Once in a great while, I’ve encountered stories of a priest on the occasion of his ordination anniversary offering a list of his sacramental data: how many baptisms, how many confirmations, how many marriages and funerals, how many Masses he celebrated over the course of 25 or 50 years.

I can’t begin to imagine how anyone amasses those particular numbers. Does he keep some sort of clicker in the confessional to keep the number up to date? Does he hold on to half a century’s worth of appointment books to track the Masses and sacraments?

For me, any of those numbers would be sheer (and probably wildly inaccurate) guesswork except for one of the rarest of all Church celebrations: the Dedication of a Church. I can give that number so easily: just two. Once, when the seminary chapel at the Catholic University underwent a major renovation and needed to be rededicated, the other time for dedication of Resurrection Parish in Muncy.

Dedications of Churches are a wonderful ritual, full of rich symbolism about what it means to be a church. Water and light, incense and chrism oil figure abundantly, leading of course to the principal reason why we have a church building in the first place: the bread and wine offered on the altar to become the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

But, there’s a note at the end of the ritual instructions I’ve always found moving. It tells us about the Anniversary celebration—a solemnity, the highest of all feasts, in the church itself.

Next Saturday and Sunday, we celebrate that great solemnity in St Boniface Church, 50 years to the day when this beautiful new Church was dedicated to the glory of God. We’ll celebrate it with readings and prayers appropriate to the day at both the 4 pm and 11 am Masses. Bishop Bambera will be the principal celebrant at the 4 pm Mass, and I certainly encourage you to welcome him to our parish. But, both Masses are set apart to remember with gratitude God’s presence in those years of building not merely a structure but a community set aside for the glory of God.