Spiritual and material foundation stay strong at St. Patrick in Cedar Lake

Every time Father Michael Miller processes into the sanctuary of St. Patrick in Cedar Lake at the start of Mass, he pauses to tap his ring on the base where the tabernacle sits.

That simple gesture is packed with meaning.

Mainly, it’s a tribute to his father, Carlton Miller, who died Feb. 6, 2020. The ring Carlton had worn since he received it in 1980 for a milestone achievement at work was passed down to his son, who proudly wears it on his left hand to honor a family and faith legacy that led to his priesthood ordination in 1996.

The ring tap ritual is also an acknowledgment of Father Miller’s homecoming in 2015, when he requested and was granted the assignment of being pastor of this parish and of neighboring St. Catherine in Spring Lake. The farm where Father Miller grew up, and which he purchased in 2014, is only 10 miles south of St. Patrick — or, he said, “9 miles as the crow flies.”

The stone tabernacle base is the final piece of a church renovation project that was completed in 2006. Parishioners did all the work. Dan Cervenka, who grew up and still lives on his family farm only about a mile from the church, did much of the interior masonry work. A year ago, he crafted the tabernacle base. On the side of the base is a plaque bearing Carlton Miller’s name. Father Miller used memorial donations from his father’s funeral to pay for the materials used in the tabernacle base.

Up until the day of Carlton’s funeral, Father Miller had no intention of receiving his father’s ring. Years earlier, an older priest had advised him never to wear a ring — they were mostly reserved for bishops. But, Father Miller changed his mind not long before his father’s casket closed, and took possession of this prized heirloom.

“It was my mother’s idea, actually,” said Father Miller, 55. “This was the ring given him back in 1980 when he started selling Pioneer seed. It fits me just right.”

The color was right, too. Green represents Father Miller’s birthstone color (his birthday is May 19); the color of John Deere tractors, which his family has used for decades in farming; and, of course, the color associated with his parish’s Irish namesake.

Sacred space of home

The fit and color of the ring are symbolic of the way his vocation and life have come full circle.

“I call it not only living the dream, but I’m living in the Resurrection now,” he said of being a pastor near where he grew up. After being away from a community he thought he would never leave, he now can talk about “the joy of being home.”

“To be the shepherd here has been just the greatest,” said Father Miller, who as a child attended St. Wenceslaus in New Prague and St. Wenceslaus School, which, at 6 miles from the family farm, were slightly closer than St. Patrick.

“These are two of the smallest parishes in the diocese (St. Patrick has 195 families, St. Catherine has 64). Some might think, ‘Well, you’re kind of being punished or something.’ But, it’s just the opposite. … I had said so many times that my dream was to retire on the farm and take care of a couple of parishes nearby.”

Father Miller is not the only one who thinks he is the right choice to lead these two parishes. Cervenka, who was just a year ahead of him at New Prague High School, said he was “ecstatic” when word spread in 2015 that Father Miller had been named the new pastor. Within a few years, that would mean a continuation of Cervenka’s passion for helping create beautiful and meaningful worship space.

At a previous parish, Father Miller had orchestrated moving the tabernacle from one side of the sanctuary to behind the altar. He wanted to do the same thing at St. Patrick, with the idea that the tabernacle would rest at the feet of a statue of the Irish saint.

Having done most of the interior masonry in the 2006 renovation, Cervenka was the logical person for the job, with the crucial task of finding matching stone for the tabernacle base. He “made a few calls” and came up with something that Father Miller said cannot be distinguished from the stone Cervenka used in the wall behind the tabernacle base in 2006.

Cervenka then set to work for three weeks in February 2020, crafting the new tabernacle base. In this way, he carried out his own family legacy, which began when his father, Dan Cervenka Sr., taught him the trade right after he graduated high school in 1982.

“After high school got out, my dad says, ‘What are you going to do?’” Cervenka recalled. “And, I said, ‘I don’t know.’ And, he goes, ‘Get in the truck. We’ve got work to do.’”

Nearly four decades later, he’s still at it. He got married in 1988. His wife, Debra, graduated in the same class as Father Miller. A few years into the marriage, he rediscovered his Catholic faith, which he had abandoned in high school in favor of a party lifestyle.

All it took was a decision one day to switch radio stations during a period of spiritual restlessness and questioning in the 1990s. After listening to rock and roll for years, he turned the dial and landed on a Christian radio station. He noticed the difference immediately.

“The songs were praise and worship songs,” he said. “I starting listening, and I thought, ‘This is it. This is what I was missing — not the station, but it was God, it was the Lord Jesus. That’s what I’ve been missing, that’s what I’ve been overlooking. This is the purpose of my existence.’ I mean, it all just made sense (on) that one day.”

Sacred space of worship

It was the beginning of what he calls “a new way of living.” His rekindled faith has driven him ever since, and filled him with passion for turning raw stone into beautiful living spaces for people’s homes and beautiful worship spaces for God’s home. His name is engraved on the tabernacle base underneath Carlton Miller’s. And, his handiwork is spread throughout the inside of the church, made possible by learning a trade he initially found distasteful.

“In my junior high years during the summer months when we were out of school, once in a while Dad would get me to come to a job site and help out,” he said. “I would go and do it, and I would come home at the end of the day and I’d tell my mom, …. ‘I hate it. I’m never going to do that for a living. I’m never going to do what Dad does.’

And he never did like it, he said, but when he got out of high school, he knew he had to do something. “What I tell people is: I loved my dad more than I hated cement work. And, I basically just wanted to be wherever he was.”

As he followed that simple desire, he saw his life’s vocation take shape, built on a foundation as solid as those he makes with concrete and stone. Guided, he believes, by divine providence.

“God opened my eyes to the value of hard work and to the dignity of a trade and doing something well, even if it’s messy and dirty, in the heat of the day and (with) the bugs and the gnats and the mud and the snow and whatever else comes along with it,” he said. “You know, you do your best, and we’re all created equal.”

This approach to work life and the spiritual life is one that is known — and shared — by his pastor, who speaks the language of those who use their hands to work with the dirt and all that comes from it, including crops and even stone from local quarries that was used to build St. Patrick church in 1874.

Father Miller knows intimately what the rural lifestyle is like, having grown up doing farm chores on his family’s 230-acre dairy farm. During childhood, he envisioned being a farmer all his life. It took some steady pitchforks of faith over many growing seasons to prod him toward the priesthood. “I grew up safe and sound here,” he said. “I was going to farm.”

After graduating from high school, he went to the University of Minnesota and got a two-year degree, then came home and farmed with his father for three years. That’s when he “started to feel this call to be a priest.”

He answered, going to The St. Paul Seminary for his priestly formation after graduating from the University of St. Thomas. After ordination, he served at parishes across the archdiocese, including St. Joseph (now St. Maximilian Kolbe) in Delano and St. Michael in Stillwater. After six years at the latter, he decided it was time for a change.

In early 2015, he bought the remaining 114 acres of the family farm, where a neighbor now plants crops. Just months after that, he learned that there was an opening for a pastor at St. Patrick and St. Catherine. He made a request to go there, which was granted by Archbishop Bernard Hebda.

Going back home to his roots “was exactly where I needed to go,” he said. “It was my time.”

He is happy to come home every day to his family farm, which, he said, locals still call the “Miller farm.” He combines Benedictine and Dominican spirituality, which involves work, prayer, contemplation and passing along what he learns and hears God saying while inhabiting this serene landscape.

And, with spring planting getting underway, he is sure to offer many prayers for rain.