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Parishioner crafts hand-made monstrance for weekly adoration
By Andrew Junker, ajunker@catholicsun.org
July 18, 2008
GILBERT — When Mary Josephs showed St. Mary Magdalene parishioners her hand-made monstrance at a June 29 Mass, it was the end of a two-and-a-half year road for her.
The amateur jewelry maker — who had been taking classes at a local studio — was thinking of all the challenges her parish faced. It’s a new community in the midst of a capital campaign to build its own campus.
But for now, weekend Masses are held in an elementary school gym. Daily Mass is at the Mercy Gilbert Hospital, and the parish had to borrow a monstrance for its First Friday adoration until last month.
“Adoration has always been a devotion of mine, so I thought, ‘Let’s make a monstrance,’ which was really crazy,” Josephs said. “I didn’t have the experience.”
What she lacked in experience, though, she more than made up for in dedication. Carol Taylor, her instructor at Metals Edge studio, also played a part.
“God bless her, she helped me,” Josephs said of Taylor. “Little by little and piece by piece, we did it.”
Josephs made the monstrance out of sheets of silver, some of which she bought at local shops. Larger pieces were also needed, which were shipped from out of state.
She measured the base of a monstrance at St. Anne Parish in Gilbert to get a sense of how large she would need to make hers. And then, she went to work.
“I had a certain design plan in mind, but I just sweated it out,” Josephs said. “We had some challenges along the way.”
That’s to be expected when you work with silver, Taylor said. In order to solder silver together, you have to heat the entire piece to a temperature very close to its melting point. The room for error is very slight.
“It was an ambitious project,” Taylor said. “There were a lot of problems that occurred, but she overcame them.”
Josephs attributes her final success to some timely petitions she placed while hammering out the hot metal in a back room of the studio.
“I said, ‘OK, St. Joseph, you’re my patron. Now I know you worked with wood instead of metal, but please help me out,’” Josephs said. “With some prayers and miracles it came together. It was very humbling and I learned a lot about silver making.”
Fr. Greg Menegay, pastor of St. Mary Magdalene, said he couldn’t be happier with the outcome.
“She did a great job,” he said. “Mary comes to daily Mass as often as she can, but she always tries to make it on First Fridays because adoration is so important to her.”
The project — which Josephs estimated cost around $2,000 and countless hours of work — is also a great illustration of service, the priest said.
“It’s an example of somebody using her gifts to contribute something I find very valuable,” he said. “Part of my goal as pastor is helping the parish realize that the sacrament of the Eucharist is at the heart of who we are as Catholics. This just helps to emphasize the point.”
When the parish’s new campus is built, Josephs hopes her monstrance will sit in a 24-hour adoration chapel.
“I want my creation to be holding Christ,” she said. “The most exciting part was when I made the lumina, which holds the actual Host. Even when I couldn’t be [in the adoration chapel], I’d have this connection.”
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