Remembering Visitation Church

I am not a regular churchgoer, but on the last Sunday in May at the Mass marking the permanent closing of Visitation Church on Van Cortlandt Park South, a Catholic parish since 1928, I was so glad that I once was. 

An uncle of mine who is a priest once told me that one of the greatest gifts of a Sunday Mass was the sense of community that it helped build. And on Sunday as I sat among a crowd of people that overflowed out the door, many of whom had traveled from around the country to be there and most of whom no longer lived in the parish, I understood exactly what he meant. I’m sure that a good 99 percent of the people there were complete strangers to me, and probably most there could say the same, yet nobody there felt like a stranger. Quite the contrary. We were a family who had gathered again and recognized each other; a family who had come together by the same draw, a chance to honor a place, a people who had made out of us a community, a chance to say a heartbreaking goodbye. 

And yet the heartache would be like a hangover — for the next day.  Because on Sunday, the Mass itself was a joyous, pomp-filled occasion and the meet-up afterwards full of little else but laughter and good cheer.   What understandably might have been a sad lament for a loss was instead transformed into a celebration of something great once shared.  

The closing of Visitation Church proper and the merging of its parish with St. John’s on 231st Street is part of a major reorganization undertaken by the Archdiocese of New York, part of which involves a redrawing of parish boundaries to better reflect a  current situation of dwindled  church attendance in some areas.

The tone of celebration and good fortune was set by the billing of the mass as a “Mass of Thanksgiving: Church of the Visitation 1928-2014” and was beautifully carried forth in a touching and inspiring sermon by Monsignor Robert Larkin, who with 24 years in Visitation Parish has the distinction of being the longest serving priest there.  He spoke of shared experience and shared values and how Visitation lived on through us.