Religion: Consecration

Eighteen years ago a pompous papal delegate witnessed the laying of the cornerstone of the St. Louis Cathedral. Last week, following appropriately the brilliant pageant of the Eucharistic Congress, church princes, prelates, priests participated in the medieval liturgy of consecration. Seven o’clock in the morning saw 8,000 reverent worshipers on Lindell Boulevard gazing awe-struck at the Cathedral’s granite walls, at its glistening green dome. The massive doors swung open. Came forth in stately procession acolytes, priests, deacons, followed by Archbishop Glennon wearing a white cope and carrying the episcopal crozier. Thrice this holy array rounded the Cathedral. Thrice the Archbishop stopped to knock at the church door. The third time it opened and the procession disappeared within. There are Catholic mysteries not open to the public. Promptly at ten o’clock began another procession from the residence of Archbishop Glennon to the Cathedral for the classic ritual of Pontifical High Mass. Robed in their most gorgeous vestments, the assemblage of churchmen provoked manifestations of devout reverence. In front glinted the cross with a candle-bearer on each side. Then followed, seriatim, colorbearers, resplendent church flags, cherubic altar boys ranging in size upwards like steps, seminarians four abreast in black cassocks with white surplices. Last, preceded by pages and surrounded by a retinue of priests, marched the scarlet cardinals,* with purple-clad Prelate Bonzano dispensing blessings upon his genuflecting worshipers. Said Cardinal Hayes in delivering the sermon: “. . . . This magnificent edifice … is in very truth ‘a structural Te Deum.’ … In the early centuries it was through the preaching of ‘Jesus Christ and Him crucified’ that the church drew under His yoke the legal-minded Roman, the philosophic Greek and the untamed barbarian, teaching them to bend the knee at the sacred name of Jesus.” Dusk saw the centuries-old ritual terminated by the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament.

*In the procession were: Archbishop Glennon; John Cardinal Bonzano,Papal Legate; Cardinals von Faulhauber, Primate of Germany; O’Donnell, Primateof All Ireland; Hayes, of New York.