Praying the Steps (continued)
As pastor, Father Parks remembered that he followed an established devotional procedure or horarium that drew people into participation. Just before midnight on Holy Thursday he arrived at Holy Cross-Immaculata Church. Two acolytes joined him at that time directly outside the front door of the church which faced out over the quiet night lights of Cincinnati. One acolyte carried a procession cross. The other carried holy water. Together they walked down the one hundred and twenty-five steps to the street below. There a prayer service took place. "There would be, probably, a five-minute reflection in terms of what we're about and what we were going to be doing for the next twenty-four hours. I tried" recalled Father Parks "to tie it in spiritually with Christ's love for us."
Father Parks was inspired by what happened next. About two hundred or three hundred people had gathered below and almost all would follow him and the acolytes back up the steps as they said the Rosary. Each step Father Parks remembers how he would "stop to say a Hail Mary or an Our Father and the people would recite that with me. But I would go up about 50 to 70 steps and look back, and what started out as three hundred people would be five or six hundred." By the time he was at the top of the church entrance once again he found "there could be eight or nine hundred people there. And again, all ages. This was not just an old timers nostalgia spirituality of the past. There were a lot of young people. A lot of families." The whole Holy Thursday ritual took about one hour. And it took place whether "there were snow flurries or a heavy rain, but, honest to God, every year, the people would be there at the bottom of the steps. And that would continue for twenty-four hours." It ended at midnight on Good Friday. One of the more memorable moments was his going into the Holy Cross-Immaculata Church sanctuary where in silence he "could hear the Hail Marys and the Our Fathers. And they would come in, and they would start passing that along. So, once the priest was in the church, there were laity who would continue to recite the decades of the Rosary, and so forth." Even in the late 1970s or in the 1980s there was a whole segment of the pilgrims that would start praying the steps down at the Ohio River. That was where "the old timers" started to pray the steps. The steps from the Ohio River up to the front door of the church was close to four hundred steps. In all the years that he was there Father Parks never recalls using a microphone system outside. He could always count on the strong voice of those making the steps to maintain the ritual of prayer.
As I listened to Father Parks my historical intuition made me come to the quick conclusion that this was essentially a Rosary Devotion. He agreed but then offered insights on the storied history of making the steps that made me realize that there was and still is so much yet to learn about this Mt Adams, Cincinnati devotion. Like so many aspects of Passionist history in the United States it could easily become the topic of a Ph.D. dissertation.
General belief is that Immaculata parish was built by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. It is said that when Archbishop John Baptist Purcell was returning home from the First Vatican Council in 1870 he got caught in a terrible storm. In the midst of riding out that storm he promised Our Blessed Mother, if he survived, that he would build a shrine in her name. While Father Parks thinks there is a grain of truth to this, he also stated that it is important to remember that priests of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati actually staffed Immaculata for ten years before the Passionists arrived on the scene in 1871. In fact, when they did arrive one of the stipulations was that their being given permission to build a monastery on Mt. Adams was dependent on their willingness to staff Immaculata parish. It probably was helpful that some of the early Passionists had experience with German immigrants on the South Side of Pittsburgh at St. Michael's Parish so ministering to Germans at Immaculata Church would have been a suitable transfer of assignment.
Father Parks told me that while the church actually owned the steps property it was, as far as he knew, the city of Cincinnati that had built the cement steps circa 1910. He then added another interesting caveat. He believes that there is also a story that making the steps might have had its origins just prior to the Civil War in 1861. This is backed up by old newspapers—some of which were anti-Catholic—that described the Good Friday devotion in the late 1800s. Other information was found in parish archives or commented upon in journals from parishioners that lived at Immaculata or Holy Cross at the time. One thought behind this was that there was a common sense of prayer on the part of the local people to avert the Civil War. They "would begin to come up the hill to pray even as they were just building Immaculata Church. And so, the foundations were laid. But, there were many times in the three to five years to build the church that, either Holy Week or during Lent, Catholics would begin to come up that dirt path, up the hill. And then, of course, there was wooden steps put in at one point. And we had the tram, which was from downtown Cincinnati." It came up to the top of Mt. Adams about three blocks from Immaculata. A focal point was the huge crucifix that stood outside the church for many years. "And that is still there today, and people would pay their respect there before they would go into the church on Good Friday."
Neither did Father Parks underestimate the fact that the whole devotion of praying the steps probably allowed the German Catholics to remember their pilgrim homeland devotions in Bavaria. It was a kind of local religious festival where "as immigrants they would feel as if they were at home; transference of an immigrant culture into a modern culture." Over the years he remembered visitors from Europe feeling very much at home when they prayed the steps.
The more that Father Parks reflected on this historic devotion of making the steps the more that it became apparent that the Passionists had become identified with it for two reasons. First and foremost had been the fact that the Passionists had been synonymous with Holy Cross-Immaculata even though they did leave the parish on Mt. Adams in 1996. Given their century old time on the hill, it was only natural that anyone growing up there would think of the Passionist connection to making the steps even if it proved true that they had inherited the tradition. But the second reason is all important as well. The Passionists considered this Holy Thursday to Good Friday devotion not to be a burden since the founder of the Passionists, St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), desired to promote an understanding of the healing and redemptive ministry of Jesus through his death and resurrection. In fact, this devotion was a perfect fit into dynamics of Passionist spirituality.
Part of the strength of making the steps was that pilgrims did not end their devotion at Immaculata. Again Father Parks: "And then they would trek up to Holy Cross Church. [They went to] 'The Grotto'. And they would go down there to pray as well. So, it would be to Immaculata, be refreshed, and then they would continue up to Holy Cross Church, and down underneath the monastery was 'The Grotto.' And, supposedly, there were many miracles and cures of people. There were, you know, literally hundreds of crutches....and that's really how I think the people, especially in the metropolitan area of Cincinnati, came to know and love the Passionists." Father Parks thought that "probably 90 percent, at least, were Catholic. They would come from northern Kentucky; the metropolitan area of Cincinnati; as far away as Cleveland, Ohio; as far south as Nashville [Tennessee]. Each year, those families that would come would check in. We would have coffee and donuts for them and for all who prayed the steps over that twenty-four hour period."
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