Sacrifice of the Altar

After the Hostyn church was destroyed by a gas explosion five years ago, Bob Stanzel of La Grange was asked by some parishioners if he could use his carpentry skills to turn some wood of the nearby damaged trees into bowls for a church auction.

“Well Father Eddie (Winkler) sees a bowl and, you know, he’s got these ideas,” laughed Stanzel.

What turned out as a small project making some bowls morphed into one of the most important pieces of the Hostyn church rebuild – and one of the most intense projects of Stanzel’s quiet retirement hobby of woodworking.

“Where I made my mistake, was inviting Father to my house,” Stanzel laughed.

When Winkler saw what Stanzel was capable of in his shop on Guenther Road (and adjacent house filled with stunning examples of his handiwork), the Hostyn priest asked him to make the church’s new altar, and the ambo, the pulpit used in church to read the scriptures.

Stanzel is now hundreds of hours into the project.

“I started in March, and I probably have 350 hours in it so far,” Stanzel said.

He and his wife Lucy, are donating all the cost and labor of the project.

The design for the altar, which is being made from white oak Stanzel hand-selected himself, was actually sparked by the look of the current chair that the priest sits in during Mass – with a lot of tweaks.

“The design is kind of a combination of father, the church building committee, the architect – great minds thinking together,” Stanzel said.

The ambo will feature ornate open shelving to display the scriptures.

The altar is square, 5-feet, wide by 5-feet long, and will hold a 300-pound piece of local granite on top of it.

“It’ll be plenty strong, and almost all tongue and groove (connections), very few screws,” Stanzel said.

Father Winkler said he has a lot of emotions when he looks at the still-under construction altar “To me, it respects the Eucharist. It’s the most important thing that we do as Catholic Christians, and this brings out so much more of what the Eucharist is. Not only is it the altar of sacrifice, the table of our meal, of our most important meal, but it’s egalitarian.

“Being square, it doesn’t have a front and a back. It’s a way to show that the community is around the altar. I’m amazed at the grandeur of the architecture, of the artistry that’s going into it. Bob has put into execution a grand example of how important the Eucharist is.”

The project has been a labor of love for Stanzel, a Schulenburg Bishop Forest grad, who was a mechanical engineer for Dow Chemical for 30 years before discovering a love of woodworking in retirement.

Bob’s uncles were Victor and Joseph Stanzel, who started the line of ready-to-fly model airplane toys that were known worldwide. The Stanzel Model Aircraft Museum in Schulenburg pays homage to the family’s legacy Meanwhile, The Stanzel Family Foundation, an outgrowth of that model aircraft empire, is a huge force of charitable giving in Fayette County, and Bob has been a part of that foundation for 35 years and currently serves as its president.

Bob’s father worked for his uncles in the Stanzel company, and he remembers his uncles giving him tools for Christmas, sparking that love of working with his hands.

“I like to build,” Bob said. Bob and Lucy are actually both members at the Ammannsville Catholic Church, but have a lot of friends that go to Hostyn.

After more than four years of having Mass in the church hall after the 2022 explosion, the new Hostyn church is expected to be completed next spring.

Stanzel’s altar and ambo will be ready.

What was is first emotion when asked to build the altar?

“I mean, there’s nothing more important in a church than the altar,” Bob said. “I was glad to do it. I said it would be a great honor.

“I’m real careful what I say around this altar, while I’m working on it. There’s a lot of solitude out here. There’s a lot of self-fulfillment with this. It has to bring you closer to your faith. I feel privileged I have a shop to do this in and have some skills to do this – and that comes from the Good Lord.”

As a carpenter, Stanzel is in good company.

After all, Joseph was a carpenter, and so was Jesus.