My First Easter in Chicago and Why I Felt the Holy Spirit

Outside Holy Name Cathedral on Palm Sunday

As an Aussie expat in Chicago, I expected to miss the comfort of home this Easter. What I didn’t expect was to feel the Holy Spirit so clearly. Having lived in Sydney around the corner from my family my entire life, the family Easters and the accompanying traditions blur into one another. Not for lack of meaning or joyful celebration, but because of their gentle uniformity. Mass at the local suburban Church, a glass of wine on my parent’s deck under a mellow autumn sun, a home-cooked oven roast. In the two years since my father died, we have added some new traditions too, like saying and walking the stations of the cross at the cemetery, not far from my dad’s earthly home.

But Easter in Chicago was none of those things. Despite having our family on the other side of the world, it was more.

We started Holy Week with mass on Palm Sunday, and the first thing that struck me when we looked up churches on Google Maps was exactly how many options there were. Yes, we have churches in Australia, but amidst the rampant secularism, they can be more like ancient relics, dotted around the city but often with a skeleton parish and accidental social distancing resembling peak pandemic. So, imagine my surprise and delight when we walked a short fifteen minutes to Holy Name Cathedral, and it was bursting at the seams. I suppose it’s the Chicago equivalent of St Mary’s in Sydney, which is reasonably full on major feast days. But what stood out most was the vibrancy and spirit of Holy Name. Despite arriving late, the kind ushers, spotting we had a baby, guided us down to the front and squeezed us into the third row, where we had a perfect view (and a real fear that Olivia-Grace might start crying mid-Homily).

The Cardinal of Chicago prayed the mass in front of the marbled altar. Whilst we were in our tracksuits and activewear, the native Chicagoans were in their Sunday best. I hadn’t quite worked out how to dress up and stay warm in the sub five-degree climate yet! The homily was beautiful. The Prayers of the Faithful included a prayer for the unborn - that the lawmakers would legislate to protect them - a petition we had long wished (and recently asked) our parish priest in Australia to include, but he never quite got around to it. Even the mass booklets were carefully printed in full, with no scrimping on paper or colour ink. These were small details, but collectively, they helped me feel the Holy Spirit in the reverence, the ritual, and the attention poured into every part of the liturgy. For a spiritual novice like me, trying to live my faith more fully, rather than picking and choosing like some sort of cafeteria Christianity, it felt like a win. A successful Palm Sunday. Our first Mass in our new city.

Holy Week had begun with a bang on Palm Sunday, and soon enough, Good Friday was upon us. With the time zone difference and Sydney being ahead of us, I was feeling sad that I had not been a part of my family stations of the cross at the cemetery. Determined to forge our own Easter experience, I looked up stations of the cross as part of the pro-life movement, something I had been eager to discover in the US. We had a rental car, and so were able to venture further out of the city. We jumped in the car, with our handy convertible car-to-pram seat, and drove to a suburban area about forty minutes out of the city. Feeling nervous - we’d never done something like this before - we crossed train tracks and joined a group praying the Stations of the Cross outside an abortion clinic. Around thirty or forty people stood on the side of the highway, genuflecting and praying, responses said in unison. Our daughter slept in her pram and we prayed for all the babies, many of who would never get to feed or sleep or be loved by their parents in this earthly realm.

At one point I was overcome with sadness and tears welled in my eyes as I thought about the building across the road from us, where so many lives had been ended. At another point, the powerful hymn ‘Were you There’ played over the speaker, and I was able to finally hear what was going on as there was a lull in the traffic on the highway. I was moved deeply thinking about all the suffering in the world and Jesus’ death on the cross for us. And then, so unexpectedly, I was uplifted by the heart-warming toots of encouragement and thumbs up from cars driving past. Even truck drivers showed their support. Here, Christianity isn’t just subculture. It’s counterculture and mainstream.

It was a Stations of the Cross that profoundly affected me, and I couldn’t wait to share the experience with my family and close friends. Being pro-life in the US didn’t make me feel crazy or ostracised. It was normal. Of course, there were volunteers on the other side of the road, ready to usher women into the clinic, the opposite of the ushers in Holy Name Cathedral a few days earlier. Divergent views exist here, but it is not one-sided. We prayed for these volunteers too, while they scowled at us.

We left that roadside vigil with a unique mix of sadness, a sense of meaning and purpose and an even stronger appreciation for Jesus’ death for us so that every person might have the hope of eternal life.

And finally, this brings us to Easter Sunday, the pinnacle of Holy Week and a great and joyous celebration of the resurrection. Sitting in a different suburban church, worlds away from Holy Name Cathedral, we quietly reflected on Easter and listened to the Homily. Having confused Easter mass times between different parishes, we had rocked up at the very end of one mass, and so had gone and found a second church – which we had consequently arrived quite late. We were trying our best! This third prayerful experience of the week was far more like our local parish at home. The biggest difference was all of the children. Oh, the children! Whereas often Olivia-Grace was the only baby or child at mass, here we were surrounded by Catholic families with their children: making noises, running around and sometimes crying. We felt right at home. Is this what a truly Christian society looks like? Where children are welcomed and heard? Sometimes the contrasts can lead to deeper reflection and open our eyes to all of the possibilities. Following the Easter Sunday Mass, we went to a champagne brunch, feeling grateful to God for all of the blessings in our lives: new life, new home, new meaning.

So why was this first Easter in Chicago different? Perhaps it was because we had to seek out the rituals of Easter – in a new city where there was no easy route laid out by other family members al la my mum’s usual text in the family chat letting us know the mass times. Perhaps it was because I am starting to find a deeper meaning in supporting the most vulnerable babies, and giving a voice to the voiceless. Or perhaps it was because God truly resurrected our life in 2024, entrusting us with a beautiful living baby, and that has brought new depth to our understanding of Easter. Whatever the reason, whatever the convergence of earthly circumstances, one thing is certain: It is God who has the final word. Wherever we are. Alleluia.