Renovated dome, first responders blessed at St. Mary’s in Saint Clair
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL
SAINT CLAIR – As a Saint Clair church celebrated a recent renovation, they invited area first responders to join in for a blessing.
Saint Mary’s Orthodox Church, at Nicholas and Lawton Streets, recently refreshed their cupola. It received a new coat of paint courtesy of CTS Painting from Philadelphia County. Previously, the church had a silver color and is now blue.
“The inspiration for the color came from St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church in Philadelphia,” Father Kirill Zawatski told the Sentinel. “We usually associate blue with the Mother of God, and because the patronage of this church is the mother of God, that’s why we went with blue.”
“The dome itself represents Christ is the light of the world,” Zawatski added. “Most people think it’s an onion it’s actually not. It’s the flame. It represents a flame.”
Those domes, of course, are a focal point in most northern Schuylkill communities, including Frackville and Shenandoah. Saint Clair is no exception.
“The neat thing about Saint Clair is you see them everywhere,” Zawatski said. “There’s domes all over the skyline down here so we wanted to beautify ours and add it to collection of domes that are already down here.”
Members of the Saint Clair Fire Department brought their apparatus to the church as well for a vehicle blessing. One of those trucks came in handy — the Alert Fire Company’s Mack ladder allowed Zawatski to reach the cupola to bless that, too.
“For the first responders… one of the core elements of orthodoxy for us is humility and sacrifice. This is sacrificing your own life and your time and your talent and your skills and your own safety for other people,” Zawatski said. “What these people do every day to protect our parish and our people s really a core essence of our theology.”
Following the blessings, the firefighters were invited to join parishioners for a short prayer service and lunch.
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