When the first rays of the rising sun reach a certain point on this planet called Camden, New Jersey, they illuminate the stained glass of a sanctuary window and the words "William H. Lynch" inscribed in it.
Those words are the first and most honorable signature to the parish of Sacred Heart because they form the name of the young priest who founded it in 1885, built its holy church in 1886 and broke his health trying to pay for it. In that same glance of the morning sun, the light also brightens up his chiseled name on a stately stone in St. Mary's Cemetery in Perth Amboy, New Jersey. He died on August 27, 1921.
He himself saw the first light of day in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on August 5, 1859. Two days later his parents John and Honora had him baptized in St. Peter's Church by Fr. John Rodgers, formerly of Fermanagh. Educated at St. Charles College in Elliott, Maryland, and at Seton Hal1, he was ordained in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Newark on June 7, 1884, by Bishop Winand Michael Wigger. His first assignment, for only three months, was at Holy Cross, Sea Bright, and then he came to Gloucester. Somehow that association of the Holy Cross and the bright sea hints at the difficulties that oftened shadowed the bright light of his life.
Some years before he arrived at St. Mary's, Gloucester, three nuns had died there because of the dampness of the old building they lived in. The saintly pastor, Fr. Engelbert Kars, gave the rectory to the nuns and he and Fr. Lynch dwelt in the dampness themselves.
In September 1885, Fr. Lynch was appointed pastor of Sacred Heart parish in South Camden, but it did not have a rectory at all until 1887. The young priest lived at 1911 Broadway, and said Mass in a little wooden church at Ninth and Van Hook Streets. On November 13, 1885 he bought a site for a church from John Bamford at Broadway and Ferry, a pivotal spot, it seemed at the time, where tram lines for his scattered parishioners converged from several directions. With his trustees, Hugh Greenan and Richard Boyle, and his small congregation he decided to build the church of Sacred Heart.
Jeremiah O'Rourke, an architect from Newark, drew the plans and the ground was broken on May 20, 1886. Philip McDonald, a native of Cavan, Ireland, with his six half brothers, the Beattys of Philadelphia and his cousin Alexander Monroe from Inverness in Scotland began to lay the Trenton brownstone at Broadway and Ferry. On July 4, 1886, Bishop Michael Joseph O'Farrell of Trenton laid the cornerstone in the presence of 7,000 people. Work moved rapidly. Mayberry Hardin of Camden did the woodwork and nine months after the shovel was sunk in the sand to start it, the church opened for the first Mass on March 6, 1887.
But the rapidity with which it was completed contrasted desperately with the long, dogged effort to pay for it. The mortgage of the new church, rectory and furnishings was $35,000.00 but the Sunday collection was only $2.50. Economically, the area of South Camden did not develop and the poverty clung. The weight of the impossible debt hung heavily on the young priest and damaged his health.
Less than two years after the new church opened with bright enthusiasm and hope, Fr. Lynch left his church and his people behind and was transferred to St. Joseph's in Keyport. There in a place bigoted against Catholics he filled a vacancy brought about by a misunderstanding between the Bishop and the former pastor. Eight months later he was on the road again, to St. John's in Allentown, where he ministered for six years.
On May 14, 1895, he linked up again with Fr. John Fox, to whom he was an assistant in his first assignment in Sea Bright, and "labored assiduously" (History of the Diocese of Trenton) in St. Mary's Cathedral in Trenton until 1898. He finished out the century as pastor of St. Mary's in Salem, near where the first Catholics had gathered in South Jersey 150 years before.
Then at last there was a long uninterrupted time for pleasant walks by the Delaware River and 19 years of rich, wholesome ministry in the lovely town of Lambertville. There, to this day, Mary Hartman remembers the kind pastor of St. John's who baptized her on October 7, 1900, five days after he arrived. He was there when she was old enough to know him. "He came into the school every day" she says "and he used to go for long walks with his heavy cane - not that he needed it - he would just walk along and swing it." She remembers his kindness when her mother died in 1913.
Yet debt dogged his footsteps there too - $32,000.00 when he came. World War I began in 1914 and desperate unemployment resulted from it and a deadly influenza followed it. But he was there, stopping by at every house, stronger now, swinging the heavy cane and not needing to lean on it.
Mary Hartman was also present when he left St. John's in 1919 and nearly all of lambertville lined up to say good. bye to him. It was indeed Good-bye. Fr. lynch did not live long in Deal where they sent him. One year later, he had a serious operation from which he only partially recovered. On August 27, 1921, he died, in his 62nd year.
The old pewter mug that Mary Hartman treasures is much older now than he was then, dented from falls, but still beautiful like herself. It is the prize that Fr. lynch gave her when she won his baby contest in 1901.
May his prize be better. And may the light always shine bround his name, brightly and clearly, like his stained glass window in the morning. Thanks, good priest, for "the house that you shaped in your heart."