By Fr. Matthew Vandewalle
St. John Nepomucene, Weston
In this Happy Easter Season, we Christians do not have some abstract Faith. We can point to an empty tomb and Jesus, who has Risen both body and soul! We all have tangible, or ‘concrete’ realities – persons, places, and things – that helped us in our faith journey... you might call them ‘stepping stones.’
These stepping stones help us to be built up, as St. Paul says, into ‘living stones’ that make up the mystical Body of Christ. Since we each have a body and soul, some of these stepping stones are material things of ‘brick and mortar’ that have been there on our journey. While they are not the most important things, they play an important role. These edifices were planned and built with time, talent, and treasure. I took them for granted in my youth, but now I appreciate them more. While they are things ‘in the concrete,’ they became places of spiritual grace. In fact, some of them are literally... concrete.
For example, at our St. John Nepomucene Church and school, the concrete was eroding. After filling cracks for many years, the time had come for a replacement. Can you call concrete beautiful? I think, yes. The entrance to the school and the church stairs now have ‘beautiful’ new concrete, over which the feet of young ‘living stones’ hurry during school days. There is even a new masonry stone wall which replicates the façade of the church’s stone foundation. As it extends out from our church entrance, it reminds me that the ‘walls’ of the Church ‘prevail’ over the ‘gates of hell’!
My mind hearkens back to those places and buildings, those stepping stones, that I took for granted in my youth. The buildings were all planned for and purchased. My mother recently commented how wise Bishop Glennon Flavin was to buy plots of land around Lincoln so that, as the city expanded, these plots could house new churches. For new parishes in Lincoln, the school would be built first, then the church. In the meantime, the gym or somewhere else could be used for the church. Our family’s church and school was St. John the Apostle on 7601 Vine Street in Lincoln. During my childhood, I was amazed when a new church was built under the leadership of Father Joseph Mroczowski.
As a teen, a new high school awaited me. It was named for the most recently canonized saint, Pope Saint Pius X, whose motto was “To restore all things in Christ.” Our superintendent, Msgr. Liam Barr, had an Excellence in Education capital campaign. With enrollment growth over the next generation, which included my nephews and niece, the school saw a new chapel, new classrooms, and even added full-time campus ministers. They had new stepping stones to catch the faith.
Upon my arrival as a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a beautiful church awaited, the St. Thomas Aquinas Newman Center. I recall one Mass where I witnessed college peers gazing with great devotion at the Eucharist during the elevation. I thought, “Wow, they believe!” This increased my own faith. Now there is an even larger and more beautiful church to ‘catch’ the college students.
As a priest, I’ve been blessed to be in small-town parishes, Plattsmouth, Cedar Bluffs, Colon, Weston, Touhy. In these and similar small towns, the churches are a testament to the faith of the people. In Weston and Touhy, some still remember their parents helping to build St. John Nepomucene School and our local high school, Bishop Neumann in Wahoo.
Today our parishioners are dedicated to maintaining these churches and schools with their time, talent, treasure, and our course, fundraisers. I was blessed to arrive, as pastor, right after the completion of St. John School and Church renovations and as St. Vitus in Touhy was breaking ground for their beautiful new addition that included, for the first time, running water.
Though I used to take these stepping stones for granted, now I appreciate their value and am so grateful for those who help them to be erected and maintained.
Perhaps you have had similar encounters with your own stepping stones of concrete, brick and marble. In our diocesan schools of brick and mortar, Jesus has been passed on to the hearts and intellects of many. In our churches of stone and marble, the sacraments have been celebrated, giving grace to our souls and bodies. All of these stepping stones, though material, have much history behind them, and though they will one day pass away, they have been helpful along our way of becoming living stones in building up God’s Holy Temple, the Mystical Body of Christ.
Thank you to all who continue to build and maintain them!
