Bishop Ronald M. Gilmore presided at the Mass with Father John Strasser, pastor. The bishop, acknowledging the large congregation, quipped that he had to park some distance from the church in "metropolitan Sharon." The 350-seat church was filled to capacity and more than 200 others participated in the Mass via closed circuit television in the parish hall.

In all, 650 reservations came in for the meal that followed. Some in attendance traveled from California, Oregon, Minnesota, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma.

In his homily, Bishop Gilmore spoke of travel and a significant event in the life of the parish.

"In the past six years I have come to know that a bishop travels more than this bishop would like. I think of the hours and hours and hours in lines, in airports, in airplanes, and in strange hotels. These are sad and lonely places for me: so many persons course through them, but there is so little real human connection.

"That’s why it is memorable when something does happen, when some real exchange does take place. I recall a lapsed Catholic on a plane from San Diego. I recall an airline attendant in Phoenix worrying about her seriously ill husband. I recall a Peruvian woman shining shoes in a Washington hotel.

"As I recall them, I think of that German couple and that Irish priest in a train 100 years ago. Otto and Mary Winter, Father Patrick Maloney: they looked at one another over 100 years ago. They stopped. They met. They talked, and St. Boniface, Sharon, was born as the car swayed, and creaked and rattled on.

"And don’t miss the significance of it. When they met on that December day, the age-old story of the ‘church’ was happening: the push and the pull that every parishioner and every pastor knows so well.

"There was the ‘push’: this long initiative, this putting into words of their spiritual needs.

"There was the ‘pull’: the priest who gave them a sympathetic hearing, who looked upon them with love, who promised to help, and who thus pulled them deeper into the mystery of the Gospel.

"The push and the pull. So simple, so down-to-earth, so filled with the mystery of God.

"I find that push and pull repeated throughout these hundred years.

"The innovative land company in the first 20 years, welcoming the stranger, populating the valley, attracting a resident pastor.

"The holding of body and soul together during the Depression, caring for, and expanding the plant, educating the young.

"The phenomenal explosion of building after the war: a totally new parish plant within 14 years.

"The painful loss of your schools, parochial and public, the stress of changing circumstances, the restructuring of parish life all over the diocese.

"Push and pull, push and pull, push and pull: Practically, that’s how it has felt to be a Catholic Church. That’s how it will always feel, the pull and the push wrapped in the teaching, the sanctifying, and the leading of every day parish life.

"A wondrous thing happened in that railroad car 100 years ago. Redemption happened, church happened. The whole 100-year world of St. Boniface happened.

"No wonder they call you ‘Sharon’: fertile, life-giving valley.

"No wonder they call you ‘Rose of Sharon’: a biblical metaphor for a thing of beauty.

"No wonder. No wonder at all."

After Mass, the celebration continued with a banquet at the former high school auditorium. Tables and chairs were set up for 600, but some who went through the line early sat in the bleachers to make room for others to eat.

Father Strasser took time during the banquet to have different groups stand to acknowledge their numbers: those who were baptized in either St. Boniface Church; those who were married; those religious vocations from the parish; the Dominican Sisters who taught in the parish school, and those who attended the parish school.

Entertainment at the banquet was provided by the centennial children’s choir under the direction of Margie Eck. Sharon native and recording artist, Kimberly Dawn Traffas, sang with the choir and performed original songs. The choir opened by singing "It’s Just a Little Town," a song that was written and sung for the 50th anniversary of the parish in 1954.

There were 13 Dominican Sisters present who taught at St. Boniface School: Sisters Alvina Miller, Bertilla Brungardt, Charlene Eisenbart, Janice Thome, Loretta Podlena, Malachy Stockemer, Mary Leon (Cecilia Ann) Stremel, Patricia Martinez, Rosalia Govert, Roserita Weber, Sabina (Martina) Stegman, Scholastica (Geraldine) Eakes, and Veronica Staudinger.