Check out the photos below for some of the progress
being made on the painting of St. Peter's Church!

Click below for a gallery of photos of the painting in the church!

After having fixed the encroaching leaks and the resulting plaster damage, we have begun the very important next step of painting the church interior. This is an incredible opportunity to make St. Peter’s a place of awe-inspiring beauty. A place in which people will stop by to experience it and enter into a conversation about the reality of God in their life. This happens and I believe that the proposed schema of the Church will do just that.
 
When we are talking about Sacred Art, we are talking about something more than something nice to look at or something purely cerebral, but something that engages us and draws us in to lift up our hearts to Christ who is seated at the right hand of the Father.
 
Sacred art should be an immolation before Our Lord, like St. Mary Magdalene pouring out the precious ointment, (worth a year’s wages), on the feet of Jesus and drying them with her hair. It should be a beacon of visible beauty pointing the way to God who is Truth and Goodness and Beauty Himself! It should be a challenge to the ugliness of a world that has lost it’s hope. It should be a timeless treasure communicated in timeless styles. (What is popular today will soon appear as interesting as a 1980s shopping mall.) Styles that have lasted the test of time should be used. It should be an expression of hope in the goodness of God.  
 
Since the Council of Trent, the Church has guided the making of sacred art by appealing to four groups of people, (paraphrasing here), It should appeal to the artist in that it should be of excellent quality, it should appeal to the devout in that it should draw minds to devotion of Our Lord, it should appeal to the theologian in that it should communicate correctly the truth about God and it should appeal the child in that it should cause the simplest to be drawn up in wonder.
 
It is for these reasons that the original renderings, made by Slawek Miskow, inspired by the Basilica of St. Mary in Krakow, A basilica much loved by St. John Cantius in the 15th century, will no doubt be an inspiration to all parishioners and visitors to St. Peter in Volo. 

Fr. Nathan Caswell, SJC
Pastor of St. Peter's in Volo
 

The estimated cost for this work is $485,000. If you are interested in making a contribution directly earmarked towards the painting of the church, please be sure to indicate “Restoration” in the memo of your check.