PARIS — “It’s not every day that you get to celebrate this sort of event,” Bishop William P. Callahan told the congregation filling the pews Saturday at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

“There’s a great deal of history here.... There are deep roots here,” Callahan said, continuing his homily during a Mass marking the 150th anniversary of St. John and exhorting church members not only to revere the past, but to continue honoring their Christian faith as families, as a community in the present and the future.

“These messages from Scripture are not just read so we can listen to events long ago and far away,” he said.

In the future, the Plexiglas time capsule placed into the cornerstone of the church for posterity and to mark the sesquicentennial will be reopened anew, “and that’s nice. But the gospel is here; the gospel is now,” Callahan said, “Our gathering at this Eucharist is not just a ritual.... Our being here is not just testimony to generations of Christianity.”

Before leading the congregation in prayer, Callahan called on parents, children and spouses to greet each other daily with respect in the spirit of Jesus and John the Baptist “if the blossom is to continue to flourish in this wonderful little part of the world.”

Callahan arrived at the dedication by way of horse and carriage, riding from the original church site up the road to the present building at 1501 172nd Ave. (Highway D).

After the Mass, he joined the parish pastor, priests, nuns and congregants outside at the bottom of the church steps. There, Anna Zarovy, 19, of Salem, the youngest adult member in attendance, temporarily placed the Plexiglas time capsule inside the 1912 cornerstone of the church, assisted by Larry Willkomm, St. John’s facilities manager and a lifetime St. John’s member.

Earlier this summer, Willkomm and others cut the stone from the northwest corner of the brick wall and removed a metal time capsule placed there by parishioners 97 years ago. Inside were coins, church financial records, a registry of members and newspaper clips, including one from a Catholic German-language paper from Milwaukee, reporting the 1912 building dedication.

Those items will be returned to the cornerstone inside the new Plexiglas time capsule, along with artifacts and memorabilia gathered in the intervening years: photos, news clippings, perhaps DVDs, videos and present-era coins, as well as other items commemorating St. John’s 150-year history.

For Adele Fonk, 95, the eldest living congregant and great-grandmother of Evelyn Fonk, the youngest church member, who was born in June, the event also marked seven Fonk generations in St. John. They started with Adele’s late husband Arthur’s great-great-grandfather, Phillip, a founding member, through her seven sons and two daughters and all the way to Evelyn, who represents the seventh generation — remarkable even in a church where multi-generational membership proliferates.

“The horse didn’t move far from the carriage,” said Adele, who still lives less than two miles away on the Fonk farm with son Al and his family.