For decades, SeptemberFest has been a hallmark of parish life at Annunciation Catholic Church and School — a weekend of food, music and Mass that brings families, alumni and neighbors back to the campus year after year.

But this year, following a deadly shooting at the south Minneapolis church, it wasn’t clear if school could resume — much less if a festival planned for thousands would still happen.

Yet on Sunday, the grounds were crowded with folding chairs and prayer books. Alumni swapped stories. Children clutched cinnamon rolls and cups of orange juice as parishioners raised their voices in one of the church’s largest Masses in recent memory.

The ordinary gestures — breakfast in hand, neighbors side by side — felt like small triumphs in the face of what the community has endured.

“This is the DNA of our community,” said Jen Campbell, a parishioner of 27 years. “People need this. They need to be together.”

SeptemberFest, once a parish anniversary party at the start of the school year, has grown into Annunciation’s largest annual gathering. Still, leaders debated whether to go on with the event less than a month after a shooter opened fire on the sanctuary, killing 10-year-old Harper Moyski and 8-year-old Fletcher Merkel and injuring 21 others.

Sunday’s festival was redefined by attendees not as an escape from grief but a way to confront it together.

“There was a phase where celebration didn’t seem right,” said Karl Wolf, who has three children at the school. “But after prayer and reflection and the outpouring of community support, it feels right.

“Like Principal [Matt] DeBoer says, ‘You can’t go over it. You can’t go under it. We’ve got to go through it as a community.’”

That idea — that healing has to be walked through collectively — surfaced again and again during a weekend of events.

The parish used the occasion to introduce “Annunciation heroes,” replacing its usual volunteer awards with a tribute to teachers, parish staff, first responders, doctors, counselors and neighbors who carried the community through its darkest hour. A plaque unveiled Sunday will hang inside the church, ensuring the shooting is remembered not only for its loss but also for the courage it summoned.

“I have a different perspective on first responders,” said Jimmy Dunn, Annunciation’s outreach director. “Our first responders were inside the church.”

Dunn admitted he was among those who first doubted SeptemberFest would happen.

“I thought for sure we were not going to have it,” he said. “It took five days until someone was like, you know, we might need this.”

With help from families and alumni, the parish planned the event in less than three weeks.

What followed was a weekend stitched together by small but powerful steps back toward routine. Children played wiffle ball with University of Minnesota football players. Alumni and young families mingled across picnic tables. Conversations circled back, inevitably, to the shooting — but also to the ways people have stepped forward to help in the aftermath.

The joy and the sorrow ran side by side, like two currents moving through the same space.

Annunciation reopened some of its classrooms last week following the return of its preschoolers, large signs of normal life resuming. But parishioners said SeptemberFest marked something deeper: that the parish would not be defined by violence, but by how it chose to gather afterward.

“This one was different, obviously, than all the others,” Wolf said. “But it feels good to be here. It does.”

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