Some hundred years ago, Bishop Hoban invited the Passionists into the Diocese and he offered them a prominent site to build a church and Monastery. Denis R. McNamara, assistant director of the Liturgical Institute of the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois, wrote: "Why and how churches stand out: A church, ed said, is generally the highest status building in an area of neighborhood, which means it’s given a prominent site, it has a distinctive architecture that’s different from the commercial architecture or the residential architecture that’s around it. There are certain shapes, like the basilican plan, or the high peaked roof, that we have in our cultural memory as a sign of church."

Today, St. Ann’s Basilica Parish still stands out as identifiable landmark as a place of Church with a capital C. For what is the Church? It’s the community of believers who come together to take part in this special identity of the church over 2,000 years, and then on top of that, they come together with Christ and the angels and saints who are not bound in time. That is why we use images of Christ and the saints, like that of St. Ann and the Passionist Religious. We make them present with us. As McNamara concludes in his remarks: "The church building should be the microcosm of the heavenly Jerusalem, the symbol of the idealized church that’s described in the book of Revelation."

Our history as you can see is very interesting. St. Ann’s Parish evolved from people coming to our Novena to St. Ann and a need was present to be parish priests for all the people that came to the Monastery. St. Ann’s Parish is unique in that, many people don’t move out of the parish. I was told that even when our children went to high school, other than our own, which closed in 1964, they never really played sports for the schools, but always said that they had to go back to St. Ann’s. Also, so many people remember playing on the Monastery grounds and sitting on the mound of the Grotta to St. Ann, to listen to the priests singing the Divine Office in Latin.

Life is about change. Change is good and necessary if we are to grow. However, change is hard and difficult. Remember when you used to get cramps in your legs as a child and that charlie horse caused you such pain? Well change in a parish is like a large charlie horse. St. Ann’s is having a change and it is painful for many of our people and it has to do with, the closing of our grammar school. For many reasons, from a dwindling enrollment, to a budget that cannot be met for such a small number, the school closed June 8, 2004. No pastor wants to see his school close. A pastor however is responsible to the parish, for its finances and decisions had to be made. Not everyone is happy, but in time the parish will rise to the occasion and as they say flowers will come from the ashes.

I am very hopeful. I have met so many wonderful, generous, good holy people I know that we will rise and become a parish that people will want to come to and be nourished.