Read an excerpt from “Serving a Diverse Community” below, then read the full story.
On a quiet Sunday morning, Dori Panagis is racing down the aisle of a grocery store, gathering as much fresh basil as she can find.
She is not preparing a sauce for an early morning brunch, but rather taking the herb to her church, St. Nicholas Antiochian Orthodox Church, in the small Wisconsin town of Cedarburg, north of Milwaukee.
The basil will scent the church’s holy water. Ms. Panagis’s mission is especially urgent this day as her church is celebrating the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, an important celebration in which flowering basil plays a crucial role.
The feast marks the fourth-century discovery of the true cross of Jesus Christ by the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, Empress Helen, who was traveling in the Holy Land to uncover sites associated with the life of Christ.
According to tradition, after weeks of searching for the true cross, St. Helen wandered onto a barren piece of land where she found a tiny flower. She believed this was a sign and ordered her soldiers to dig deep below the spot where the flower bloomed. There they found the three crosses that had borne the bodies of Christ and the two thieves who had died alongside him.
A sick person was brought by St. Helen to the site and laid on the crosses one by one. When the afflicted man was placed on the third cross, he was miraculously healed.
The flower that St. Helen had found was sweet basil, or vasiliko in Greek, the object of Ms. Panagis’s supermarket sweep.
The story of the Wisconsin church – the building, the pastor and the parish – is one of transformation and diversity.
The church was previously owned by Lutherans who had outgrown the building. But the size was just right for St. Nicholas’s congregation, a small community founded in 1989. The congregation moved into the former Lutheran church in 1994.