A pilgrimage

I was at Mass at Corpus Christi on Friday, and Sr Ann invited me to join them for the parish pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Sorrows the next day. I didn't have any plans, so I decided I'd go along.

It was nice to meet a few more of the Corpus Christi parishioners: I go there pretty frequently, but on weekdays. We loaded onto a school bus (as Dad says, school buses really look like school buses in the US: they're even painted school bus yellow) and headed northwest to the basilica.

We began with Mass offered for the souls of Fr Anthony and Roberta, the parish priest and a loyal parishioner who both died in quick succession in June. Before Mass, their successor and daughter respectively spoke about their lives and the way they inspired and shared Christ with those around them.

Over lunch, the director of the shrine told us a little of the history of the church. Like many churches in Chicago, it was built for the Polish Catholic community. But for some reason, it began with Italian priests who didn't speak much English (or, presumably, any Polish): I guess sometimes bishops have to find an inventive way of matching the needs and resources of their dioceses. A small church was built, but the parish was quite large and it was seen that Chicago was growing westwards, so a much larger church modeled after the Sistine Chapel and other Italian renaissance churches was constructed, being completed in the early twentieth century.

In 1937, they began devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows, a very popular patroness given the ongoing financial depression. It quickly grew to serve thousands of attendees in person, and thousands of other churches following the same devotion. In recognition of its importance, Pius XII made the church a basilica in 1956.

Over the next decades, a couple of changes really shrunk the parish. First, the expressway was built through the neighbourhood, removing hundreds of homes. Second, the demographics of the area changed from mostly Catholic Polish Americans to mostly protestant black Americans. So now it's a small parish in a huge church, a scenario certainly paralleled in many places across Chicago (and the developed world).

After lunch we went on a little tour. The balconies looking out over the sanctuary are very interesting: usually the choir balcony is at the back of the church. The overall feeling of the place did remind me of a church in Italy (I haven't been to Italy, but seeing even a little bit in movies or news stories gives an impression), in the way the church building is so closely connected with the monastery and other parish buildings. And the balconies add to that feeling! As well as an altar dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, there's one dedicated to the Seven Founders of the Servites, the order that runs the basilica. I don't know anything about those saints other than that they come up together on the about today page of my prayer book each 17 February. There's also a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta in the old baptistery.

We spent some time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, and I also went around to pray in many of the little side chapels. I was especially happy to see a chapel dedicated to St Peregrine, patron of cancer patients, where I prayed for a couple of my friends' parents.

The bus to take us home was rather late, but it eventually arrived and we made it back safely, feeling nicely refreshed.