The Pilgrim Virgin revisited.

I haven't seen her since high school. She stayed at the Blaesers' home on the far Southwest Side of Chicago, but only for a week. I haven't really thought about her much since the mid-'50s. So when I recently came across a short story named after this woman, I was quite surprised.

"The Pilgrim Virgin," the fifth short story by Billy Lombardo in his collection of eight stories titled The Logic of a Rose (BkMk Press) reawakened memories of growing up in Catholic Chicago several years before Vatican II, including the Pilgrim Virgin's weeklong visit to my neighborhood.

Devotion to the Pilgrim Virgin combined two interrelated pillars of the pre-Vatican II church: devotion to Mary through the rosary and a fierce anti-communism. The rosary, of course, was the premier symbol of Catholicism, often outdistancing the Mass and sacraments in popular practice. And the fierce struggle against godless communism was front and center in Catholic consciousness back then. Mary herself told Catholics everywhere, through her appearances at Fatima, Portugal, to pray the rosary daily for the conversion of Russia. Whether that conversion was to wrest souls away from Russian Orthodox Christianity or from communism was never particularly clear.

Billy Lombardo's story "The Pilgrim Virgin" relates the coming of this statue to his childhood home, a modest apartment above Dressel's Bakery in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood. The rosary is prayed complete with the prayer between its decades, "Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of thy mercy."

On opening night of the Pilgrim Virgin's run, a devastating fire breaks out in the building. A neighborhood punk's heroic actions awaken the family, and the Pilgrim Virgin is one of a few items saved from the blazing building, carried out wrapped in a blanket by the narrator's father. The statue is saved from the hellish fire that both Jesus and the Pilgrim Virgin did not stop in spite of the many supplications, "Save us from the fires of hell," prayed in front of the statue.

"She needed my father to protect her," the narrator says. The Pilgrim Virgin is saved from the fires of hell through the actions of a neighborhood thug and the narrator's dad. The simple sacredness of ordinary people outshines the public religious practice in this story.

That's but one of the many beauties of Billy Lombardo's book. The Logic of a Rose shares penetrating insights into mid-20th century American Catholicism and what really energized the faith.

After all these years I'm not too concerned when I'll next meet up with the Pilgrim Virgin. But I am looking forward to more Billy Lombardo stories.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.