A Constructive Summer - Chapel Exterior

The first installment chronicling our seminary construction projects this summer: The Exterior of Saint Mary's Chapel.

Saint Mary's Chapel at the Saint Paul Seminary is much older than our administration bulding and residence. With that in mind, the administration decided it was high-time to fix-up the exterior of the chapel.

This was the first project to begin this summer. It is still on-going due to the complex nature of the project. The crews are both cleaning the exterior walls of the chapel as well as making repairs all the way around the structure.

"So," one might ask, "how hard is it, really, to clean a wall? I do that at home with a standard pressure-washer." There is actually a three-fold complexity to the project: 1) the building is becoming old and care must be taken not to damage the stone, 2) the architecture of the chapel is more complex than a standard home - it has various overhangings, pillars, and so forth that make the repairs complicated to complete, and 3) the gound around the chapel is complicated to navigate with large machinery: bordering the chapel to the East is the North end of the administration building, and the seminary gardens border the West side of the chapel - in addition to trees, boulders and the like. I hope these pictures are able to communicate the complexity of the project.

As you can see, the machinery used by these crews is both large and complex. Now imagine that you're inside the beautiful, contemplative Saint Mary's Chapel at the Saint Paul Seminary. Imagine you've just done your daily Holy Hour, the Office of Readings, and are slowly finishing Morning Prayer. You're calm, deep in prayer, relishing the joy that comes with the Liturgy of the Hours AND THEN, without warning, two of these machines start up, and pressured water hoses begin to spray the chapel walls.

It's more than a bit of a shock and, suffice it to say, it takes some effort to re-focus on prayer.

The chapel's exterior walls will be just like new in less than a month. As always, I (and all of seminarians) hope that you will stop by to see the chapel and join us for prayers or Mass - our regular schedule begins again in just over a month.

Come back to the blog soon for more on our Constructive Summer.

Take care, -Jeremy