Bishop consecrates new altar in Queen of Peace Church, Ewing
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The bishop sent the people forth with a blessing that included:
“May he who gathers you at one table and renews you with one bread make you of one heart and one soul.”
Bishop W. Shawn McKnight had just finished consecrating the ornate new altar and celebrating Mass in Queen of Peace Church in Ewing.
Father Boniface Nzabonimpa, pastor of the Ewing, Edina and Canton parishes, thanked everyone who had a hand in building the altar and setting it into place, and Bishop McKnight for traveling to Ewing to consecrate it.
“My dear bishop, the parishioners of Queen of Peace are very loyal to the Church,” the priest stated. “They have strong faith and they are ready to work with you and do their best, in whatever way you direct us and guide us.”
“Father, your words are very well taken,” the bishop replied. “You reminded me of the authentic and true faith of the people here in this parish. I pray that you and I will never forget that.”
The Lord will provide
Like Abraham, Darren Neisen built an altar with his own son in mind.
The father of seminarian Gage Neisen spent a month fashioning about 150 board-feet of elaborately grained cherrywood, topped with a polished marble slab, into the new altar for Queen of Peace Church.
“With Gage being in the seminary, it’s kind of a hope that maybe someday, if it’s what God wants him to do, he’ll be able to say Mass, and I wanted to have something really special for that,” said Mr. Neisen, a lifelong Queen of Peace parishioner.
Bishop McKnight consecrated the altar the afternoon of Feb. 22, blessing it with holy water, anointing it with Sacred Chrism, burning incense in a brazier upon it, and using the altar to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
“The things that are most meaningful in life require a great sacrifice,” Bishop McKnight noted in his homily. “And so, in our celebration of Mass at this altar, soon to be consecrated, we shall make a sacrifice of praise to God with hearts full of gratitude lifted up to him.”
Fr. Nzabonimpa concelebrated the Mass. Deacon Kenneth Berry of Edina proclaimed the Gospel reading and assisted at the altar.
Bishop McKnight emphasized the importance of people carrying out what they receive and experience at Mass, out into their daily lives.
“There is a link between our sacramental worship of God and our relationships with one another,” he proclaimed. “God wants to bless other people in our community through you today in this very parish.
“He wants to bless the whole world through you through your parish community, by your devotion ‘to the teaching of the Apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers,’” the bishop said, echoing Acts 2:42.
“And so, let us not delay our celebration of this community of faith by giving thanks to the Father for all the blessings he has bestowed upon us and will continue to bestow upon us through the various sacramental celebrations that will take place here,” he stated.
After Bishop McKnight offered a prayer, the whole congregation knelt down as the choir and people chanted the Litany of Saints, asking God’s holy men and women in heaven to pray for everyone present in the sight of God’s divine majesty.
Bishop McKnight then placed a relic of St. Barbara, a third-century Greek martyr, below the altar top.
The tradition of including relics in altars dates back to when Mass was celebrated above the burial places of martyred Christians in the early Church.
Bishop McKnight poured Oil of Sacred Chrism, which he had consecrated during the Chrism Mass in the week leading up to Easter last year, into the shape of a cross in the marble altar top’s center and four corners.
The same oil is used in the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation and to anoint priests and bishops at their ordination.
Bishop McKnight then used his right hand to spread the fragrant oil carefully throughout the entire altar top.
“Mercifully accept our petitions, O Lord,” the bishop prayed, “through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the Saints, so that this altar may be a place where the great mysteries of salvation are accomplished and where your people offer you gifts, make known their desires, pour out their prayers, and bring forth every sentiment of worship and devotion.”
He then burned a large quantity of incense in a brazier on top of the altar, filling the church with white, aromatic smoke.
Mr. Neisen and his wife, Jennifer, then reverently wiped down the altar and set the new altar linens in place.
Bishop McKnight and Fr. Nzabonimpa then stood at the altar and called upon God to consecrate unleavened bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
Here to eternity
Darren Neisen was thinking about his son and also his late father while making the new altar.
Dale Neisen moved to Ewing in 1979 and became a Queen of Peace parishioner for the rest of his life.
“He passed away 12 years ago, and I wanted to do something to dedicate to his memory,” said Darren.
Darren had built the side altars that hold votive candles and statues of the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph 17 years ago.
“So, I wanted to keep the design for the main altar the same, with the arches and the pillars,” he said.
“We talked to the parish council about it,” he stated. “Everybody was in favor of it. So, I drew something up, and we sent in the drawing to the bishop to get it all approved before I built it.”
The marble altar top came from a company in St. Louis.
He noted that cherrywood is easier to work with than oak, “and the grain is absolutely beautiful.”
It also darkens over time, “so a year from now, it’s probably going to be a couple of shades darker, which will match the rest of the woodwork,” he said.
He used a lathe to hand-turn six pillars for the front of the altar, to complement the six candles that are set upon the altar for Mass.
The cross on the front of the altar is also cherrywood, but with a somewhat different grain, so it stands out.
Six men carried the marble altar top into church, and four carried the wooden part.
“Altogether, it weighs about 700 pounds,” said Darren.
He pointed out that people often leave something to their parish after they die.
“I wanted to be able to do something for the Church and be able to be here to enjoy it and see everybody else enjoy it,” he said.
A look back
The people gathered after Mass for a celebratory meal in the parish hall.
The event stirred many memories for lifelong Queen of Peace parishioner William Kroeger.
His father helped build the previous Queen of Peace Church in 1918.
“When he was in France during World War I,” Mr. Kroeger recalled, “292 men in his company got caught behind the railroad tracks, and the Germans kept shooting.
“Out of those 292 men, 13 came back,” said Mr. Kroeger. “My Dad was one of them.”
The younger Mr. Kroeger helped build the current church.
“I worked in the basement, doing the concrete, setting in the concrete after it was poured, so it would fill out the forms,” he said.
He also worked for the lumber yard where the knotty cedar planks for the walls and ceiling were purchased.
“I unloaded carloads of that particular red cedar paneling,” he said.
Another long-time parishioner reminisced about the summer of 1957, when the parish’s annual picnic was about to get rained out.
“They moved everything — games, tables, everything — into the new church. It wasn’t finished yet, and we still had the picnic there,” he recalled.
“Nothing was moved in there yet,” he noted. “Nothing but plywood on the floor.”
He said the new altar is a nice addition to the church.
“When I started being a server in the old church, everything was far away from the people,” he recalled. “You didn’t see the people at all. It was quite a different world.”
The ornate reredos from the 1918 church was moved to the back wall of the sanctuary of the current church in 1957 and remains there.
A venerable visitor
Queen of Peace Parish traces its beginning to 1887, when a priest offered Mass in a railroad caboose nearby.
The town of Ewing grew up around the original Queen of Peace Church that was built a few years later.
Franciscan priests from Quincy, Illinois, came to offer Mass for several years until a resident pastor was assigned to the parish.
A 1919 article in the Lewis County Journal newspaper included recollections of Emmett Boudreau, who moved to the area in 1884.
He said German Catholics and Irish Catholics didn’t always get along well at the beginning.
“When an Irish priest was sent out here, the German people were unhappy, and vice-versa,” he recalled.
One Sunday, the visiting priest from Quincy turned out to be Father Augustus Tolton (1854-98), a former slave from Monroe County who had become the Roman Catholic Church’s first recognizably Black priest in the United States.
“Needless to say,” Mr. Boudreau recounted, “the congregation was amazed and asked how long he would be coming.”
Fr. Tolton’s reply: “Until you settle your differences.”
Fr. Tolton, now under serious consideration for being declared a saint, came back to Ewing 1889 to sing the Mass at the laying of the cornerstone for the parish’s first church, and ministered there on several other occasions.
Mr. Boudreau said it only took the venerable cleric about two weeks to help parishioners become of one heart and one soul.
