There’s an old Shakespearean axiom that revenge begets revenge. That’s as true today as it was 500 years ago. And the parishioners at one Chicago parish have decided to do something about it:

Violence can happen anywhere. But when Israel Morales, a neighborhood organizer and parishioner at St. Nicholas of Tolentine Parish on Chicago’s Southwest Side, was gunned down this summer near the church, community members decided they had to do something.

The first thing they did was have a Mass outside, near where Morales was killed. Since then, the parish has had three more street Masses, with another set for Sept. 27, all on blocks where violence has occurred.

The first Masses drew 120 to 150 people; one in late August had more than 200 in the congregation.

“There’s something in the ancient ritual of reconsecrating ground that has been violated in some way,” Father Stan Rataj, the pastor, told The Catholic New World, Chicago’s archdiocesan newspaper. “I think it makes a statement to the people.”

Father Rataj and the associate pastor, Father Roger Diaz, take turns as the main celebrant of the bilingual Masses, although both are at all of them.

“We saw how the people came out and participated,” said Maggie Perales, a parishioner and organizer with the Southwest Organizing Project. “Because of the work that I do, I talk to a lot of people. It’s hard to get people to surface. They live in fear. I feel like families are isolated and don’t know where to go.”

They might not want to speak out because the ones causing trouble are their neighbors’ children, or because they don’t want troublemakers to take revenge, she said. But they will come to Mass.

“The Mass itself is sacred,” she said. “They feel comfortable coming out for that.”

The link has more on this remarkable effort to bring Christ, literally, to the streets.

Photo: by Karen Callaway, Catholic New World