St. Mary’s Parish celebrates big with food, games, quilts and live music
Huntingburg – It’s one of those great community traditions that just gets better through the years.
The members of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Huntingburg will be pulling out all the stops at their annual Parish Picnic, set for Sunday, September 16 from 10:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
To accommodate the picnic’s full schedule of events, Fr. Godfrey Mullen will celebrate Mass at 9:30 a.m.
Starting at 10:30 a.m., a mouthwatering menu of roast beef and chicken dinners will be available for eating in or carrying out, with three serving lines available to meet customer demand. Complementing the dinners will be plenty of delicious homemade chicken noodle soup – 300 gallons! – to take home…you can fill up one of the containers the church is providing, or bring your own.
A quilt raffle of over 50 beautiful works of fabric art created by St. Mary’s very own quilting group will provide a feast for the eyes as well. A Country Store likewise will have plenty of homemade items to stock everyone’s pantry for the upcoming holidays.
Game booths for kids and adults alike will make for a day of great fun. In addition to the game booths, there will also be Bingo as well as a Chinese and silent auction. At 5:30 p.m., a total of $6,000 in cash prizes will be given away.
Everyone is invited to set up lawn chairs to sit back and enjoy live musical entertainment provided by one of Huntingburg’s own, rising country talent Danielle Wehr and the Gospel Sounds.
This year’s Parish Picnic celebrates St. Mary’s 151st year as an established Catholic community here in Huntingburg.
It all started on October 20, 1859, when the Rev. P. Bede O’Connor celebrated the parish’s very first Mass.
Then, in August of 1860, the cornerstone was laid for a new church, to be named “St. Mary of the Visitation Roman Catholic Church.” The particular reference of the Visitation refers to the account in Luke’s Gospel when Mary, who had already conceived Jesus within her womb, visited her much older relative Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with a son, John the Baptist. It was during the Visitation that Mary praised God in her joyous Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) for His deliverance of Israel through the coming of the Messiah, her own son. The beautiful stained-glass windows inside the sanctuary tell the biblical story of Jesus and Mary, beginning from the northeast end of the church.
From the time its cornerstone was laid until 1873, St. Mary’s was served by various Catholic priests from Ferdinand and Jasper. Later that same year, priests from Saint Meinrad Archabbey (http://www.saintmeinrad.org/) began sending pastors to serve the parish, a special relationship that has continued to this day. St. Mary’s most recent pastor is Fr. Godfrey Mullen, O.S.B. (Order of St. Benedict).
St. Mary’s Catholic Church is located at 313 North Washington Street, Huntingburg. For more information, please call the church office at 683-4903
