The History of Holy Eucharist Parish

Prologue

There are 24 Roman Catholic parishes in Burlington County.
Holy Eucharist was the twenty-third parish created, followed only by St. Isaac
Jogues parish in Marlton, established in 1996. Holy Eucharist serves the
largest geographic area in the county, encompassing four Pinelands townships. Our
“Family Tree” among the Burlington
County churches of the Diocese of
Trenton began in 1845 with the creation of St. Paul’s
Church in Burlington City, the first Catholic Church in Burlington County.
By 1848, the faithful in Mount
Holly established Sacred
Heart church to serve parishioners in the southern half of the county. Subsequently,
in 1905, the Diocese established St.
Ann’s in the Pines in Browns Mills. Priests from
Sacred Heart would offer Mass during the summer in a pavilion at Medford Lakes. Eventually, local congregants
constructed a log cabin church there and Diocesan officials created the parish
of St. Mary of the Lakes in 1943, followed by the new church on Jackson Road, Medford,
dedicated in 1966. Finally, as St. Mary of the Lakes grew to become the largest
parish in geographic area within the Diocese of Trenton, and the community of
LeisureTowne was created in Southampton
Township in 1970, the
Catholic population of the area grew and by 1982, the diocese determined the need
for another parish.

Before Holy Eucharist:

Little did John Brainerd, a young Christian missionary who traveled to
Indian Mills, realize that the establishment of a one-room church in 1778 would
lead to the eventual name for a growing township. Brainerd organized this small
church, built on the present site of the Tabernacle
Cemetery at the corner of Chatsworth
and Hampton Gate Road,
for the northeastern section of what was then Shamong Township.
The church became known as “Tabernacle in the Wilderness.” Both
Indians and white settlers worshipped in it.

As the population grew, a Catholic identity began to take shape even
though few in number. In 1940 the faithful worshipped at Saint Ann’s in the Pines, Browns Mills.
When Sacred Heart, Mount Holly, created a mission church at Medford Lakes
in 1943, area residents worshipped there.

Catholics felt unwelcome in Tabernacle during the first half of the twentieth
century. In 1940, Anthony Russo, a second-generation Italian American whose
family roots lay in Messina,
Sicily, purchased a farm in
Tabernacle. The Russo Family had a farm on Burlington-Mount Holly Road in Burlington Township, but Anthony always desired his
own farm. To help pay for it, he worked at a Philadelphia shipyard, and his brother, Louie,
also pitched in to make the dream come true. And so they moved to Tabernacle Township. The only other Catholics in
the area were Henry and Joe Eschenberg and Timothy Campbell, all chicken farmers,
and Carl and Sophie Baker. Frank and Joe Grungo moved into the area a bit
later.

Catholic school children first attended Sacred
Heart School
in Mount Holly
and later Our Lady of Good Counsel in Moorestown.
Anthony Russo shuttled the children to and from Moorestown
on one school bus. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Newark taught CCD in the
Russo’s home from 1946 to 1955. The need for a Catholic school in the
area became apparent and St. Joseph’s
School, located on Rt. 70 in Medford,
opened its doors in 1956 under the auspices of St. Mary of the Lakes parish.

St. Mary of the Lakes continued to grow and shortly after Father William
Campbell’s arrival in 1958, the congregation made plans for a new church.
The Diocese dedicated St. Mary of the Lakes on Jackson Road in Medford Township
in 1966.

Up until this time, Southampton, Tabernacle, Shamong or Woodland townships
contained few Catholics. It was hard to even conceive that there would ever be
a need for a Catholic Church in any of these communities. Then, in 1970, developers
created an adult retirement community in Southampton Township.
Known as LeisureTowne, the announced plans called for the gradual creation of
over 2,000 homes. The community attracted people from Northern New Jersey and Pennsylvania –
many of them Catholics. It immediately generated a surge in the Catholic
population of this predominantly Protestant community. Most of the residents
attended St. Mary of the Lakes Church, although some gravitated to St.
Ann’s, Browns Mills, and others to Sacred Heart in Mount Holly.
(Today, 37 years since it opened, there
are 2,173 homes in LeisureTowne, with a population of 3,800).

By 1981, St. Mary of the Lakes had become the largest geographical
parish in New Jersey.
It was during this summer that Father John Campoli attempted to find a
convenient location to provide Mass for the parishioners from LeisureTowne in
their own neighborhood. Leisuretown’s Steve Baron aided in the search for
an appropriate building to hold the liturgy. Through Steve’s efforts and
with Father Campoli’s consent, the church rented a firehouse in Hampton Lakes, directly adjacent to LeisureTowne.

The next problem for Father Campoli was staffing. Father asked a
Pallotine Priest, Father Walter Norris, if he would be interested. When Father
Walter accepted the task, he would begin the program in September, 1981. (The Pallotine Fathers staffed Bishop Eustace
High School in Cherry Hill).

There was mixed reaction to this experiment. Some parishioners felt
uneasy about attending Mass in a firehouse and preferred the commute to St.
Mary’s. Others enjoyed the informality and homelike atmosphere of the
liturgy, and they became regulars. As things progressed, Joe and Marion Cassidy
introduced music to enhance the liturgy to the great pleasure of those
attending. By the spring of 1982 the attendance at Mass had grown to 150-200
each week. Some hardships had to be overcome: making sure the firehouse was
opened, setting up chairs, sweeping out the firehouse, getting the fire engines
removed, and turning on the heat. None of these factors ever deterred
attendance, however. On one very hot day, Father Walter celebrated Mass outdoors
on one of the fire engines.

After the parish census of 1981, Father Campoli realized a need to find an
additional location for holding Mass. Beginning in the summer of 1982, Tabernacle Middle School became the site for these
services. The priests celebrated Mass at 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. The weekly
attendance grew to 500.

During this period, Fathers William
McKeone and Walter Norris often commented on their missionary assignments to Southampton and Tabernacle with humor and warmth. The
parishioners enthusiastically welcomed the opportunity to attend Mass in their
own communities.

Need for a New Parish

It became apparent to Bishop John Reiss that a church in Tabernacle
would be both a spiritual and practical benefit to the people in that part of Burlington County. On September 17, 1982, Bishop
Reiss announced that effective October 1, 1982 there would be the formation of
a new parish – Holy Eucharist in Tabernacle, New Jersey, that would
encompass Shamong, Southampton, Tabernacle, and Woodland townships. With that
announcement the spiritual and communal journey of our parish began. On October
3, Father James Roche, the newly appointed pastor, spoke at all the Sunday
Masses in St. Mary of the Lakes Church, Medford.
Bishop Reiss installed Father Roche as Pastor on January 9, 1983.

Masses continued at Hampton Lakes until December 26, 1982 – the last
liturgy there – when Tabernacle
Middle School became the
single location for Sunday Mass. Mr. Anthony Russo and Mr. Stephen Lee accepted
the responsibility of becoming parish trustees.

The need for a church building soon became apparent. Anthony Russo
conveyed twelve and one-half acres of farm land on November 18, 1983 to Church
officials for a new edifice. The property had been in the Russo family since
1970 when Anthony purchased it from Mervin Fletcher. Originally Frank Earl
Haines owned this land. Many who knew him have indicated that Anthony
Russo’s vision for a Catholic Church at this location motivated him to
purchase the land in 1970. However, another dream, to have the parish named
after his patron, St. Anthony, remained unfulfilled.

In early 1983 the congregation formed two important committees to work
with Father Roche. Pete “Sonny” Capelli, Bob Ragone, Walter Knortz,
and Thomas Monehan joined trustees Russo and Lee on a finance committee. Then a
building committee began to plan for a space that could accommodate the
newly-formed church community. Buzz Sawyer, Richard Ellis, Joseph Lasano, Mary
Reece, Mary Ross, Bill Upham and Bill Price joined Stephen Lee, III and Joe
Casano for this monumental task. The committee identified the first priority as
constructing the worship space, followed by classrooms and a hall, if the
budget allowed. After receiving the approval of the Pinelands Commission to
move forward, the committee engaged in many thousands of hours of education,
investigation, planning, coordination and volunteer labor that even included
the site grading, sprinkler installation and landscaping for the 12.5-acre
site.

They began the next phase of the process by visiting recently
constructed churches throughout the diocese. Then, Father Roche suggested that
they pause and search for a “liturgical consultant” to help educate
and guide the building program. On May 2, 1983 they engaged Father Richard Vosko,
a priest of the Diocese of Albany, New York, and a nationally acclaimed
liturgical consultant. The committee selected Father Vosco based on his
expertise and his reputation for including the entire parish community in the
education and design process. The committee and Father Vosko invited the parish
to a three-Sunday series of “town meetings” to help design the
church. Father Vosko spoke with parishioners about post-Vatican II liturgical
changes and helped us incorporate the identified needs of the new parish
community into a formal building program document. During the summer of 1983, more
than a thousand contributors to this plan came forth to create a very special,
beautiful and practical parish facility, one which blended in with the natural
rural setting and also incorporated historic and modern liturgical design
elements.

The mandate for construction of a new church grew rapidly, confirmed by
an extensive survey produced earlier that year. Over a thousand parishioners
participated through interviews, questionnaires and other communications. As
much as it could be, this program comprised elements of massive communications
and consensus.

The committee engaged architect Henry Jung, A.I.A., in early August
1983. Among his many accomplishments are the Air Force Academy Chapel in Colorado, the United Nations Chapel in New York and sixty other churches around the
country.

In the fall of 1983 a $1,000,000 building fund campaign began. The
parish leased a trailer and placed it on the building site. The committee
devised a pledge system for the convenience of contributors. As a result of the
success of this campaign and the generosity of our friends and parishioners,
building plans proceed rapidly.

Father John W. Ryan joined Holy Eucharist as an associate pastor on
March 3, 1984. Fathers Roche and Ryan moved into our newly purchased rectory
located at 42 Sleepy Hollow Drive
on March 4, 1984. The congregation held a “shower” on March 18th
to provide the two priests with household necessities.

The committee received contracting bids for the new church in January
1985 and awarded the general contract to E. Allen Reeves, Inc., of Abington, PA.
After obtaining all necessary approvals from the township, the parish broke ground
on April 19, 1985. Actual construction began in June of 1985 with the church
complex being completed in the summer of 1986.

Concomitantly with the construction of the church, liturgies continued
at Tabernacle Middle
School and at times, Tabernacle School
#1 and even on the athletic fields. The parish celebrated its Lenten masses at
the Tabernacle Methodist Church
in 1985 and 1986 and we shared in the Thanksgiving Evening services with the
Methodist Community in 1985. Congregants organized support groups to meet the
spiritual and temporal needs of parishioners. Picnics and socials provided
opportunities for fun.

Proving inspiration by the Holy Spirit, the committee immediately began
operating as a “parish family,” focusing their energies on the task
of making a home in Tabernacle
Township. Parish
committees began to form, focusing on specific ministries and apostolates. The
parish functioned as a faith-sharing community long before completion of the
church. This was a period of creativity, consensus building, hard work, painful
disappointments and many satisfactions. The last two months before the
scheduled dedication of the church generated anxiety and anticipation. Right
down to the last minute, as Bishop John Reiss arrived for the consecration of
our place of worship at 2:00 p.m. on September 7, 1986, parishioners laid the last
strips of sod around the church in “the gateway to the Pines.”

Since that time the parish has continued a journey. The parish community
has grown, ministries have developed, personnel have changed, we have said farewell
to many who were instrumental in getting our parish going and have welcomed the
gifts and talents of many new families; but the parish continues as a work in
progress. In 1988, Holy Eucharist held its first Pine Barrens Festival. It has
become not only an important fund-raiser for the parish, but a means of
building “community” and reaching out to our neighbors. For nineteen
years it has been a part of the fabric of our parish.

Not satisfied to simply think of our own parish community, we began a
sister parish relationship with St. Mary Ann’s in Duran, Ecuador
in 1989. It soon grew to visits by our parishioners, mutual prayer, Lenten
fasting and almsgiving through our “Lenten Soup Nights” project,
along with continuing charity to support a mission. Father Dennis
O’Brien, a Florida diocesan priest who
served as a missionary volunteer in Ecuador with the Society of St.
James, visited Holy Eucharist regularly as a spokesperson for the
people’s needs. The project helped us be a real part of the Catholic
Church in the world with other people who share our faith and hopes. Soon our
attention shifted to Quito,
Ecuador, when
Father Bob Thomas became our contact abroad. More visits by parishioners to our
sister parish resulted in expanding our assistance with the introduction of an
annual Nativity Set raffle. Today, we have moved our support there to a major
Children’s Mission in Quito.

During 1985 and 1986, and again in 1997 and 1998, parishioners
participated in several seasons of “Renew” – a national
program of organized faith sharing within small groups focused on various
biblical and social themes.
The Renew groups met weekly in private homes throughout the parish.

Father Richard Milewski became the second pastor of Holy Eucharist, serving
from 1993 until 1998. Father Joseph Farrell, an Associate Pastor during this
period, then served as Temporary Administrator (November 1998 – April,
1999) when the Diocese assigned Father Rich to a parish in Freehold. Installation
of Father Michael Lang as pastor occurred in 1999. Father Mike ministered to
our people until July, 2002. On May 11, 2002, Joseph DeLuca was ordained as a
Permanent Deacon and he continues to assist in the ministry of the parish. On
July 12, 2002, the Bishop appointed Father Andrew Jamieson as Parochial
Administrator and subsequently Pastor in December of that year. He immediately
began efforts to bring to fruition the community’s long-held desire to
build a parish hall and education center. A fund-raising campaign called
“Continuing the Journey” culminated in the dedication of Hoffman
Hall, the classroom wing and several meeting rooms on November 19, 2005.

Indicative of our growth are the numbers of Baptisms, Weddings,
Funerals, Families and Children in our Religious Education programs. Several
benchmark years provide examples of the numbers:

During
1982-83, the first year of our existence as a parish, we baptized 89; ten
years later the number was 90; in 2002 there were 98 baptisms and in 2006,
70.

Twenty-four
couples received the sacrament of matrimony during our first year; In 1992
the church celebrated 27 weddings; in 2002, 10 and in 2006, our priests
performed 14 weddings.

In
1982, the parish records list five funerals; 31 in 1992; 52 in 2002 and 53
in 2006.

Our
parish began with 1,600 families. It grew to 2,109 by 1992; 2,739 in 2002
and today boasts of 2,574 families translating into a total parish
population of 8,432.

During
the 1982-83 school-year we had 670 children in our religious education
program; in 1992 we had 805; in 2002 the number had risen to 814 and in
2006 we had 755.

We began our parish life in simple ways: with people who set up chairs
in a school or fire-hall for Sunday Masses, people who helped with singing,
teachers who volunteered with the education program, ushers and Mass-servers. We
have developed into hundreds of parishioners giving time, talent, treasure and
service in over forty parish committees.

We have used God-given gifts for the good of our parish, region and
world community. Our lives have been touched by qualities of compassion,
patience, fidelity, and hospitality toward one another; and we have celebrated
that in our worship, especially in the Eucharist.

Each day marks the beginning of a new chapter of the story of who we are
as a faith community. We give thanks to God for the gifts of faith, the place
we call parish and the people who are willing to be travelers on this journey.

Our Pastors

Father James J. Roche – October,
1982 –June, 1993

Father Richard Milewski – July, 1993 – November,
1998

Father Joseph Farrell – November, 1998 – April,
1999

Father Michael Lang – April, 1999 – July, 2002

Father Andrew Jamieson – Administrator: July, 2002;
Pastor, December, 2002 - present

The Development of our Parish
Building

Our desire to move from temporary to permanent quarters led us to accept
that certain elements would be added gradually to complete our dream. On the
day of dedication, our Baptismal Font was en-route from Italy! We would do without stained
glass windows, Stations of the Cross, and other liturgical adornments for
several years. To insure that we would be faithful to the vision of our
founding parishioners, we added the following elements as the funds became available
to pay for them.

1989 – We
added the corpus to the altar cross on September 29. Robert K. Carsten of Springfield, Vermont,
carved the figure from basswood to fit an existing outline of a cross behind
the altar.

1989 - Stephen
Lee and the Lee family, donated the organ, a Rodger’s Model 890
“pipe augmented organ,” first played on December 25, 1989. There
are 407 pipes and an electronic augmentations system for the lower notes. The
cost amounted to $99,000.

1996 –
Stations of the Cross, sculpted by Holy Eucharist parishioner Joseph Palecki. The
original drawings of Henry Jung, the architect of the church, provided the
design of the stations. Bishop Reiss dedicated them on March 1. The original
design called for the fashioning of the stations out of wire, but experimental
models did not create the intended effect.
Mr. Palecki also designed Holy Eucharist’s statue of Our Blessed
Lady, inspired by the image of Our Lady of Medjugorje.

1993-2002 - Internationally
acclaimed artist, Maureen McGuire, of Phoenix,
Arizona designed our stained
glass windows. The order of installation was:

1. Blessed Sacrament Chapel and
Confessional – December 24, 1989

2. Daily Chapel – May, 1993
– Theme: Sacraments of Eucharist, Reconciliation,

Anointing of the
Sick, Matrimony and Holy Orders

3.
Lower Nave – May, 1998 – Theme: Earthscape; Eucharistic Celebration

4.
Upper Nave – May, 2001 – Theme: Celebration in the Universe

5.
Atrium – December, 2002 – Baptism and Confirmation; The Four
Evangelists;

The local environment, including pinelands, holly, cranberries,
blueberries.

2005 - Hoffman
Hall/Education Wing – Dedicated - November 19, 2005

Historic firsts:

First
Mass                                October
2, 1982

First
Marriages             October
2, 1982

Michael T. Gallagher and Antoinette
Tromontana

Thomas A Hewitt and Patricia Ann Van
Horn

First
Baptism
October
3, 1982                      Nicole
Condurso

First
Funeral                             October
16, 1982                    Eugene
Hutchison

First
Adult Converts                 April
2, 1983                            Six
Confirmees

First
Communion                      April
30, 1983                          88
Communicants

First
May Crowning                  May
8, 1983                            Maureen
Davis

First
Holy Orders                     May
14, 1983                          Joseph
Lombarski

First
Confirmation                     November
11, 1983                 103
Confirmees

In addition to our Pastors, many people marked our first twenty-five
years. Among them we note particularly the pioneers - Father Walter Norris,
Father Jack Ryan, Father Anatol Woloszyn, Sister Margaret Joyce and Sister
Robin Smith. Deacons Joseph Lambarski, Daniel Pienciak, Richard Meyer, Stanley
Orkis, John Zimmerle and Ken Zepsey stand among the first to assist in our
parish ministry. They shared our faith and affected it in important ways. We
are grateful to them. We have made a home in Tabernacle. Our name reflects our
location.

As we continue our journey, new parishioners replace the old; new parish
leaders emerge, building on the foundations laid by those who went before, and
new Deacons minister among us in our quest for holiness and service: Joseph
DeLuca, Steven Bonocore, Kenneth Domzalski and Anthony Repice. We are thankful
for this parish and with God’s help we will continue to add to the faith
of the entire community through the gifts which the Spirit calls out to us. We
continue to be a work in progress, people on a journey seeking to experience
the glimpses of hope that God provides in our parish.

Our mission is clear: Holy Eucharist
Church, a Catholic Community in the Roman
tradition, called by God and united in our belief in Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Our mission as members of the body of Christ is to gather and be
nourished through the Word and Eucharist: and in so doing reach out in love to
all others.

Material for this summary was merged, summarized, and edited from
the 1982 Holy Eucharist Church Dedication Booklet, the 1992 and 2002 Parish
Directories, interviews with parishioners, “Upon This Rock”, The
history of the Trenton Diocese by Monsignor Joseph Shenrock, and the 50th
Anniversary booklet of St, Mary of the Lakes Parish.

Joseph M. Laufer

HE-final-072707
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