Hundreds of parishioners and guests filled not only the new Holy Face of Jesus Eucharistic Adoration Chapel but also the main church at St. Theresa Parish in Palatine for the chapel dedication Sept. 8.

Auxiliary Bishop Jeffrey Grob, episcopal vicar for northwest Cook County and Lake County, celebrated the Mass and dedicated the new chapel and its altar.

“How does one do justice to this evening?” Bishop Grob said in his homily, before anointing the altar with oil. “What a blessing it is to be here.”

Bishop Grob spoke about Jesus as the Bread of Life, and the meaning bread has in the lives of people.

“The reality is physical,” he said. “I need bread to live. But the reality is also social. I need others to provide the bread. I rely on hundreds of people whom I do not know and whom I will never know.”

Jesus, he said, offers his body as real nourishment, but also as a result of the bond created by God’s love.

“We too are called to give life to the world because of the heavenly bread we receive,” Bishop Grob said. “We do not live in isolation. There is no need to live in darkness. We are children of the light indeed.”

Father Timothy Fairman, St. Theresa’s pastor, and Father Matthew Jamesson, an associate pastor, began talking about an adoration chapel about three years ago, Fairman said.

“This dream has finally been realized,” Fairman told the congregation in the chapel and those watching on screens set up in the church. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”

That includes the more than 300 donors who contributed as well as those who prayed for the success of the project.

The congregation gathered outdoors near the statue of St. Therese of Lisieux, the parish’s patron, and processed to the door of the chapel, where architect Thomas Rajkovich spoke of the work and the care that went into designing and building the chapel before the key was handed to Bishop Grob, who opened the doors to the people.

Rajkovich recalled St. John Paul II’s 1999 Letter to Artists, in which he said “beauty is the visible form of the good.”

Special attention should be given to an adoration chapel, a place where people come to be with Jesus in the Eucharist, Rajkovich said.

“It should be a setting which is beautiful and strives towards the ideal,” he said. The chapel “is designed to create a sacred space which singularly focuses your mind, your heart and your eyes on Christ in adoration or at Mass.”

Fairman wrote a letter about the beauty of the chapel that was included in the parish bulletin and distributed to members of the congregation after the dedication Mass.

Fairman said he has been asked why the parish spent $1.6 million on the chapel, with its custom wood, plaster, stained glass and marble work.

“The answer is simple,” he wrote. “Because beauty doesn’t come cheap. A crude response to be sure, but true. Beauty comes at great price; it often requires a lot out of people, and most of our finest literature is filled with daring people fighting for a taste of beauty — the beauty of nature, of romance, of adventure, of art, of family, of God.”

Fairman invited the congregation to return to the chapel to pray, but also to look at it and appreciate its beauty.

“It is much harder to be reverent in a place of worship and prayer that lacks singular beauty,” he wrote in his letter. “Certainly, the Body of Christ in the tabernacle inspires absolute reverence, but when an environment is lacking in noble beauty, it can lead to distraction.”

The chapel will be used for adoration on the parish’s current schedule, available at sttheresachurch.org, and for weekday daily Mass at 6:30 a.m. The parish hopes to make it available for perpetual adoration as soon as a schedule can be developed, according to Nicole Carlisle, St. Theresa’s communications director.

Parishioners who gathered after Mass discussed plans to attend services and adoration in the new chapel.

“I plan to sign up for a slot once we can,” said Val Piper. “The chapel is really something.”

“It’s just beautiful,” Joan DiGioia agreed.