06/14/2026
Father Zehren shares what he learned about our church's bells:
Last week I proposed, in my weekly message, a matter for parochial inquiry. I asked if anyone knows the name of the bell in our church bell tower.
I was delighted to hear that many of you do! Even more, I came to learn that there are four bells in our tower – and that they are named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in honor of the Holy Evangelists.
One parishioner reminisced how the ringing of the bells at noon signaled that it was time for her family to pray the Angelus together and then have lunch. She further recalled that, “When the bells rang at 6:00 pm you had better be sitting at the dinner table with clean hands folded for Grace.”
Then I learned that we have a young man from our parish who has been solemnly commissioned to the ecclesiastical rank of Bell Master (that’s Magister Campanarius Maximus, in Latin). His name is Ivan Korman (Ivanus Kormanus, in Latin). I share a photo of Ivan posing with Matthew.
Ivan comes not from the ranks of pre-conciliar bell tower custodians who performed the ancient ritual of tugging downward on a thick, sturdy rope until several hundred pounds of bronze could be persuaded to overcome their inertia and toll all of south Minneapolis to prayer. Instead, Bell Master Ivan now oversees our bells through a digital control system – allowing even greater ritual punctuality without anyone having to suffer blisters and calluses.
Finally, I was extended an invitation by a veteran bell tower climber to strap me in a harness and lanyard so that I could scale the spire and have an audience with the bells face-to-colossal-face. Perhaps I could time my visit to get a nice view of holiday fireworks.
It’s so cool to be Catholic.
Those bells have been calling people to worship for generations. Let us not neglect their summons to us. We answer the call to prayer at Annunciation. As we do, we discover that prayer is the answer we seek.
