Dear Parishioners,

I think some of you have figured out that I like history and historical facts. Of course, that’s one of my degrees. A few weeks back, I was invited to one of my former parishes, St. Charles in Coldwater. They were celebrating 175 years as a parish. That made me think a little bit about our Kalamazoo area. Even though the first Masses were celebrated in Kalamazoo in 1832, the first parish would eventually be called St. Augustine Parish and was formally founded in 1856. At that time in the 1830’s, priests would travel up from what we know now as Notre Dame. Yes, Holy Cross priests were some of our first priests who celebrated Catholic Mass for the faithful in this area around 192 years ago!   

If you have discovered where the cornerstone of our church building is located (which is now inside the building and by the main office), the date on the stone is 1969. But our parish was actually founded three years earlier in 1966. If you do the math, that means we are closing in on our 60th anniversary of the founding of this parish. Of all the parishes in the Kalamazoo area, we were the last parish to be established in this area. If you were living in Portage in 1966, one would never believe that Portage has grown so large this many years later. 

As we are working on rebuilding the rectory, we had to dig out the original blueprints to see where some things were located or how the building was originally designed when it was built as a convent. The date on the blueprints is 1968. With so much internal damage done by the tornado, it was certainly time to refresh and renew a number of things in the rectory. Thankfully, many of these are being paid for by the insurance company. My hope is that all of these updates will serve the parish for years to come and make this a usable place for our priests to live in a what is probably now considered to be an older home. Keep your prayers coming that all of our rebuilding/renovation work keeps progressing!

Fr. Mark