Cleveland parish completes major church renovations

CLEVELAND — Aesthetic rest is when, led by beauty, one can repose with a sense of suspension from all temporal things in an experience of the Transcendent. To create a beautiful space that would inspire aesthetic rest was part of the vision behind the major church renovations undertaken by St. Mary Parish this fall.

“The church is the temple where God dwells,” said the pastor, Father Marek Visnovsky. “Aesthetic rest and beauty give rise to the sense of a sacred space. They put you in awe and lead you to prayer.”

A church that is clean, orderly and beautiful is restored in holiness and dignity, he said, because God is a God of beauty and order.

“It says to people that here is something extraordinary,” he said.

The renovations, completed in time for Christmas, include the use of “traditional icon colors” on the walls that intend to “give the resemblance of heaven on earth,” he said, explaining that church design includes both eschatological and anthropological considerations.

“While we want the church to communicate the life of the world to come, we also have to provide a beauty that the human heart wants to enter into, that helps people to pray, and people use the senses to absorb beauty,” he said.

A major undertaking was renovating the sanctuary according to standard Greek Catholic design, he said. The six cinder-block steps that were covered in carpet and led to the altar were removed, and the altar was placed on the same level as the proskomedia table and the diakonikon.

The original baldachino, iconic to the church, was kept intact and refreshed, but the marble altar, which was rectangular, was resized to be square. Everything in the sanctuary now rests on the same level, called the solea, which is one step up from the nave. The ambon, a semi-circular platform that juts out in front of the royal doors, from which the clergy proclaim the Gospel and preach, was added.

“The ambon represents the rock that was rolled back from the cave on Easter morning to reveal the resurrection,” said Father Visnovsky, explaining the theology of Eastern Catholic church design. 

The stenciling on the arches in the sanctuary was peeling, so Father Visnovsky, an experienced iconographer, painted the lettering in Slavonic script.

Around the main arch — with about 64 feet of lettering space and almost 35 feet high — are the words to the Hymn of Victory. The lettering around the arch above the proskomedia table, which frames an icon of Christ Extreme Humility, are words from the priest’s prayer at the proskomedia, while the lettering around the arch above the diakonikon, which frames an icon of the Dormition, are words from the troparion for the feast. These icons were painted by Ilja Hasigan decades ago. 

While the bright, new colors and the remodeled sanctuary would be the most obvious changes to visitors, Father Visnovsky said, 95 percent of the work to the church interior involved repairing the walls that were damaged from years of water seepage and subsequent mold.

“In some areas of the church, we had to remove the plaster right down to the brick and then seal the wall properly” to prepare for painting, he said. The damage was worse than anticipated and extended the renovation work from two months to three.

The pillars in the nave were stripped and bleached to remove mold and then painted with a marble design.

The work was conducted by Renaissance Paintings, headed by a nondenominational Christian minister, Shannon Blower, based in Medina, Ohio. Blower forwards a portion of the profits to a mission project in Uganda.

The renovations to the church interior followed last year’s repairs to the church exterior, which cost $131,982. The $122,000 price tag for the interior work was covered entirely by donations from individuals, said Father Visnovsky.

The third phase will be the addition of an iconostasis, which will run the width of the church and cover the entire sanctuary, not just the altar area. As per Greek Catholic design, it will be a low icon screen, he said, unlike the Russian-style screens that reach up to the church ceiling. But the parish “will need some breathing time” for financial purposes, he said. 

“I can tell that people are proud of what we’ve done so far and they should be,” said Father Visnovsky. “We sacrificed ourselves to make the church beautiful for worship and setting up for liturgy in the school gym every Sunday (for three months). My hope now is that the community will grow spiritually.”

Caption 1: Bishop Milan Lach, SJ, consecrates the resized altar in the renovated church of St. Mary Parish, Cleveland, during a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy Jan. 14. (Photo: Miriam Visnovsky)

Caption 2: St. Mary Parish completed major renovations to its church, just in time for Christmas. At top, the church is pictured during a wedding, prior to the renovations, in July 2016. At bottom, parishioners are pictured on Christmas 2017, worshipping in their remodeled church. (‘Before’ photo: courtesy of St. Mary Parish, Cleveland; ‘After’ photo: Mark Papke)

As published in Horizons, Jan. 21, 2018.
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