In the midst of all of our 170th Anniversary celebrations this weekend, with the special Mass and reception as well as the visit from Bishop Sartain, it dawned on me that on the personal side of life, my sister Linda was flying in from New Jersey to visit my family this week. It also dawned on me that I spend so much time talking about my fourteen year old brother from my father's second marriage that I often forget to mention that I have three older siblings in my family as well: my sister Linda is the oldest, my brother Mike is second, my brother Ben is third and I am the youngest of the original four.

Now as for my sister Linda, every time I think about her life in New Jersey, I twist around a passage from the second chapter of John's Gospel and I act like the apostle Nathanial when I say to her, "Can anything good come from New Jersey?" A couple times in life I have made that joke, only to find out that someone from New Jersey was actually attending the Mass I was celebrating and I ended up with egg all over my face. As for my sister, she moved to the Garden State about a decade ago, bought a house and has lived there ever since.

In relation to my family, Linda takes very seriously the role of being the oldest sibling of the family. I think Linda is the model for the sociologist Alfred Adler, who must have had Linda in mind when describing the characteristics of the oldest child. Adler defines the oldest sibling as the natural leader of the siblings and the one who takes charge among the other children. The oldest child often serves as the de facto baby sitter, chief bottle washer and head of the house when the parents are gone. In my sister's case, she played this role to a tee. On the farm on which I lived, my sister was responsible for taking care of the flower and vegetable gardens and working with my mother inside the house. When my mother passed away twenty years ago, Linda took it upon herself to spend extra time with my father during his time of grief. This was a responsibility that Linda took very seriously, a responsibility for which she should be commended.

That said, I was thinking about the kind of relationship our 170 year parish enjoys with the parish one mile up the street, St. Raymond's Cathedral. In 1919, these two churches were designated as "sister parishes," due to the fact that an architect names Charles Wallace built both St. Patrick's and St. Raymond's churches at the same time and in an identical way.

As the story goes, St. Patrick's Church used to be located on Broadway Street (where the current Victory Center Retirement Center is located. Note from editor: after the homily was preached this weekend, a parishioner found an oil painting of the original St. Patrick's Church on Broadway Street hanging in their house and donated it to the parish). As soon as he was assigned to the parish as her ninth pastor in 1917, Monsignor Philip Kennedy (who served our parish for 44 years) chose to move the location of the parish a few blocks west on Marion Street after receiving a parcel of land as a gift from the families of Sr. Grace Henneberry (the current Business Manger of St. Paul's in Joliet) and Bishop Roger Kaffer. The story is told that Monsignor Kennedy asked the Kaffer family so many times for parcels of land that the Kaffers chose to move blocks away from the church so that the good monsignor would stop asking them for more property. Bishop Kaffer confides in me how he still passes by the parish in a spirit of nostalgia, reflecting on his childhood days in Joliet.

Once the land was transferred to our parish, the construction of both St. Ray's and St. Pat's took place simultaneously. In 1950, when the Diocese of Joliet was established by Pope Pius XII, the leaders of the area decided to choose St. Raymond's as their Cathedral Parish, due to its central location within the city. That said, the architects in 1950 constructed a cathedral around the structure of the old church, providing us with the present Cathedral we enjoy today.

The fact is that St. Raymond's Cathedral is better known to the diocese than St. Patrick's. St. Raymond's is larger and is much more affluent. But in my reflection of this weekend's celebrations, I came to the conclusion that the role that St. Patrick's serves in this diocese is that of the "older sister" who cares for her siblings in the same manner that Linda cared for the Jankowski kids. I thought to myself how, in 1838, Martin Van Buren was serving our country as the eighth president of the United States (1837-1841) and the city in which we live was still called "Juliet" instead of "Joliet." During this time, the immigrants flocked to the Joliet area to offer their services to the Rock Island Railroad and the barges that passed through the Des Plaines River in Joliet. So many immigrants came from Europe that the need arose to offer the sacraments to such a diverse group of people. During this time, the immigrants came from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland and many countries in between.

So in 1838, Bishop Gabriel Bruté of Vincennes, Indiana sent a newly ordained priest named Francis Plunkett out into the middle of this vast territory to serve the faithful on horseback. Traveling on horse as far north as Bensenville and as far south as Kankakee, Fr. Plunkett's responsibility was to serve the needs of the immigrants who lived in this area and realized the need to build a church for the faithful. Unfortunately, Fr. Plunkett died suddenly only after two years of ministry when he fell off his horse during a blistery winter in 1840. Since that time, sixteen pastors have succeeded Fr. Plunkett in the ministry of the parish.

In 1850, Fr. George Hamilton (the George Hamilton without the luxurious tan) decided to start the first Catholic School in the basement of the church building on Broadway Street, serving the needs of the immigrant children that lived in the area. Fr. George was ahead of his time, so much so that he decided to rename the church in 1850 to the Church of… you guessed it… St. George. The Church took on this name for eight years until Fr. Patrick Farrelly came to the parish and, ironically enough, renamed the parish back to St. Patrick, a title which we have kept to this day. (As I was reading the parish's history, I was starting to wonder if each of the succeeding pastors was going to change the name parish after themselves.)

Because of the strong resolve of this one parish, I started to realize how our little church on Marion and Willow can be symbolized as the seed of life from which the Italian faithful moved and started their own Church, St. Anthony's. From this seed, the Slovenians moved from the parish and created St. Joseph's, the Croatians built St. Mary Nativity and the Germans built St. Raymond's. The ethnical diversity that made itself evident in the late 1800s was the result of one parish and the one God that took root in this city and allowed the area to grow.

Our parish has endured its difficult times as well. In the last 170 years, our faithful have suffered through a Civil War, a Spanish-American War, two World Wars, as well as a Korean and Vietnam conflict. Our parish has educated the future Archbishop of Dubuque Iowa, the future Bishop of Davenport, Iowa, over thirty documented priests and over forty documented religious. Our community has educated thousands of children in our Catholic School System and thousands of Masses have been celebrated by the faithful attached to this community.

Normally on the weekend of Trinity Sunday, I would focus on the theme of the spirit of love that bonds a husband and wife reflects the love of the Spirit that bonds the heavenly Father and Son in an infinitely stronger way. In light of our parish's anniversary, though, I would like to focus this image on the one of sisterhood and the bond that exists between the parishes within the diocese herself.

Bishop Sartain once preached that the diocese is only as strong as the bond that exists between the parishes within. I would like to think that the bond that exists between St. Patrick's and St. Ray's is like that of two sisters that love each other in a tremendous way. For our anniversary Mass, Fr. Brad Baker (excuse me, the Very Reverend Brad Baker, the new rector of the Cathedral) was kind enough to allow us to borrow some chasubles, vessels and other accoutrements from their parish so that we could celebrate our anniversary in a festive way. I would like to think that this same relationship of sisterhood could be said about all of our parishes in the diocese working together, because as all of the members of the diocese must recognize each other as brothers and sisters in the name of God, so our parishes must look at each other in the same way.

I also reflect on how this "big sister" called St. Patrick's was able to keep this family together during her formative years and should take a sense of pride that the children in the family have grown up well and have prospered. Our parish played out her role well - we helped the other parishes establish themselves by allowing the seed of the diocese to be planted first on Broadway Street and later here on Marion and Willow Street. Our parish is a reminder of the results of raising the children well in the practices of faith and the fruits that are produced from such practices.

As your pastor, I see my role as your husband and you are my bride. As with the sixteen priests that came before me, it is my responsibility and honor to love you, to protect you and to make sure that you are safe and directed towards the diving presence of God. I love my bride; I love you. And no matter what has happened in the past and what may lie ahead in the future, it is my wish that I may continue to love you to the best of my ability and to offer this love unconditionally. This is what a good husband should always do for his wife. This is what brothers and sisters should do for each other. May we continue to prosper as a Catholic community in the years ahead and may we continue to share the story of St. Patrick's with the people that we meet. This is how we serve as the "big sister" in the diocese of Joliet.

And this is our prayer.