When Fr. Andrew Marinak passed away in September of 2021 he remembered our parish in his Last Will & Testament. Fr. Andy was a very proud son of Steelton in addition to serving as the last pastor of St. James Church; we are honored and humbled that he remembered our parish family.
At least as far back as the 1980’s there were desires to have a prominent and visible crucifix in the front of our Church. Many of the proposals over the years would have drastically altered the artistic cohesion of our sanctuary appointments. Last Summer when the large wooden crucifix at the main stairwell was moved for storage, several people saw the striking beauty of the corpus (carved body of Jesus) and so the idea of installing a hanging crucifix or “rood cross” came about.
A quick history of that crucifix: Under Msgr. Rudolph Fuhr’s pastorate of St. John’s Church, the congregation moved its church from the original church at Second St and Juneberry Alley up to Enhaut; the centerpiece of the sanctuary was the large cross with a beautiful, hand-carved corpus imported from Germany. When Fr. Marinak celebrated his first Mass on Sunday, June 3, 1956 at St. John’s in Enhaut he would have looked upon that central altar cross.
In neo-Gothic churches such as ours the rood cross is a very common and traditional architectural feature. Within the next several weeks this rood cross is going to be installed within the proscenium arch of our sanctuary. With the soaking height of our heaven-like ceiling, this cross will not detract from the existing sanctuary murals, but instead it will culminate the artwork and make the statement that “We proclaim Christ crucified…Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:23.
The rood cross project is made possible by a portion of Fr. Marinak’s bequest to the parish. Thank you, Fr. Andy!