Saint John Cantius: Restoring the Sacred

some of the doors to the church in the lower level were boarded up just for security and nailed shut a dying Chicago parish on the verge of shutting down was like a ghost town here miraculously comes back to life so we went from being condemned to excellent and spawns a new religious order of priests imitate what you celebrate dedicated to replicating this miracle wherever they go the incredible story of the revitalization of st. John Kansas Church next on assignment good morning Chicago and a windy 53 degree morning it is here in greater Chicagoland at 528 a.m. we're approaching the traffic copter our goal in this parish is to make Saints of everyone who come to this place real simple this is very very simple we keep the church open all day now we open the church at 5:30 in the morning it stays open till 7 o'clock at night unheard of in the city but it seems to me that over these many years what the devil has wanted to happen is to keep our churches closed the no one can make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament so by keeping our church open anyone can come in throughout the day and make a visit sometimes in my house I tell the people the church is like a just a treasure chest there's there's so much for each one of us and sometimes you know people just think one little piece of the treasure and just run away with us you know just grab as much as you want and keep coming back for more that's the spiritual life well our prisoners are very educated not educated white black Hispanic young old very involved in the church just on the outside of the church they're all coming here because each one of them is being nourished spiritually the greatest teacher we have is Jesus Christ and where does Jesus Christ teach us the best at the Mass so all these individuals are trying to truly live very holy lives in a very secular world where did they get the nourishment from the Holy Eucharist from the Mass the people who built st. John can't just perish as I understand were from an area in Poland called Galicia the st. John conscious was known as polish patch it was a very tight neighborhood father Frank Phillips has been pastor at st. John Cantus Church in Chicago since 1988 and he's the first to admit that the patron saint of his parish is relatively unknown yes Nona's heard of st. John Kansas Saint John caches was probably the most obscure Saint in the Roman calendar medieval Saint patron of Poland diocesan priest educator at the gala Union University in Cracow patron of educators so st. John Kansas because again the foundation this parish was polish it was naturally like a hand in a glove well they should have some church dedicated to st. John Kansas from the time it was built in 1893 the parish grew and flourished by the early 1920s there were over 23,000 parishioners and well even like when the grammar school was built I understand at one time there were like three thousand children in the grammar school that was early 1900s 1920s the parish continued to thrive well into the mid 1920s and then this parish had his first urban renewal with the construction of Ogden Avenue the school went from 3,000 down to 400 so that's how many parishioners were taken out just with Ogden Avenue going through but the parish itself in the 40s 50s began just declining with decreased enrollment and then in the late sixties when the kennedy went through 94 they lost another eight hundred families I think this was one of the first Catholic schools and the archdiocese to close I think around 1968 so when the school closed more people moved out the church itself always was maintained very nicely so it was always clean but then we started going into like the boiler room different storerooms every one was just filled with debris every window in the basement of the church was boarded up some of the doors to the church on the lower level were boarded up just for security and nailed shut I remember talking to one of our brothers who was stationed here at one time he and one of the other priests used to look out the window in the evenings and it was like a ghost town here and they always wondered what will happen to comte oval which is the Polish for conscious what will happen to our conscience so many people said that the expressways would kill all these parishes and yet I always thought well if they take people away that also bring people here just as easily and that was one of the premises I worked on when I asked to come here story tell is a non-profit media foundation we tell true stories like the one you're watching now that show extraordinary things happen when ordinary people answer God's call to restore the sacred creation of our films would simply not be possible without the help of many friends like you who share our vision of bringing Souls closer to God through quality productions and widespread distribution so please pray for our mission and if you can make a financial donation today thank you so ioud approached the provincial saying that you know I'd like to be the associate here st. John catches and as I was going into the provincials office the former pastor who is here like for 30 years father Felix was now deceased was going out of the provincials office as trying to submit his resignation so then the provincial asked well how would you like to be pastor I didn't have a clue but what that entailed but there what that entailed was much more than father Phillips could ever have imagined he had taken on the difficult task of pastoring a struggling large beautiful old church but he quickly found he'd also taken ownership of a Pandora's box full of extensive building maintenance issues because we had a deferred maintenance here for maybe 40 50 60 years many things were in bad shape mechanically the parish probably closed by itself like our first heating bill because 13 radiators in the church were missing when something broke they just took it out and they never replaced it so the one that are going constantly our first heating bill was like $45,000 and our average collection on a good Sunday at that time was like $500 this must have terrified you you know i rightly don't think i was terrified because i think it was probably just too stupid to realize what a mess i got into it the shock of that first winners heating bill prompted father Phillips with the help of volunteers to begin work on the boiler the boiler room was the the heart of the parish at this time after lighting painting and labeling everything clearly in the boiler room they replaced the valves radiators and eventually the old boiler itself but I didn't have a cool you know the whole physical structure of the buildings I mean I'm glad I didn't think I would have had to hit my heavens heaven you know to continue on this old wiring had to be ripped out and years of hidden debris removed in the midst of all this it was discovered that the approximately four-story high altar was not secured and had been held in place for years only by gravity and grace a slight earth tremor could have caused it to fall forward at any time we went from basically one crisis to the next and one by one I was able to well always with the generosity of the parishioners tackle one project at a time the bell tower again is one of these like Pandora's boxes our bells did not work so at that time across the street we had the National Security Bank so they came over one day and asked you know they're you know what could we do to help so I called the company and they so we get to install this for $25,000 $25,000 so he gave me a check for $25,000 I got the check on the Feast of the Annunciation when we were doing the bell tower there's one fella said to me you know you have pigeon coops above the nave of the church I said no no but they I guess used to do is during the Depression so they'd have meat they raised pigeons so they had squab but the pigeons left ten tons of their droppings in our church attic which we then had to clean out probably our ceiling would have collapsed if we had not done something right away at about the same time they noticed something peculiar about one of the large circular stained-glass windows in the church so the the stained-glass window on the north side of the church was bowed out about twelve inches so the stained-glass people said well we better put a brace on this on the window shortly after the brace was put on the stained-glass window the company hired to remove the ten tons of pigeon droppings accomplished their job with all that excess weight was finally removed the window popped back twelve inches now if we had not had the grace that window would have just collapsed saved from the brink so many times they were finally feeling as if they were at least gaining on if not getting ahead of the curve when Mother Nature made a surprise attack on the old vinyl church floor remember a few years back where that horrendous summer where so many people died because of the heat well our church was so hot the candles on the altar liquefied and the floor buckled so we had to remove the whole floor and in keeping with his philosophy of repairing things so they will never have to be repaired again father Phillips set out with the help of artist Jed Gibbons a parishioner to design and install an all wood floor that would not only lasts forever but instruct you even as you walked on it we've put in the the new floor with the intention that it would be a a teaching device about the Christology so the lifeline of Jesus Christ those are low birth the Epiphany of the manifestations the crucifixion the resurrection and so on st. John can't just obviously was watching over everything sometimes I wonder how how we did make ends meet but we did every time one of the things when I first came here was I told provincial in the council that I will do the the present mass of Paul the sixth which follows the 1972 books in laughing now what that means okay we'll do the land chant or duel and Paul found music will do the the prayers the Canon and so on in Latin with the readings and the prayer of the faithful as on in the vernacular that's actually when people started coming you know to the parish just again word of mouth and usually when the choir sing in the service we used to have more people in the choir and the on the altar serving than we had in the congregation still but now the balance is totally upset there's no more people in the benches now with the church building slowly but steadily being restored in the parish growing every month father Phillips then began looking into restoring the sacred heritage of the Catholic Church such as the liturgy the music the artwork and so on when I got the idea to restore the sacred very simply what that means is because we do the traditional Mass here which is called the Tritton teen Mass and also the present Mass keep the both books separate do it each one just when other words don't confuse them and don't try to add don't try to subtract will do exactly what all the dorms would require and just by doing that it was just a just a tremendous thing and restoring the sacred because today there are so many adaptations that one wonders sometimes because I hear this from parishioners well did I attend Mass or did I attend the Johnny Carson show so as long as we could follow what is in the books I believe we're doing a great service to the church time and time again the young people are here because they've seen the traditional mass or the way the new mass is celebrated they not have been exposed to it before wherever they might have come from they're attracted to it and some people with all their kids five six kids in a van they travel for two hours come here formats people that were only going to the old mess come to the numerous people are only going to new miss coming to the Ole Miss so that mixture of being open to to the full treasures of the church and the church is you know little over 2,000 years old so I mean the church is built on things that are old and ancient and and new as well and it's you know good to have that combination effect and that's what I see the st. John can she's doing you have the new and the old and you're bringing out the best of both restoration means being able to provide sacramental services for the faithful being faithful to the books which we use rubrics are very important because the more one is able to follow the rubrics first of all shows a humility and then the more one is humble at the altar actually the more Jesus Christ shows true at the altar because it's not me it's Jesus Christ I get letters thankful for thanks for doing the masses here thanks for hearing confessions you know it's nice to have a place where we can go where we know there's confessions there after knocking the door confessions you know from 4:45 until 450 or by appointment only I don't know how his hand was been so strange they'll be known in church someone let's say father could you hear my confession the green light goes on one person in church all of a sudden there's like 15 confessions I don't know where these people came from might see if Schuler said this to me his father was a shoemaker he says as long as the door was open to the sign was out he had business so the same thing for us we usually average about maybe 350 maybe 400 confessions of Sunday what do you attribute that to man well we have good confessors here that's one thing that's wonderful here is to have the reverence of the priests and the reverence so that people to the parishioners are very reverent Junta you can see that the building uh encourages that because this is the house of God it's not man's house we should not build this to suit our knees or to suit a fashion or a trend of the time I mean it's got to be built for God we learned by our senses so when someone walks into our church or smells like incense as well.i smells like a church like people say well there's their sense of smell you know they touch the holy water there's a sense of touch they see the church you see all the art well there's another sense a lot of people don't realize the importance of art as first of all caddy catechol tools children grow up seeing all these little symbols on the walls in their church with little statues and they become catechized about their faith you come in here it's got to be so different from what you're used to that it's got a it's got to give you that sense of transcendence to make you think about heaven because the church is like a model of heaven and the sanctuary is the Holy of Holies so that even moreso than the rest of the church has to be a very special beautiful place music is important because in elevating the not only the mind of man but also the spirit because through the through the texts through the tonality x' through the emotion of the music it touches you know there's the very very fibers of people's they hear music let's say for Mozart or Gregorian chant what we're trying to do more than anything else is to implement the directives of the Second Vatican Council it said that our Catholic heritage of sacred music is to be used in the fullest way possible is it's it's a treasure of inestimable value it's not about being a traditionalist or you know cutting-edge you know it's it's just about what is objectively beautiful and let's go with that over the years as father Phillips and his team were restoring the building bringing the parish back to life and restoring the sacred heritage many of the volunteers began coming forward interested in becoming priests themselves story-tell films are made possible by viewers like you who share our vision of bringing souls closer to God through quality filmmaking and widespread distribution so if you can please make a financial donation today thank you father Phillips was out visiting the school and something struck me inside during his visit that I may actually be called to religious life in the first Sunday that I visited father asked me if I wanted to serve Mass so at that point I started serving and doing volunteer work and it got to be more and more and I just knew that I wasn't wasn't just called a religious life I was called here and when I came from a visit that's what happened to me it just felt like you know I could fit in here so I went approached father and asked him I could join the community either I called Carl Georgie he called me he was already heard in Chicago there ten men in this parish that are seeking the priesthood or at least have one way or another think they have Ovation priesthood 10 men he could not hardly believe what he was hearing so he wanted to meet these 10 men so came into the dining room it was filled there were about 30 men in you or in one way or another in the parish had thought about the priesthood so with the permission of our provincial and council with the permission of Cardinal George I was able to undertake forming a new community of men dedicated to the restoration of the sacred but more specifically liturgical apostolate to go out you know throughout hopefully country and hopefully the worl one day to let people know that you can have still the Troodon teen mass but you can also have the beautiful Novus Ordo mass and to show people that mass is you know essential to our life the Holy Sacrifice of the mass and it has to be done reverently respectfully and beautifully this is an ideal order because it's a place to restore a whole entire tradition of beauty in music and art that the Catholic Church has had it's showing people that the beautiful things of the church in the past and so many people are hungry for that young people as well as the older people that remember when they used to have that I think the original intention it seems that with the Apostles he wanted them to be priests but also still he'll still have that Brotherhood that community aspect we're all here to work together wrong for the same purpose we're all here to support each other to live together you know to pray together and to help each other with difficulties or trials they're going through and also to share and their happiness and their joys the community is part of the apostolate so we do get together for prayers for recreation for work for study and so on I come from a kind of a large family so to me is kind of a carryover from growing up I have two brothers and two sisters so it's like you know having a lot of brothers no sisters a lot of brothers here are the beginnings of a society founded to make available to the people of God the heritage and gifts of the universal Church in all their forms and all their splendor it takes a lot of work to do what we're doing but the thing is this can be done anywhere you just take the time to look for who can do this who can do that so on so it's not isolated that's what I'm saying and any parish can do what we're doing here so all these individuals are trying to truly live very holy lives in a very secular world where do they get the nourishment from the Holy Eucharist from the mats a large old Catholic Church once slated for the wrecking ball with less than 200 parishioners now referred to as a treasure of Chicago with over 3,000 parishioners and growing and a new religious order doing the same this is a story with no end in sight a true story that shows what can happen when just a few of God's people decide to begin restoring the safely you you you

Channel: StoryTel

Views: 63,936

Rating: 4.9597988 out of 5

Keywords: catholic, mass, cantius, restore the sacred, latin, chicaco

Id: ejwhzxQL5s4

Length: 29min 25sec (1765 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2015