ARLINGTON — There’s a black and white photograph of schoolchildren, the boys in suits and ties and the girls in neat little dresses, posed in front of the church in 1938.
Marian Harrison, now 85, is one of the girls in the photograph. She has gone to Immaculate Conception Catholic church in Arlington since she was 8 years old, minus a handful of years at another parish.
She remembers a small church that would fill to standing room only on Christmas and Easter. People would get up for a holiday procession and when they came back, the late-comers would have stolen their seats.
Marian’s seven children had their first communions at Immaculate Conception. The church outgrew the little building she remembers from childhood and moved to a new, bigger location.
“The church as it is now is a very welcoming, warm parish,” she said. “It’s one of those places where if you don’t see somebody for a little while, you know they’re gone and you wonder about them.”
On Oct. 22 and 23, Immaculate Conception plans to celebrate its 100th birthday. St. John Vianney in Darrington, a mission of the Arlington parish, celebrated a few weeks ago. The actual centennial is Oct. 25.
The churches chose the theme of giving thanks, which entails a full Thanksgiving-style feast and time to reflect on the many devoted Catholics who helped build Immaculate Conception and St. John Vianney, said Father Tim Sauer, the priest for both churches.
“Our task is to show our gratitude to those whose shoulders we stand on, and accept the responsibility of passing our faith on to the next generation so we can have a bicentennial,” Sauer said. “The way we show our gratitude is living our faith with the same passion and fervor and zeal that they had.”
There usually are about 500 people at services in Arlington and 30 at services in Darrington.
Immaculate Conception started in the late 1800s as a mission of a parish in Snohomish, but the congregation expanded and asked for its own parish. On Oct. 25, 1916, the Arlington parish and Darrington mission were established by the Catholic church. A mission is a church that shares resources with a larger parish.
Katie Robinson, 83, has been going to St. John Vianney in Darrington since about 1940. When she first moved to Darrington, Mass was held next door to a restaurant in a little room churchgoers set up once a week. After more people started coming, the congregation raised money to buy a piece of land and an old bunkhouse that was moved and remodeled into a church. It’s been added to, but the bunkhouse still is part of the church.
Robinson received her first communion in the bunkhouse right after it was set up. She was 11 or 12 years old, she said.
The number of people at services has fluctuated with the town’s economy. When the logging industry slowed, people left. However, the church still has regulars and draws guests who stop by on their way over the mountains, she said.
“We’re just a little old mission parish, and we’re proud of it,” Robinson said.
Volunteers at the churches help with service projects in the community and around the world. They raise money to help a parish in Kenya with its church and school. They sponsor about 100 students there with tuition, books and meals. They also cook and serve dinners to low-income families in the Stillaguamish Valley and helped pay for funerals for families who lost loved ones in the Oso mudslide in 2014.
“How can anyone love the God he cannot see if he doesn’t love the neighbor he can see?” Sauer said, referring to teachings from the Bible. “We take that very seriously.”
Immaculate Conception donated a sculpture to the city of Arlington to mark the church’s centennial. Called “Embraced by Love,” it’s a globe made of colorful glass tiles with a heart in the center.
A centennial celebration is a time to reflect and to look toward the future, Sauer said. He knows there are challenges on the horizon. Many young people who describe themselves as Christian choose not to go to church. Churches need to find a way to connect with people in their busy lives and give them a community of faith, he said.
“Does the next century hold a lot of challenges? Oh, yeah, you bet it does,” Sauer said. “But we think of the early days of the church, when it struggled to survive. And the message of God’s love is needed now more than ever.”
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com
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