By Patricia Kasten | On Mission
OMRO — On Holy Thursday, at the end of the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, a procession with the holy Eucharist takes place in churches around the world. Jesus, in the Blessed Sacrament, is carried to an altar of repose.
This procession usually happens inside the parish church.
However, the procession at Omro and Winneconne travels eight miles — and includes a police escort.
After Mass ends in silence at St. Mary Church in Omro on March 28, the priest celebrant will carry the Blessed Sacrament in a ciborium to a vehicle waiting outside. Deacon Paul Vidmar, the pastoral coordinator for Omro and St. Mary in Winneconne, will be the driver. The altar servers will take the back seat.
At St. Mary Parish in Omro Deacon Paul Vidmar, pastoral coordinator, Lyn Zahorik and Omro police officer Phil Parnell handle the ciborium for a rehearsal of a Eucharistic procession. The parish processes the Blessed Sacrament from St. Mary, Omro, to St. Mary. Winneconne on Holy Thursday evening.
Leading the way will be an Omro police car, with lights flashing, and the caravan will set out toward St. Mary Church in Winneconne. Anyone who wishes to do so can join the procession in their own vehicles.
For Deacon Vidmar, who has served the two parishes since 2022, this will be his third time driving.
“Last year, we had 40-50 cars behind us,” he said of the Holy Thursday procession.
“On my first time driving over,” he added, “I just got goosebumps when I looked in the rearview mirror.”
This year, as it does each year, the procession will slow to a near stop as it reaches the town line of Winneconne. That’s where the police escort is turned over to a Winneconne police car before continuing to St. Mary Church. The evening concludes with Night Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours at the church.
This annual Holy Thursday procession began in 2012, when Franciscan Sr. Pam Biehl was the pastoral leader of both parishes.
“It all started just by way of conversation,” she said.
Lyn Zahorik was part of that conversation.
Zahorik, who now serves the two parishes as director of spiritual engagement, recalled a discussion she had with Notre Dame Sr. Carla Rose Scheider and Sr. Pam on ways to unite the two parishes during Holy Week “since various services were shared at one or the other church (at that time). Sr. Carla Rose had experienced this (type of) procession already in a small country, two-parish situation and told us about it. The rest is history, so to say.”
Sr. Pam said that, in that first year, there were 35 cars in the procession. The number grew over the years, she said.
“When we had the old bridge in Winneconne — when they could fish off that bridge— they would see us coming at 8:40 at night,” Sr. Pam said of the early days. “People would stop and look. Then they would be waving. They saw a police escort and (later) wanted to know what a funeral procession was doing in the middle of the night.”
Zahorik found a similar reaction when she tried to film a parish video of the procession along the dark roadway last year.
“I was waiting at one point in the road to videotape,” she said, “and I must admit the whole thing caused me to stifle tears. A woman pulled up next to me on the side road where I was taping and asked, “What is going on? Is that a funeral procession?’ ‘Of sorts,’ I said. ‘We Catholics are moving the Blessed Sacrament from our church in Omro to our church in Winneconne where Jesus will be kept until we begin the Good Friday services.’ The woman responded with, ‘That is really beautiful.’”
Omro police officer Phil Parnell leads a rehearsal for a Eucharistic procession on Holy Thursday. The parish processes the Blessed Sacrament from Omro to St. Mary Parish in Winneconne on Holy Thursday evening.
Sr. Pam said there were only two years in the past 11 when what has become an annual event did not take place: in 2016, during a bad snowstorm and in 2020, due to COVID.
“It was a great sign to me of unity,” Sr. Pam said. “We are two separate parishes, linked by the leadership of parish leaders. To me it just said: ‘We are one. … We are still one body in Christ.’”
She admitted that the procession needed to be fine-tuned in those first years.
“We had to wait until 10 p.m. to offer Night Prayer,” she said of the first time. “We arrived there around 8:20 — and everybody left (before prayer). Well, those old days of Adoration until midnight are gone, so we decided to wait until everyone was there and then we brought the Eucharist in and prayed Night Prayer. And everyone stayed. There were 60 to 70 people staying in church and praying.”
Deacon Vidmar said the procession reminds him of “being with Jesus as he is in the Garden. Feeling those emotions that he was feeling. It’s a great connection and a great way to start the Triduum.”
Before his assignment at Omro and Winneconne, Deacon Vidmar and his wife, Kelly, attended St. Raphael Parish in Oshkosh for Holy Thursday.
“We didn’t know about this procession,” he said. “We would have come to experience this. This is the best kept secret in the Green Bay Diocese.”
He added: “I would invite people if they would like to see firsthand the power of this procession, to join us in Omro at 7 p.m. for Holy Thursday. … It’s one thing to talk about it and another thing to experience it firsthand.”
(St. Mary, Omro, is at 730 Madison Avenue. St. Mary, Winneconne, is at 201 Pleasant Drive.)