I step off the boardwalk into the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and am immediately met by a sea of slot machines and blackjack tables. Everything from the lighting and the spinning reels of cherries, lemons and bars to the signage seems designed to make you feel overwhelmed, lost and ready to keep on gambling. I walk down a corridor of luxury brand purses, perfume and clothing stores meant to tempt the lucky few who come out ahead. When I round the corner I see three women religious descending the escalator in gray and black habits. I know I am in the right place.
“The Wedding of the Sea” is advertised on a large screen in the Hard Rock Etess Arena. In Las Vegas, people celebrate a wedding, or two, every night. Here in Atlantic City, the biggest wedding party happens once a year on the Feast of the Assumption.
The Etess Arena was originally a part of the Trump Taj Mahal, and the stage has featured everyone from Elton John and Bob Dylan to Beyonce and the Backstreet Boys. But on this warm morning of Aug. 15, over 2,000 Catholics gather in the arena for Mass, celebrated by Bishop Dennis Sullivan of Camden for Atlantic City’s 56th annual Wedding of the Sea. After Mass, the 79-year-old bishop will be rowed out into the Atlantic Ocean and throw a wreath of flowers into the water, memorializing the city’s “marriage” to the sea on which its economy and people depend.
The tradition was brought to this coastal city by Italian immigrants in the 1800s but dates back to 1000 A.D. in Venice. In that year, the doge of Venice memorialized his kingdom’s newly achieved maritime dominance by throwing a ring into the Adriatic Sea. In 1173, the ceremony was fixed on the Feast of the Ascension, and in 1177, Pope Alexander III gave the doge of the city a blessed ring for the ceremony in gratitude for a peace treaty that ended a long struggle between the Venetian empire and Rome and asked that the doge and his successors “marry” the sea again each year.
How the ceremony was moved from the Feast of the Ascension to the Feast of the Assumption when it crossed the Atlantic remains a bit murky, but legend has it that in the 15th century, a bishop was traveling from Venice and, when faced with choppy waters, threw his episcopal ring into the sea and the waters became calm.
This year is Bishop Sullivan’s last wedding ceremony before his retirement as the head of the Camden diocese. Before moving from his native New York, the Bronx-born bishop had never heard of the tradition. But he has always connected the Feast of the Assumption with the sea. Every year on Aug. 15, his Irish-born mother would take him and his three siblings to Orchard Beach in the Bronx. “I have a very vivid memory of one year: It was beastly hot, and my mother threw us all in the bathtub,” he told me shortly before Mass. “It was too hot to go to the beach. You had to be in the water.”
Today, he sees the value of the Italian tradition as an expression of what Pope Francis has described, and praised, as “popular religion.” “This connects [people] to God, it connects them to the church. It certainly connects them to Mary. There’s a great religious atmosphere around the whole thing.”
The day’s events are put on by St. Monica’s, a parish that includes the three Catholic churches in Atlantic City. Its pastor, the Rev. Kevin Mohan, serves as master of ceremonies. I asked if he ever heard people express concern about celebrating Mass in the middle of a casino. He has heard comments, but he said, “To me, I think it’s fitting. For one thing, the casinos and more broadly the hospitality industry are a very important part of life in the city here. So many of my parishioners work in many different capacities in the casinos and the hotels. So in that sense, it’s not something that we’re ashamed of.”
It’s only the second year that the Mass has been held in this location. For years it was held in the Atlantic City Convention Hall, and a smaller celebration took place in St. Michael’s, one of the parish churches, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Father Mohan even saw the Hard Rock Hotel in particular as a fitting venue:
How many longing cries have been belted out from that stage with or without realizing that God is the fulfillment of all desire? And here we are and God is feeding us with the bread from heaven, and it’s commemorating God drawing the Blessed Virgin Mary up to himself, which is the fullness of God’s generous response to the desires that he placed within us. So there’s something not only acceptable but very, very fitting.
The people streaming into the arena certainly are not bothered by the setting. To the left of the large stage is a statue of the Virgin Mary. Before Mass begins, Catholics stick dollar bills to her dress, another Italian tradition. But what started as an Italian celebration has changed with the population of Atlantic City. The opening procession features two young Latinos carrying a banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, women in traditional Filipino dress and several Black men dressed in the regalia of the Knights of St. John.
In his homily, Bishop Sullivan reminds us that in the encyclical “Laudato Si’,” Pope Francis says that Mary is “the queen of all creation.” “So we ask her today to look on this ocean, God’s creation, so critical to this city, and on all who use it,” he said. “We ask her to look with maternal love and to help us do all we can to protect and preserve this magnificent gift of creation, the Atlantic Ocean.”
Though he didn’t say it, the bishop might also have asked Mary to keep that ocean calm today, because it would soon be time for him to get to the boat.
After Mass, we make our way back through the maze of slot machines and card tables to watch the statue of Mary process down the boardwalk. Presumably because of the sizable amount of cash stuck to her, she is escorted by several members of the Atlantic City Police Department in addition to nuns, priests, knights and dames. After she is placed next to a pathway to the beach fittingly called Virginia Ave, we head to the water for the main event.
To my surprise, the bishop is not in some motorized seafaring vessel, but in the small wooden lifeguard boat. Dressed in a white robe and carefully donning his violet zucchetto, Bishop Sullivan is rowed out against the incoming surf by two lifeguards. While I am told the bishop has never been knocked out of the boat, several people mention to me an iconic photo from a few years back when the boat appears to be perfectly vertical to the water.
Thankfully, the breakers aren’t too rough today, and when the bishop gets about 50 yards out, he throws the wreath of flowers and blesses the ocean. Immediately people start filling bottles with salty water to use as holy water should the need for it arise. I notice a college-age couple who are filling up multiple glass containers. Thomas has come from Haddon Township, 50 miles across the state. He is fourth-generation Italian and told me that his family comes every year, so he wanted to introduce his girlfriend, Jamie, to the tradition. He says the holy water he gets on the Feast of the Assumption is “the best there is,” and when I ask what he has used it for, he replies: “I just used it all around. Anything I need it for. That’s why I come with a big bottle.”
Jessica and her grandmother, Rita, have traveled to Atlantic City from outside of Philadelphia. Rita has made it to the shore for the Feast of the Assumption since she was a girl. Back then, she says, she didn’t know about Venice, the doge and the ring. “My mother just said, put your feet in the water and you’ll be healthy,” she tells me. When Jessica’s grandfather was alive, he would take her—and whoever else in the family he could grab—to the Wedding of the Sea, seeking to pass down tradition. After he passed away, Jessica promised her grandmother she would take her to the seaside wedding every year. “I think the funniest part is there’s people on the beach, and they have no idea that there’s going to be the attack of the little Italian ladies,” Rita said. “And we all rushed down there and they have no idea what’s going on.”
After filling up my own plastic bottle, I head up to the boardwalk where I chat with Sister Ann Kateri, one of the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal I saw descending the escalator before Mass. In addition to the feast day, Sister Ann is celebrating the eighth anniversary of the sisters’ arrival in Atlantic City at the invitation of Bishop Sullivan. (“The best thing I did in my 11 years,” the bishop told me.) The sisters came to work with the poor, of which there are many here. Stray far from the boardwalk and you will encounter a struggling city. Opioid use and prostitution are rampant, Sister Ann, whose community runs a drop-in center and homeless shelter, tells me.
I ask what this feast means for her and her ministry. “It really is a feast of hope that our Blessed Mother rose body and soul into heaven,” she said. “And she’s there. She precedes us. That’s what we’re aiming for. That’s what we’re hoping for.
“It’s a reminder, first, to me, of body and soul here in Atlantic City—where the body is just a vehicle of pleasure in so many ways. [It is a reminder] that it is integrated, that we are a body-soul union and of the importance of the dignity of our body. [And it is a reminder,] for me personally, to try to live that out in the way that we serve the people. But really [it’s a reminder] that Mary is our hope, that she is the answer to the complexities. I can’t solve the homelessness here. I can’t solve the poverty. But I turn to her. I entrust the people that I serve to her.”
