Meeting the Archbishop - 170 Year Church Anniversary

Last Saturday evening, for the Vigil Mass at St. Joseph, we celebrated 170 years since our church's founding.  There were at least 17 current and former priests, and the celebrant of the Mass was His Excellency Archbishop Blase Cupich.  Bishop Francis Kane was also there.  It was pretty awesome to see two Bishops on the altar in their mitres.

Our choir sang. We had a live string quartet to accompany us, plus, our director put other instruments into his keyboard, so it sounded like an orchestra.  There were two soprano soloists who sang so beautifully.  Our director picked some fantastic music, very moving and uplifting.  In particular, When In Our Music God Is Glorified by Green/Stanford/arr. by McDonald and Faithfulness by Chisholm/Raney.  We also sang excerpts from Hör mein Bitten by Mendelssohn, with a soprano soloist.  This was tricky!  Difficult parts, all in German! What was really neat is that this piece was written in the same year our church was founded. And our church has a strong German influence. More props to our director for finding it.

At the end, the Archbishop greeted the parishioners, even posing for pictures.  I got such a nice photo of Tyler with him.  He's holding his crozier, which I have never seen up close.  It was a marvelous event!