One of the joys of the Catholic faith, at least from my perspective, is the incongruity of universality in the midst of obvious differences. By that I mean that one can attend Mass anywhere in the world, in virtually any language, and still follow what’s going on. Whether you’re at your home parish, on vacation, or at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, you can still worship God in the way He has prescribed for us.
 
Of all the churches I’ve visited and had this experience at over the years, the one that sticks out the most in my mind is when I was vacationing with some seminary friends in the Diocese of Peoria, and we stumbled across a church that was built in exactly the same fashion as my home parish. The pews, walls, pillars, high altars- everything was almost identical to Sacred Heart in Camp Washington. Even though I had been at Sacred Heart hundreds, maybe thousands of times, I felt as though I was seeing it for the first time since I had found a copy hundreds of miles away. I noticed something in that church’s
sanctuary that began to bother me about Sacred Heart as well. While the processional cross was placed in a stand near the celebrant’s chair, there wasn’t a prominent crucifix that caught one’s attention at the center of the Mass. In an act of complete coincidence, the pastor of Sacred Heart added an altar crucifix and new altar candles shortly thereafter, and the sanctuary suddenly felt more complete.
 
Many of you have likely noticed by now that there are crucifixes on each of the altars at the parishes of our region. I have been meaning to purchase some and have them placed for some time now, but one of my consistent problems as a priest is thinking of something during Mass, and then having it vanish entirely from my mind by the time I get back to the sacristy.

Something you may not have noticed however, is that these altar crucifixes have a double corpus; as you see Jesus on the cross facing the
congregation, there is an identical statue on the priest’s side, facing the celebrant and the deacon. In the few weeks that they have been here, I have found great consolation in knowing that we are not so much facing each other, as we are all focused on the action on the altar, participating in Jesus’ great sacrifice for His people. It has helped me to focus on what happens at Mass,
and I hope the same is true for you.
 
As we draw closer to Holy Week and the great mystery of the Cross, my prayer is that we as a region can enter more fully into the great sacrifice which God made for us, and to unite our sufferings to those of our Lord and Savior.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McCullough