The First Christmas at St. Stephens: By Rev. Louis Benoit
It was my first Christmas in the missions as a Glenmary brother. It was in a new mission at McConnellsburg, PA started a few months earlier. We had a large two story brick house on one of the main corners in town. Mass was being held on the second floor in what was eventually to become our living room. The sanctuary where the priest said mass was tucked into a bay window and wasn't much more than four by eight feet. In what was to be our dining room was the sacristy and the office which had a desk made of a door with one edge on a window sill and the other on a saw horse. Downstairs renovations were going on. To the right of the entrance area a chapel was being built where we tore a wall out between two rooms to make a chapel twice the size of the temporary chapel upstairs. To the left of the entrance area an office was being prepared. We had a target date of Christmas to have our first mass in the new chapel.
A generous benefactor donated an outdoor nativity set so we could have a Christmas stable scene in front of the house; the town had never had one before. There was a stone wall at the sidewalk that elevated our small front lawn perfectly. A parishioner donated pine slabs with bark on them from a sawmill he owned. I used the rough two by fours taken from the wall we tore out for the chapel to frame out the stable and walled it with the pine slabs. Shortly before Christmas I was energetically hammering the stable together on our front lawn. An old man stopped and watched for a while and said, "What are you making?" I told him, "A stable for Christmas." He replied, "Well, it'll look real nice when you get the reindeer in it." I let that one slide and kept hammering. I made a four foot star, painted it white and applied glitter, and arranged twenty lights on it. The star was placed on a third floor dormer above the stable. Putting the star up I sat out on the window ledge and had somebody hold on to my legs so I wouldn't fall out. We set up the stable shortly before Christmas.
Christmas came, renovations were finished and the chapel was set up. we were in our new home, a chapel that would be in use for a number of years until a permanent church was built. We had a beautiful midnight Mass with help from volunteers from outside to help lead the singing. After mass had begun, there was a knock at the chapel door, and when somebody answered it, there was a slurred voice that said, "I wanna hear the carols." The town drunk had come to midnight mass. We made room for him. At the first Christmas shepherds came to Jesus. They were marginalized people living on the fringes of society. The man knocking on our door wanting to hear the carols was on the margins of local society. A fitting touch at our Christmas mass.
For Christmas we had a new chapel, a new office with a real desk, a living room, and a dining room. The outside stable announcing Jesus's birth was a big hit in town; we were moving forward. The crude beginnings were over and we were becoming a more established presence in the community.
A generous benefactor donated an outdoor nativity set so we could have a Christmas stable scene in front of the house; the town had never had one before. There was a stone wall at the sidewalk that elevated our small front lawn perfectly. A parishioner donated pine slabs with bark on them from a sawmill he owned. I used the rough two by fours taken from the wall we tore out for the chapel to frame out the stable and walled it with the pine slabs. Shortly before Christmas I was energetically hammering the stable together on our front lawn. An old man stopped and watched for a while and said, "What are you making?" I told him, "A stable for Christmas." He replied, "Well, it'll look real nice when you get the reindeer in it." I let that one slide and kept hammering. I made a four foot star, painted it white and applied glitter, and arranged twenty lights on it. The star was placed on a third floor dormer above the stable. Putting the star up I sat out on the window ledge and had somebody hold on to my legs so I wouldn't fall out. We set up the stable shortly before Christmas.
Christmas came, renovations were finished and the chapel was set up. we were in our new home, a chapel that would be in use for a number of years until a permanent church was built. We had a beautiful midnight Mass with help from volunteers from outside to help lead the singing. After mass had begun, there was a knock at the chapel door, and when somebody answered it, there was a slurred voice that said, "I wanna hear the carols." The town drunk had come to midnight mass. We made room for him. At the first Christmas shepherds came to Jesus. They were marginalized people living on the fringes of society. The man knocking on our door wanting to hear the carols was on the margins of local society. A fitting touch at our Christmas mass.
For Christmas we had a new chapel, a new office with a real desk, a living room, and a dining room. The outside stable announcing Jesus's birth was a big hit in town; we were moving forward. The crude beginnings were over and we were becoming a more established presence in the community.