I recently got to visit Heritage Hill State Historical Park in Green Bay. Through old buildings and professional storytellers, the park attempts to help people step back in time, learn about the past, and see the area for what it used to be.
Near the edge of the park, past the military buildings, old houses, and fur trading post, is a dome-like bark structure.
Upon looking at the sign that answers “What is this?”, you learn that it’s the “Bark Chapel”.
It’s a replica of some of the earliest structures built to celebrate Masses in the 1600s as priests from France came over to the “new world” to evangelize.
After spending a day talking with people “in character” from 18-whatever and early 19-whatever, participating in hands-on activities to learn about the past up close, and feeling jealous that even low-paid workers had a fireplace in their living spaces (out of necessity, not luxury), the chapel is a place to quietly pause and reflect.
While the other buildings on the site represent echoes of what was and what used to be, the chapel represents a living and continuous Church with a glimpse of a previous time.
God and our Faith are beyond time. The prayers offered in that structure in the 1600s were offered to the same God as those made by present-day pilgrims.
I’m not speaking out against the beautiful, the ornate, the grandiose, and the awe-inspiring, but there was something to celebrate in the simplicity and the humility of the structure.
While much Church architecture serves a purpose to give glory to God, and therefore presents itself as a robust structure, the Bark Chapel showed that these buildings served as spaces for prayer, the sacraments, and conversion to God.
As soon as I walked in, I didn’t feel as if I was in a museum anymore; I felt the presence of the Lord.
No longer was I focused on a fun day learning about Wisconsin’s past; I got a blunt, but fair reminder that I am a child of God, God is everywhere, and I should be ready to be in a prayerful presence of God at any time and place He deems necessary.
It was also a chance to remember the sometimes violent past of the early Church in what we now call the United States.
According to the park, reactions and welcomes to the missionaries were mixed.
Some Native Americans burned settlements and murdered settlers.
The missionaries persevered and did convert some of the Native peoples.
For the converts, frontier chapels such as the replica in Green Bay served as the center of their spiritual lives.
We are blessed with many churches in this diocese and the greater state, along with Adoration chapels, Catholic gift and book stores, pilgrimage sites, and more.
These early structures were THE center of the Faith at the time.
Let us give thanks to those missionaries who heard and answered the call to spread the Good News in this new land.
Let’s give thanks to all of those Catholics who came before us. I’m not smart enough to connect all of the dots, but I’m sure there are some people who lived in the 1600s, 1700s, 1800s, and later, of course, who had some role in our Faith journey, preserving and being strong in the Faith for us to continue in the present.
As our country comes closer to its 250th birthday next year (I’m too lazy to type out that word, much less copy and paste it), let’s reflect on the history of the Church in the U.S., celebrate the past, and make our Faith strong for those who will come after us.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.