Church #36 - Our Lady of Grace, Johnston

I love the name of this church; it's very distinctive, and I'm not sure if I've heard "of Grace" as a title of Mary's before. I went to Mass here last Friday, on the feast of St. Thomas. The priest gave a very good homily on the whole "doubting Thomas" theme, a major challenge since it feels like I've heard hundreds of sermons on that particular Gospel story.

Music area

The church has a fairly standard modern layout, highlighted by several very cool pieces of artwork. The arms of the corpus at the front of the church are upraised, which gives it a very different feel from a typical crucifix. There are a couple of huge stained glass windows on the sides that seem to depict the role and authority of the Pope, which I think is awesome, since that's not exactly the most popular of the church's teachings. It's possible that I'm totally misinterpreting this.

To close, I want to talk about a random saint that has nothing to do with this particular church. I've heard the names of lots of saints that I know nothing about over the past couple months, and I want to look them up and write a little bit about them.

The first one is St. Boniface. A newly ordained Dominican priest who I got to know last summer is the inspiration for this one. He was an 8th century priest and archbishop, known as the "Apostle of the Germans." He spread Christianity into large areas of Germania for the first time and helped set up several diocese there, making him one of the founding fathers of Christian Europe. On an early mission, he famously cut down a huge and ancient oak tree that the native Germans worshiped and built a chapel to St. Peter out of the wood. He was murdered by bandits on another mission in 754. The church still has a lot of his writings and relics, and you can visit his burial crypt in a cathedral in Germany.

A cool plaque on the side of the road while walking to the church

What does it take to get on one of these walls? I've seen this in the prayer rooms at several churches. I'm assuming all these people are deceased. Leave a gift for the church, maybe?