Christ in America
Williams, Michael
234 THE COMMONWEAL July 7, 1926 CHRIST IN...
...Then come to Mundelein by electric and steam railroads, and the visitors would be drawn back to the crowd by that by motor cars...
...Christ had come Then came the storm...
...The fresh, pure among the people on the epistle side of the Church...
...I took it for granted, as journalists so often dinal Hayes of New York...
...the press, to supplement what I see and hear by what When the Mass was over, the procession was supI am told by others, who, in turn, often get their infor- posed at once to proceed in its circuit of the lake, a mation from still others...
...Mundelein is forty miles from Chicago, and two, a hurried glance about the chapel-so strange sixty miles from Milwaukee, with a very few towns in its perhaps symbolic admixture of Puritan rigidity nearer than those two vast cities...
...Well chosen was the sym- of reason, the smiling, praying nun, daughter of faith...
...the United States, of all America, of the whole world...
...234 THE COMMONWEAL July 7, 1926 CHRIST IN AMERICA By MICHAEL WILLIAMS '~ T WAS my very wonderful good fortune to see with overwhelming nature of the impressions produced -A~/-- my own eyes the beginning and the ending of Our upon the minds of trained and veteran reportersLord's journey about the lake of St...
...The roses tabernacle, and placed in the monstrance...
...ators taking each sheet of copy from me as I finished This was the note struck also by the sermon of Carwriting it...
...thousands of priests, members of all the orders, the Never once had those priests of our faith, legate, seculars...
...I have heard the opinion ful account possible of the Eucharistic Congress I expressed that the miracle of this Eucharistic Congress shall try to relate, so far as I can, only what I myself -considering the size of the crowds that were handled saw, and heard, and thought, and believed...
...There were periods of time...
...and after them the prelates...
...wind was buoyant with life...
...The head of the telesame city...
...Hours passed...
...one of them the Eucharistic Congress...
...Father Marquette was pic- around the lake, drenched to the skin, but serenely tured "Bringing the Faith to Chicago," the Marquette smiling, took me, as one might put the matter, under who said Mass 250 years ago where now the great the shelter of his cope, so that I was in the midst of the city stands...
...Just then, there have set down above, he represented the soul of the was a stirring of a few priests out of the sacristy into American nation, as did the assistant who responded...
...then Christian Brothers...
...Lay people did likewise, but for the probably a million...
...And for individual reporters to adof the best examples, I am told by those who have venture into the crowd was to risk getting jammed authority in such subjects, of the austere, simple, away from sight or hearing of anything-of anything strong beauty of the New England type of architecture but the crowd...
...Of course, some of us did go out on -an altar had been placed, under a regal canopy, such adventures, and somehow or other got back to the flanked by the thrones of the Papal Legate and the press box and our telegraphic operators, and one such Cardinals, where the pontifical Mass of the Most trip of mine took me into the chapel...
...and the Slovak unit, Host...
...Joy sounded in the bells an American, Nicholas F. Brady of New York, and, that chimed from the steeple of the church that let me add, a Calvert Associate...
...I went on to say that the words with which I began, . Indeed all were children then-children playing as and which begin the Mass, were the same as are said well as praying before the Lord...
...Then the Legate passed on, followed And the immense multitude that knelt before that by the Cardinals, attended by the laymen, joining the altar of joy, and through which Jesus Christ walked immense procession that long before that had begun (as that multitude believed) about the smiling lake, its movement...
...Like an assault by the spirits down from the altar to move among them...
...The ' pilgrims had and austereness and Catholic richness and grace...
...Radio amplifiers carried the chants the great storm, when the sun was again shining...
...Jesus loved, and whom He always loves...
...ing sunshine...
...How was I to write about all that But nowhere, at no time, have they had the special was happening that would be worth the writing...
...Mary at Mun- many of whom had seen most great modern events and delein...
...the value of indicating the almost stunning, the almost Anyhow, I too entered the chapel, on one of several July 7, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 235 such visits...
...mankind, and their mothers, wives, sisters, sweetI will not quote all the rest of my hastily written hearts, and hosts and hosts of the little children whom but at any rate deeply-felt description of that Mass...
...bol of their float, "Christianity Enlightening the And I wrote to my newspaper that I did not wish to World...
...the purple mon- cardinals, bishops, and the lower ranks, paused or signori...
...Then Lithuanians, and more bands...
...telegraphers' headquarters...
...Nothing of darkness, the princes of evil, came the tempest, with else mattered...
...Or, may I dare say it, great migrations of history, the movements of tribes it was like unto the stable in Bethlehem when the great and nations...
...a boys' band patch described above to one newspaper I was writfollowed...
...a genuflexion before the and priests at the seminary, is about two or three hun- Sacrament, a brief and probably distracted prayer or dred...
...Mary's Lake, above which 236 THE COMMONWEAL July 7, 1926 white birds soared, through the woods, drenched in When it came, I was under the canvas roof of the sunshine, through the multitude of 1,000,000 adorers...
...Nor did the others, the laymen, strance, the Host...
...by all priests of the Catholic Church, everywhere, -Slowly, slowly the procession passed along the road throughout the world, from the Pope in the Vatican winding around the blue St...
...most feeble, incompetent, and inconsiderate...
...Priests altar was the centre of a multitude the lowest estimate and nuns knelt in prayer, some of them for long of whose numbers is half a million souls...
...The dehuman, all too human thought of self obscure the voted faith of the nameless multitude was the great, thoughts until now ascending out of self toward God...
...Only a few Legate when he held up the Host after Benediction thousands-a mere trifle, say So,ooo, could actually And blessed us all at the end of the procession, after watch the Mass...
...One or two Joy was the great note of the marvelous climax to laymen appeared, in Vatican court dress...
...So I wrote through the wilderness, baptizing the very earth with "My story is the story of the joy of faith...
...The chapel was by comparison with that throbup historical data and he said that the figures showed bing, swaying, tremendous sea of humanity outside that there were three times as many persons gathered like a little island within a coral reef, or like a cavern about that altar at Mundelein as marched in all the inside a mountain upon which armies were marching crusades...
...outstanding fact of that day of days...
...Having sent off the desCross bearers and acolytes came first...
...John Cardinal Bonzano, legate of the Pope, mak- In that multitude there were millionaires, statesmen, ing the sign of the cross, said these words, bowing be- soldiers and sailors, artists, writers, judges, firemen, fore the golden rose-crowned altar above which was policemen, men of all the professions, doctors, lawyers, the figure of Christ crucified...
...pause or falter...
...The crowds near mans...
...It was the sort of sunBehind him came the Princes of Holy Church, the Car- shine and wind that ripens grain-grain from which dinals, whose blood-colored robes flamed in the burn- comes the bread that then becomes the Body of God...
...Certainly, If that somebody appears he will be a second Dante...
...And thousands had been waiting since daybreak) ; the very if it came, what would happen, with a million people real discomforts incidental to the assembling of a for whom there could be no shelter (save for a very million human beings and their transportation over few in the seminary buildings and the chapel) packed roads and railroads never intended to bear the strain together among trees every one of which would be a of such a concentration of people...
...Others again spoke of the with great guns and tramplings...
...I telegraphed my belief that the storm was a came the priests with Columbus, and the priests from mere symbol of the fact that religious faith is for times France and Spain and England who opened up the new of storm as well as for sunny days, for the night as well world and prepared the paths of civilization in Amer- as for the day, for times of sorrow and pain as well as ica...
...the sanctuary...
...On the other fragments of the story...
...But what that fact matters will be lightning, pouring rain, roaring thunder, hailstones written into the brighter pages of the future history of lashing the bare heads of the marchers...
...in all minds, hidden under the joy and beauty of the They were welcoming the coming of Christ as King day like a secret fear in a happy heart, now became to America...
...mitred abbots, bishops, archbishops, the car- faltered in that three-mile march, first through the dinals and their attendants, and, in their midst, the burning heat, then through the half hour of hail and Legate, his hands upon the monstrance drawn by other rain and driving wind, though many of them are old, attendants upon a wheeled carriage, and, in the mon- some very old men...
...scattered about...
...Knights of for times of peace and joy...
...blue of the sky darkened, then was blurred and ob- Men and women and children knelt in the mud and scured, as thick, lurid clouds rolled up...
...This one, in fact, I meant to be for the to the most remote missionary in the farthest jungle sake of rest, and a little breath of quiet, of silence, of of Africa...
...a long line of German-Americans and Ger- ing another for a second newspaper...
...It may be so...
...The long, long hours of waiting (many apparent-the dread that a storm was coming...
...Just the same, there Catholic laity, and what they desire to express to their were two newspapers depending upon me for part of non-Catholic fellow citizens, I say that when the their news of that day, and I began to wonder what I Legate of the Vicar of Jesus Christ spoke the words I should say, and how I should say it...
...He recalled the spiritual do, and as indeed they must do when the presses are and religious sources and origins of America from the waiting for early copy, that what I had seen begun dim beginnings where the missionaries of Christ came would go through to its finish under the same condi- with the earliest explorers, and went before them tions as its start...
...It was reason and faith, has raised such a mighty and unending harvest faith cooperating-the unconcerned, cool-headed man of children to the Church...
...as once He walked the shore of Lake Gennersareth, It was impossible, so dense was the crowd, for me that multitude represented the American nation, in a to follow further than to the door opening out of the more comprehensive manner, I dare to say, than any sacristy, from which I watched the Legate pass, the other crowd ever assembled-in the special sense that representative of Christ's Vicar on earth, and the Car- every racial strain that enters into the spiritual and dinals, the Princes of Christ the King...
...There followed after the Irish the American change a word of my story describing the day as a day Indians, descendants of those souls for whose sake of joy...
...I had managed to make my way through the and the Slovenian unit, the Syrians, the Croatians, the crowd that gathered near the outside altar, and ArchHungarians, the Belgians, the Poles, the French, the bishop Hanna, chancing to see me as he came back to Spanish, the Chinese, the Maltese, the Ukrainians, the the sanctuary from his three-mile walk with the others Italians, the Bohemians...
...And in order that I may journey of about three miles...
...The least crowded, and certainly the quietest spot The stand where they sat during the Mass afforded at Mundelein on Thursday, June 24, the last day of merely a peep-hole view, and that usually was blocked the Congress, was the chapel...
...The population of the little town most part everybody, priest, nun, layman or laywoman, of Mundelein, outside of the few hundreds of pupils made only a fleeting visit...
...then a long, long line of seminarians, the sanctuary when the Legate came to the altar, and gave young men giving up father and mother and the love us Benediction, and Te Deum was sung, and Tantum of wife and children and home to follow all their lives Ergo, and the sun shone down again, and the birds in the footsteps of Christ...
...In front of that replica up...
...What had been took the blessing of the Host...
...But there was delay give the readers of The Commonweal the most truth- after delay...
...The multitude was spread out everywhere the tabernacle, and I was one of the little group of lay- within the woodland and meadows surrounding the men who were kneeling or standing just behind the lake and the seminary chapel and buildings...
...The people had been going in and out of the chapel...
...I of the seminarians, the words of the celebrant-the say I saw these things with my own eyes, because, as Legate himself-and the sermon of Cardinal Hayes, a reporter, I often am obliged, like all who write for to those beyond the inner fringe of the multitude...
...Such gigantesque figures of speech and crowds of the Jews were tramping in from every side enormous if vague symbols of comparison have at least at the command of Caesar...
...things-the sea, the stars, mountains, the rising and As a Catholic layman trying my best to express what the setting of the sun, how much harder to write about I believe to be in the hearts and minds and souls of the Him Who is Simplicity Itself...
...the heat of the day, thing of deadly perill Would that multitude become to which many hundreds succumbed-all this was fora mob...
...their blood in many martyrdoms, tracing the paths of " `Introibo ad altare Dei...
...A little sister of a the Irish whose seed has been flung by the raging winds Franciscan order, standing by my side, smiling, but of persecution to all the shores of the world, seed praying, fought the storm by throwing holy water which, watered by the tears of exile, and fertilized by against it in a sign of the cross...
...Nor were there any signs of panic Meanwhile, the aspect of nature had changed...
...Columbus, showing in a tableau the great Genoese who So I wrote, after I had witnessed the return of the brought the Faith to America...
...Would the gotten, or ignored, or never noticed at all...
...But my work followed me into the thousand years, and as they will be said (so all chapel, where perhaps a score or two of others were Catholics believe) until the end of the world...
...a delegation of firemen and policemen from New the church swarmed into it for shelter, and crowded York, and the members of the Catholic Club of the underneath the press shelter...
...Then a float among a group of members of graph service, a calm, cool man, quieted some women the Ancient Order of Hibernians-ancient indeed, who showed signs of panic, with reasonable words, these Irishmen, in their proud heritage of religion- and by the force of his example...
...I returned physical synthesis of Americanism was there, and then to a place under the canvas that sheltered the functioning in the highest act of humanity-praise of telegraph operators, and at once began to write my God, adoration of Divinity, and consecration of self newspaper despatches, the chief of the staff of oper- to God and their fellow human beings...
...With the minimum towered in its pure New England simplicity and noof ritualistic ceremony the Host was taken from the bility and beauty above the open-air altar...
...the reporters at Mundelein were wretchedly cared for...
...Then came the Legate...
...The latter were parked by the hundreds magnetism which such enormous assemblies exert even of acres all about the seminary grounds...
...I saw the Papal Legate take the Host from things...
...Would reverence become riot...
...There was no place arranged for them to view of the old Puritan church of Lyme, Connecticut-one the procession...
...It will, both at the stadium in Chicago, and at Mundeleinof course, be merely a fragment among many, many was the efficiency of its management...
...Some day, perhaps, somebody hand, I have heard the management condemned as may collect the best fragments of that gigantic story...
...The among the people through whom the Host was borne...
...One jour- upon those who dislike great crowds, or even fear nalist among the many hundreds present had looked them...
...played about the yellow roses on the altar...
...architects, builders, teachers, engineers, farmers, work" `To God, who giveth joy to my youth,' responded ers of all possible kinds-all sorts and conditions of one of the celebrant's assistants...
...The Legate on the altar were glad and golden...
...Every second of the day they are being solitude, those three most gracious things which are so somewhere said, as they have been said for nearly two hard to find...
...All day long Blessed Sacrament was offered up in the open air...
...If significance they possessed when uttered that day at it is hard, and so it is, to write about the great, simple Mundelein...
...I will go in unto the altar self-sacrifice and devotion to the highest interests of of God.' others than themselves...
...The sunshine went out through the sacristy, entering a lane cleared poured down a benediction of joy...
Vol. 4 • July 1926 • No. 9
