Saint
Hyacinth Church in Auburn, New York is a 100-year-old parish that
proudly celebrated their centennial in 2005.
In the 1890's people from the Eastern European countries began to flow into the area to seek a new way of life, and many of Polish descent settled in Auburn. In time the parish saw the need to be nourished and refreshed. They felt the need to retain the customs and traditions from their native land, and so the parish of St. Hyacinth was formed in 1905.
As the parish family grew over the years they recognized the need for a
larger church and thus a new Romanesque style church was build in 1964.
The church with a capacity for 700 people is air-conditioned, handicap
accessible, has a self-contained children's room and a spacious choir
loft and sacristy.
As factories closed or moved out of the
area, so did the workforce. This caused a decline in the number of
parishioners in the Auburn area and those that made up the St. Hyacinth
congregation. As a result, the grammar school, conducted by the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph, closed. The strong family ties that gave both prestige, power and stability to the neighborhood shifted to other areas. And so changes took place and affected the makeup of the parish.
The
CCD, the religious education of the young, has filled in the necessary area of Growth in the Faith, where the parish school system has left off because of its closing. Dedicated leaders and teachers, by their continuing lived faith, have shared their knowledge of God with their students.
We do this together with our Cluster parish of St. Francis of Assisi.
The unchanging prayerfulness of the parish continues in both the weekly and Sunday Liturgies, and the devotion and dedication that make St. Hyacinth unique in its role of Faith continues.
Each one of us shares in its history. We continue in the tradition of selfless dedication that was so much
part of the past. We forge onward with a renewed enthusiasm
instilled by the new demands that both time and age impose upon us.
It is the Church of Jesus--the Catholic Church. We are part of the Family. We need to be proud of our heritage, and we need to share it with those who will follow us. Our Blessed Mother is with us, as is St. Francis of Assisi, St. Anthony of
Padua, and St. Hyacinth. May our dedicated awareness of who we are and what we are be very much a part of this beautiful tradition of St. Hyacinth's.
