JOHNSBURG—“I had this dream,” said Bishop David Malloy to the congregation at St. John the Baptist Church on June 26.

He deliberately paused, and the crowd chuckled.

Many had seen the fire truck parked outside the church as firefighters slowly swung an enormous crane in a dry run of what was soon to come.

The bishop’s dream had him looking up at a former coworker working on a very high church sign from a cherry-picker machine.

It ended with the bishop telling himself in the dream, “I have to do this on Sunday.”

And indeed, Bishop Malloy and Father Jacek Junak, pastor and mastermind behind the idea, gamely allowed themselves to be belted in, hoisted up and over a big pine tree and carefully brought near the lowest roof of this very tall church. The bishop blessed the new roof with holy water from that exalted point.

The steeples also have been renovated and air conditioning added to the church itself. Additionally, the newly-named “Father Richard Schroeder Education Center” received a new roof and other exterior and interior renovations. The Chapel of Eternal Light in the parish cemetery next to the church also was renovated in memory of parishioner Jonnie Vickery, reroofed in copper with repairs to the stone bridge in front.

“She would have loved it,” Jennifer Walker said of her mother, Jonnie, who cared very much about the condition of the chapel, located far back in the cemetery in front of a quiet pond. The small stone structure features a place to pray in front of a statue and candles, perpetually lit in memory of several people, all surrounded with soft green light from side windows.

Father Schroeder, a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, served as an associate at St. John the Baptist Parish in what his nephew Jim Tasch called his “third life.”

Ordained in 1945, the priest would say that his “first life” was at Angel Guardian Orphanage (now Misericordia) from 1945-1962, Tasch said. After briefly serving as an associate at St. Bridget Parish in Chicago, Father Schroeder began service in his “second life” as procurator at Mundelein Seminary, from 1967-1990. He retired to the Fox Lake area and soon began serving part-time in Johnsburg from 1991-2013. His estate contributed to the new renovations.

As evidence of the character of this priest, more than 200 orphans from his “first life” continued to keep in touch with him until his death, Tasch said, concluding simply, “How blessed we all were to know him.”

Johnsburg was the first church in the Diocese of Rockford visited by Bishop Malloy when he was pastor in Lake Geneva. The bishop spoke of his first impression of what he called “the magnificence, the beauty of this church,” before reflecting on how some churches “are filled not just with beauty, but with history itself.”

The beginnings of the Johnburg Catholic community came about some 20 years before the Civil War, Bishop Malloy noted before he reflected on how the Church universal includes those who have come before and those who will come after.

“Every generation has an obligation … to keep (their parish churches) in this state of beauty,” he said. “Today we celebrate the contributions of this current generation.”

Following the blessing of the new church roof, Bishop Malloy blessed the plaques that soon will grace the education center and cemetery chapel.