(OSV News) ─ Immaculate Conception Church, a handsome, 19th-century red-brick edifice near the Mississippi River, hosts a weekly Mass on late Saturday afternoons.
That is absolutely nothing new. Regular Mass has been held in Kaskaskia, 75 miles southeast of St. Louis, at least since 1714, when a simple stone church was built.
But even more remarkable than the church's longevity is that it still thrives even after Kaskaskia basically disappeared.
The first capital of the state of Illinois with 7,000 people in 1818, the town suffered a terrible flood in 1881 that cast it adrift, creating a new island. Other floods followed including a particularly devastating one in 1993 that partially wrecked the church and further depopulated the town.
Once east of the Mississippi and part of Illinois, Kaskaskia now sits west of the river and is accessible through a bridge from Missouri. Still belonging to Illinois, the island is down to fewer than two dozen residents and a handful of homes, sheds and barns. Most of the time, aside from the singing at weekly Mass, the only sound to be heard on the island is the rumbling hum of the barges plying the Mississippi.
Yet most Saturdays 100 worshippers or so, most of them whose parents and grandparents were once parishioners, crowd into the church. After Mass, people linger and talk before crossing the bridge off the island and returning to their widely scattered homes. They also gather at the church for the occasional funerals, baptisms and weddings and a festive late summer picnic to raise funds for the church's upkeep.
Old Man River keeps on rolling, destroying towns and breaking apart communities. But Immaculate Conception has been too beloved and cherished to not save and continue.
"It's an honor and an obligation to preserve the church," said Emily Lyons, who turned 90 Aug. 22. Her ancestors arrived in the area in the early 1700s and have attended the church for centuries.
The church is special for another reason beyond its resiliency. It grew out of a mission founded in northern Illinois for the Kaskaskia people on Easter Sunday in 1675 by the legendary French Jesuit missionary Father Jacques Marquette, who died a short time later. The mission was moved downstate around 1700 when the tribe migrated south.
Lyons penned a detailed history of the church and island a quarter of a century ago. A decade before that, in 1993, when the levee was breached and the floodwaters lifted pews off the floor and rose 9 feet, filling the old-fashioned elevated pulpit, she helped lead its restoration.
These days she gladly leads church tours. Not long ago, "a young couple from California came. They said, 'Our grandparents talk about the church all the time. We wanted to see it for ourselves,'" recounted Lyons, lively and peppy despite her age.
There is a lot to see and appreciate in the cozy church, which seats 150. The altar stone is believed to have been brought to the New World by Father Marquette himself. The wooden altar, hand-carved out of native black walnut and cottonwood, dates from 1736. The lithographs of the Stations of the Cross on the walls were painted in Germany by artisans in the 1800s and then framed in butternut mahogany carved at Kaskaskia.
The church is so old that the normal sense of time is upended. A British soldier once saluted the church's grandeur, Lyons told OSV News. He hailed "the venerable old altar." But he wrote that after the French and Indian War (1754 to 1763) ─ in 1766.
The church sits next door to an intriguing slice of history. A quaint brick building, the Kaskaskia Bell State Memorial holds the "Liberty Bell of the West," the counterpart to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. In 1741, King Louis XV of France shipped the bell with the inscription "Pour Leglise Des Illinois P Arles Soins Duroi Doutre Lea" ("For the Church of the Illinois, by the gift of the King across the water"). The bell was joyously rung on July 4, 1778, when Patriot military leader George Rogers Clark (the older brother of William of the Lewis and Clark expedition) captured Kaskaskia from the British for the American colonies.
The 1993 flood destroyed Lyons' farmhouse, and the church is a 20-minute drive from her current residence. Likewise, most worshippers come from 5 to 20 miles away for Saturday Mass.
Mary Ellen Brown, who, like Lyons, can rattle off a slew of church-related historical dates and events, now lives 5 miles away in St. Mary, the small town in Missouri near the bridge that leads to Kaskaskia.
Her grandparents settled here basically yesterday ─ in 1914. "We're German, not from the French fur trappers," said Brown, who will turn 69 on Aug. 31. She is an authentic cradle-to-grave Catholic. When she was a baby, her mom, busy at the church and lacking a crib, would place her in a large empty food bowl.
The church's long history makes it precious to her. "So we can't quite compare to the Spanish missions. But we're pretty darn close," she told OSV News. But it's people's longstanding ties to the church that mean the most. "If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, 'My grandmother grew up here.'"
The flood of 1993 nearly doomed the church. As fate would have it, the day then-Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville visited the parish to assess its future a terrific storm erupted. The tent that had been set up blew over. "He told us, 'These clouds have been following me the whole day,'" Brown recalled. "Maybe that was an omen and led him to reconsider."
Ultimately, the Diocese of Belleville designated it as a chapel, instead of a parish. Worshippers such as Lyons were tasked with overseeing the church, raising funds for maintenance and securing priests for weekly Mass.
Year after year, members have had to scramble to find priests to fill up the Mass slots. They use mostly retired priests and sometimes religious order priests. Once they celebrate Mass there for the first time, getting them to return to the church is usually not difficult. "They come to appreciate it and love it," said Brown.
However historic Immaculate Conception is, it's like any other church in its appeal to worshippers. "This is the place I go to talk to God," explained Lyons. "Some people go to psychologists or whatever. This is where I renew my faith."
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Jay Copp writes for OSV News from Illinois.
