Our Lady of Grace parishioners plant tulip bulbs in anticipation of their jubilee celebration.
West Babylon parish is blooming during anniversary year
Our Lady of Grace parishioners plant tulip bulbs in anticipation of their jubilee celebration.
WEST BABYLON — For the people of Our Lady of Grace Church here, the parish’s 50th anniversary year is not only a time to celebrate the past and look forward to the future, but a chance for revitalization and community building.
The parish celebrated its opening Mass last November and the goal has been “to try to do an event per month for our anniversary year,” noted Betty Duffy, director of parish stewardship and anniversary committee member.
The big anniversary event will be at the end of April, when the parish will have a tulip festival and parade, which will commemorate both parish and town history. “The reason we’re doing that is because the (local well-known) Van Bourgondien family were tulip growers,” said Duffy. The land on which St. Joseph’s sits “was their property and they donated it to the diocese and the parish, so we’re honoring them in a way. We did a tulip sale, with flowers bought from them, and we planted 3,000 bulbs on the property,” which should bloom in time for the festival.
The festival and parade will “emulate events that took place in the 1940s and ‘50s,” explained anniversary committee member Richie Irizarry. “It’s going to be a total parish-wide community event. We’re going to have vendors selling crafts, we’re inviting bands from various high schools and community groups to participate, as well as fire departments. We’re going to have a float competition with prizes. The high school kids are going to be in period costume.” That day the parish will also dedicate their new prayer garden.
Over the course of the next few months, there will be other anniversary activities. “We tried to be very conscious of both economics and that we were doing something for every age group — families, young children, seniors. We tried to make sure we had enough things going on to be totally inclusive of everyone in the parish,” Duffy said.
In addition to wanting all parishioners to be able to attend at least some anniversary events, it was important to the committee to have parishioners be involved in organizing those events.
“We have a lot of things planned, but the parish has been wonderful as far as groups taking responsibility for different pieces of it,” noted Duffy. Events include a movie night and tailgate party hosted by the parish youth ministry, a fishing trip sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, a camping weekend sponsored by the Boy Scouts, and a potluck dinner for returning sisters, priests and employees hosted by the Columbiettes.
“The parish always comes together for whatever the cause might be,” she said.
Celebrating the anniversary this year has “also been revitalizing. I don’t think it’s just our parish, I think it’s been all over that things have kind of been down and it’s just nice to have so much good things going on. And we’re lucky to have so many groups so willing to help.”
A lot of those people getting involved are the younger parishioners, many of whom came out to help sell and plant the tulip bulbs. “Our confirmation program involves faith in action,” noted Duffy, “and for the seventh grade, faith in action is at the parish level, so they’ve been helping us out and we intend that they will continue to do it” throughout the year. For some of the confirmation students, the tulip sale “was their community service and they raised about $5,000 of the $7,000.”
“I’d like to see some of the activities we invented this year maybe keep carrying on, not just be a one shot deal, but something the ministries could hold on to and keep reinventing each year,” added Irizarry. “We have a lot of fun with these things, and a lot of this stuff could keep going on every year. They’re great community builders. That’s the fun of it.”
“This is a parish that has so many facets to it and is such a generous, giving parish,” said Barbara Maertz, another anniversary committee member. “If you look around this campus we had Christa House, we have two homes for the developmentally disabled, we have a huge parish outreach and social ministry. This parish reaches out to the whole community and we wanted to continue to do that” throughout the anniversary year.
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