As Chicago struggles to make room for thousands of migrants who have been bussed to our city, it is good to remember how often Chicago has managed to welcome waves of immigrants in the past. European immigration to Chicago began in earnest in the 1870’s, as Chicago rebuilt itself following the great fire. Over the decades we struggled with all forms of ethnic, religious, and racial prejudice, and Catholics have been willing participants in much of it. Assumption played a vital role in enabling the first wave of immigrants from Italy adjust to life in America. Assumption was founded in 1881, primarily to serve the Italian immigrant community. But before the parish was established, Fr. Austin Morini, the first Servite friar in Chicago, had been providing Mass and other services to Italian speaking Catholics in the basement of Old St. Pat’s. After a while, the Irish pastor at St. Patrick’s had had enough. He told Fr. Morini, “Get your filthy Italians out of here!”

Italian immigrants settled in this area because of the abundance of factories and warehouses that lined the Chicago River. It was a place where they could get jobs. This neighborhood was known as Smokey Hollow, because of the preponderance of factories belching out smoke. One contemporary account says that on some days the smoke was so thick that it blocked out the sun. But these years from the late 1880’s to the early 1920’s were boom years for Assumption and for the neighborhood itself. Amidst the factories, tenements, row houses, and small businesses, our steeple towered over the neighborhood and our school on Erie Street was jam packed with students, all enjoying free tuition. After World War I, the neighborhood declined. Larger ships carried most of the freight, and they could not navigate very far inland on the Chicago River. The Port of Chicago moved south to the more navigable Calumet River and the factories and warehouses along the Chicago River closed. The Italian families began moving west and Assumption School closed in 1945.The Mart, constructed in 1930, guaranteed that there would be people around during the day, but at night the area around Assumption was regarded as sleazy and unsafe and was largely deserted. It was not until the 1980’s that our neighborhood began to come back to life.

On Tuesday of this week, we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, our parish Feast Day and the anniversary of the dedication of our present church building in 1886. The Assumption of Mary into heaven, though long celebrated by Catholics on August 15, did not become an official dogma of the Church until Pope Pius XII said this in 1950: “We pronounce, proclaim, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma that the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary every Virgin, when the course of her earthly life was over, was taken up body and soul into the glory of heaven.” She who was Christ’s most faithful disciple was the first among us to experience the fullness of redemption.

One of the intriguing things about the Mary’s Assumption is that it invites us to think about Mary at the end of her earthly life. There are no scriptural references to Mary beyond her inclusion in the list of those waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Most statues or paintings of Mary show her as a young woman, either at the Annunciation or as a young mother. Even in the Pieta statue we have in our church, Mary looks remarkably young. We rarely think of Mary as aging. But having survived the death of her son in his thirties, Mary certainly lived into late middle age and perhaps much longer. What was life like for Mary at the end of her earthly life?

The authors Rea McDonnell and Rachel Callahan in the book Harvest Us Home offer this meditation on an aging Mary: “If Mary is like us in all things except sin, then her aging slowed her down. Her brain had its ‘senior moments,’ its tangles, lapses of memory and confusions. Her joint pain may have made her snappish. Imagine her getting up to face the day from a pallet of straw on the floor. No air conditioning, no central heating, no way to keep arthritic joints from freezing up overnight. Her dimming eyesight may have made her more dependent. Her fading hearing may have made her feel gradually more and more cut off from conversation. There were for her no hearing aids, no cataract surgeries, no eyeglasses . . . . Imagine Mary as an old woman. What does she look like? Ask her what keeps her alive and alert, eager and full of power. Ask her to share her energy and enthusiasm for the Good News with you. Then spend time in quiet . . . listening and reflecting.”

                     Fr. Joe