Williamsville man sets out to see every church in the diocese

Ray Geska has a goal. He wants to experience Mass in every church in the Diocese of Buffalo. He’s already halfway there, visiting most of Erie County and some of Niagara.

Burned out from his work at GEICO, Geska, 59, took a leave of absence last August and decided to attend daily morning Mass.

“I knew turning to God was going to help me somehow,” he said outside Prince of Peace Church in Niagara Falls. Number 93 on his list.

The goal of visiting every worship site came on pretty early. He enjoyed seeing the different presentations of the liturgy, but as a history buff, also wanted to know the stories behind the churches that make up the diocese.

He felt the Spirit inside him saying, “Let’s keep this going.”

“Two weeks, three weeks later, from a spiritual standpoint, it really starts to make you feel pretty good,” he said.

Seeing the inner-city churches made him imagine how immigrant laborers physically built the brick and stone structures without the aid of trucks or heavy machinery. He talks to staff and takes notes of their story, trying to picture it as it was a century and a half ago.

“None of the churches in the suburbs compare to some of these ones that I’ve been to,” he said.

He went on Wikipedia and found an entry on closed churches in the Buffalo Diocese. Now he visits them as well, starting with the East Side.

“St. Ann’s was simply gorgeous from the outside. I wish I could have seen the inside,” he said of the church closed in 2012. “One that really stood out was St. Francis de Sales (on Northland Avenue, closed in 1981). It’s left here on a street that time forgot about. That’s a beautiful church.

He picks churches through a mix of scientific precision and random luck. He bought a poster board and fresh pack of Sharpies, then mapped out the churches and Mass times. But when he wakes up has a lot to do with it. He has taken in the occasional Noon Mass.

“Hopefully by the night before I have it figured out,” he said. The earliest has been a 6:45 a.m. Mass at St. Michael’s in downtown Buffalo.

“The fun part is punching these addresses into my GPS and the anticipation of seeing a steeple shooting up into the air,” he said.

The first thing he looks for in a new church is the altar and the crucifix

“Sometimes it’s really present. Other times you’ve got to walk up closer to see what their choice of Jesus representation is.”

Reaching the halfway mark, he considered what this has done for him.

“I felt better about my relationship with God in general just through the Mass every day. All of a sudden, after two weeks, after three weeks, you’re like, ‘Wow.’ Going daily, you start to notice things. Kind of like when a wound heals. Maybe it was a spiritual wound that’s healing.”

“It kind of builds up after a while. You might not leave a Mass thinking, ‘Wow, that was powerful. I feel like I’m a better Catholic.’ But, after a week goes by or two weeks, all of a sudden there’s that hunger to go back to Mass again,” he said. “I went to Mass here. I felt the goodness of the Mass. That made me want to go more. … I can’t imagine myself going to church just once a week now.”

Geska, a former on-air personality at WHTT 104.1 and a Williamsville resident who attends Sunday services at St. Gregory the Great, joined the Knights of Columbus two years ago. It has led him to volunteer at St. Lawrence Food Pantry in Buffalo. He also finds himself reading religious literature and praying more.

Listen to Michael Mroziak’s report.