each other and serving the poor.
“The greats of our spiritual journey – the Ignatiuses, the Francises – have shown us that the more we focus on who Christ is, the more we learn who we are, and as we rejoice in Him, the more we'll see who we're called to be,” Bishop Martin said.
Outside after Mass, the bishop greeted parishioners as Carolinas Panthers fans on their way to the game at nearby Bank of America Stadium first stopped by to pick up hot dogs from “Garden of Eat’n” – the parish ministry of nearly 30 years that serves hot dogs on home game days with proceeds going to charity.
Serving at St. Peter is now something that parishioners rejoice over even more. “We loved the church even as it was falling apart,” said Moe Cieri, secretary of the pastoral council who was involved in the capital campaign for the renovations. As a weekday sacristan, he often arrives early to pray the rosary. “At that time of day, all of a sudden, the sun hits a stained-glass window and you say, ‘That’s the Holy Spirit.’ There's nothing like the sanctuary here.”
— Trish Stukbauer