St. Peter’s Parish on Capitol Hill began a yearlong bicentennial celebration on Sept. 25 with a late afternoon Mass, followed by an outdoor 200th birthday party in nearby Providence Park.
The opening Mass drew about 300 parishioners and friends, the biggest crowd in the church since before the pandemic, and many of them walked to the park afterward for games and music, cupcakes and ice cream, and the camaraderie that has been sorely missed for the past 18 months.
In his homily, the pastor, Father Gary Studniewski, said no one knows why St. Peter, the first pope, was chosen as the parish’s patron saint back in the early 1800s. He said he admires the apostle’s boldness, confidence and enthusiasm, but what he finds most endearing about St. Peter “is that he is a very common man with real faults and weaknesses, lack of understanding and bungling at times, yet (he) could come to possess such deep, passionate, tried-and-tested faith in Jesus, the Christ.” In Matthew 16:18, Jesus said, “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”
“You may think that you are a meager grain of sand in the history of salvation,” Father Studniewski told congregants, “but in the church you are much more -- you are living stones. You are part of the Lord’s grand experiment of salvation.”
He encouraged parishioners to remember their poor Catholic immigrant forebears, to recall their sacrifices and gifts, not only to the parish but to the larger Church. The era of the parish’s founding was a time of both racial and religious prejudice, he noted. “This parish would serve as a gathering place for many families to obtain the comfort of assistance, and to endure in hardship with the bonds of Catholic communion,” he said.
Citing the thousands of baptisms, marriages and burials in parish historical records, he asked, “How many lives were nurtured, literally saved, through the sacrifices of the living stones that made up this parish?”
Father Studniewski urged parishioners to become more acquainted with the parish’s history, “that all of us may be enlightened and inspired by this history to be contemporary living stones that continue to write the story of salvation in this place, in our time. God willing, there will be a tricentennial celebration of St. Peter’s on Capitol Hill, and there will be more stories to tell from the sacrifices of the common priesthood that we offer today.”
Music for the Mass involved all the parish’s musicians; songs were led by both the folk group and the choir, the latter accompanied by Dr. Kevin O’Brien playing a Noack pipe organ installed in 2019.
The parish Bicentennial Events Committee, with 25 volunteers, organized the birthday party in the park, complete with cupcakes and soft ice cream cones, as well as sack races, corn toss, tag, and a game of “bicentennial bingo” that prompted players to ask each other questions in order to win.
Maureen Hoyler, a longtime parishioner and co-chair of the events committee, said the opening Mass and party achieved “what we wanted: reinforcing our sense of community, our sense of family; communicating the value of each generation at St. Peter’s; letting people relax and have fun; encouraging everyone to connect beyond their smaller circles.”
The theme of the parish’s yearlong celebration is “Living Faith, Hope, and Love,” which is intended to build on the parish mission statement: “To be a tangible manifestation of Christ living in the community.”
