Flooded church, parish reborn
Faith put to test during 9 months it took to rebuild
In the beginning, there will be no lights.
The sanctuary of St. Ignatius of Loyola Catholic Church in Spring — shuttered since the waters of Harvey poured through its doors — will be cloaked in darkness.
As a procession makes its way through the refurbished church, past the freshly painted walls and over just-installed travertine and carpet flooring, past the restored frescoes and along the rows of gleaming new pews, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo will sprinkle holy water on the walls and the gathered faithful.
The leader of the Archdiocese of GalvestonHouston will offer a prayer of dedication, asking for God’s blessing and anoint the altar with sacred chrism, a reminder of Christ’s role as the “anointed one.”
Finally, candles will illuminate the altar — followed by the lighting of the church.
The parish flock of St. Ignatius, who have spent nine months worshipping in school gyms, neighboring churches and a parking lot tent, will at last be home.
But the rededication ceremony, scheduled for Thursday, will not erase the long journey from ruin to resurrection. As with so many churches, synagogues and mosques across Houston, the damage inflicted by the storm changed not only the buildings but the people as well.
They are marked by the memories of the flood and everything they lost, by the months spent displaced from their spiritual home, and by faith that grew stronger after it was shaken.
In videos broadcast on Facebook Live the day after Harvey’s record rainfall drenched Houston last August, Father Norbert Maduzia makes no effort to hide his shock and pain. His face and hair are dripping wet. His eyes wide with disbelief. His voice tremulous.
The camera pans to show the interior of St. Ignatius engulfed by floodwater. The pews, the potted plants, the church organ. All, soaked and sodden.
“I’m speechless,” says Maduzia, 63, who has been pastor of St. Ignatius for 12 years. “Everything is lost.”
It is a line he repeats again and again. Everything is lost.
He sloshes through the church in rubber wading boots. Through the “Lady Chapel,” where a reflection of the stained glass window glints red and blue in the swirling eddies. Past the baptismal font, where flood water has displaced the holy water. In the entrance, where a processional cross floats face-down.
One arm of the Christ figure has snapped off. “It’s just broken,” Maduzia laments, as he fishes the icon out. “Everything is broken.”
In the sacristy, Maduzia and a cadre of volunteers scramble to store vestments on top of cabinets and high shelves. Then he heaves a heavy sigh.
At that moment, Maduzia recalled recently, his “heart was crushed.” He thought of the familiar faces in the pews every Sunday, the work that went into the building, which always seemed suffused with natural light. He thought of all that had taken place under that roof: the weddings and funerals, the joyous times and the sad ones.
“Friends, right now, we don’t have a building,” the pastor tells his parishioners watching the livestream on Aug. 28. “We are the church.”
Just two days earlier, Elaine Bertero had attended Saturday night service at St. Ignatius, where she has been a member for 30 years, where her children received their sacraments, and where she teaches adult Bible study. During that Mass, the readings emphasized the belief that the people — not the building — are the body of the church.
As Bertero watched Maduzia’s video, saw the pain in her pastor’s face and caught glimpses of her beloved place of worship submerged in water, she began to cry. It felt like a blow to the stomach.
How, she asked herself, do we even begin to rebuild?
The same questions flashed through the mind of Susan Heim, who was also watching the Facebook Live broadcast. Although the water had started to rise in her subdivision, somehow, miraculously, her house — just two miles away from St. Ignatius — was safe.
But her church of 25 years, she could see in the video, was not. In Maduzia’s glazed expression, she recognized her own emotions: devastation, sorrow, fear.
Heim’s children had been raised up in St. Ignatius, received their Holy Communion and confirmation there. For the last four years, she has served in the wedding ministry, helping couples getting married in the church.
Like Bertero, she wondered: “What do we do now?”
Yet, even as Heim stared in disbelief at the images of the flooded church, a flicker of hope rose up.
There was Maduzia, who had hitched a ride on a boat, wearing his forest green rain slicker, to get to the 14-acre St. Ignatius campus. Trudging through the downpour. Splashing through water that was waist-high in spots. Keeping his flock informed.
In the midst of the storm, she said, Maduzia was a beacon of calm, a shepherd for his parish.
“He made it feel like we were all holding hands in a circle,” Heim said, “trying to figure it out and walking through it together.”
At week’s end, on Sept. 1, Maduzia celebrated a BYOC (bring your own chair) Mass on the steps of St. Ignatius.
Hundreds of parishioners, toting lawn chairs and folding chairs, turned out for the service on a hot Friday morning. Bertero was delighted to see so many familiar faces in the crowd. Heim felt uplifted.
It was a joyful moment, a sign that the 4,000-family parish would be resilient enough to recover. No matter how long that took. Nine months. Nine months of wandering. Of Masses held in the Klein High School gym, which felt more like going to a school play than to a place of worship, and in the parking lot of St. Ignatius, inside a massive white tent, where the sound of traffic filtered through the flaps.
Nine months of makeshift Bible studies and Sunday school in borrowed offices and neighboring churches. Of mucking out the dank buildings, of ripping through sheetrock, of tossing moldy Nativity decorations and sheet music, soggy chairs and the waterlogged organ.
Nine months of mourning what had been washed away and forging a new foundation.
The attendance for weekend services, normally about 1,100, dropped to 400. Some parishioners said the tent revived too much of the trauma from Harvey. Others were still dealing with the loss of their own homes. For many, the temporary worship facilities simply did not feel right.
“They needed a sacred space,” said Maduzia. “People want to go to a holy place where they see statues and candles, and smell the church.”
Still, the months of reconstruction have also brought blessings.
After St. Ignatius added Spanish Masses to accommodate new arrivals from Venezuela and Mexico, the parish community had often been split between “us and them,” Maduzia noted. After Harvey, there is only an “us.”
The church, whose motto is “a people for each other,” became a more united congregation — a people for each other. When lectors were chosen for the re-dedication Mass, the first question was “Which one will be in Spanish?” — an indication, Maduzia said, of greater inclusiveness.
For some parishioners, including Heim, the lack of a physical building actually deepened their faith.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s in an open field, or a shack. God is always there,” she said. “It’s our responsibility to recognize that.”
That conviction was crystallized on Feb. 10, the day Heim’s daughter was married. She wanted the ceremony at St. Ignatius, her home parish. But the only space available was the outdoor tent, which other couples had eschewed.
It didn’t matter to Heim’s daughter whether the service took place in the tent, as long as it was on the St. Ignatius campus. God would be present.
A week before the rededication ceremony, a new video was posted on the St. Ignatius Facebook page.
“Hello, everyone, it’s Father Norbert. Last time we came live this place was full of water, ” says the pastor, accompanied by Father Khoi Le. “Now you can see behind me, we have pews. Now wait until you see what’s in front of me.” The camera whirls around. “They are assembling the altar,” Maduzia says, as the screen fills with the image of workers putting together the wooden base adorned by angels. “Look at that.”
He takes the viewers on a tour of the renovated sanctuary, his voice filled with wonder and awe: The rows of wooden pews, which will seat 1,700. The blue-gray terrazzo tiles. The statues, hand carved in Italy, perched in the four corners: St. Ignatius, St. Joseph, St. Katharine Drexel and the Virgin Mary who, for nine months, wore a crown placed on her head just before Harvey.
“One week away. Can you believe that?” he marvels. “One week away, and we’ll be back in here.”
So, too, will the processional cross, which had been disfigured in the flood, and will be used in the ceremony marking the rebirth of the church.
The arm of the Christ figure is now repaired and replaced, but in the foot, a hairline crack is still visible. Like the parish of St. Ignatius, it is stronger in the broken places.