St Lawrence... and Trajan: Studies in Victory

The idea of the blog is to let a few interested folks follow my short Sabbatical in Rome, and at the moment the primary focus for me is the Station Churches that are part of a pilgrimage for the faithful during Lent.  It is a very ancient practice going back over 1600 years, but only revived in the course of this last generation after falling into disuse.  For me to be here during Lent, and to be able to participate in the pilgimage every morning to the Station churches is a great blessing... and to con-celebrate the Mass there every morning is even better.

This is the road inside the Pontifical North American College grounds that takes me down to the main gate... can't really see the road very well yet, can you?  Me neither.

Its still too dark to take a picture when I leave, but it is getting lighter every day - as you can see in the colour of the sky.


This pic is taken on my way back home pointing back up the low incline hill... although at the end of the walk it seems so much steeper.

The actual seminary is on the left.  The little blue grounds keeper on the right, and his team, keep the place immaculate. The building at the end of the road is where I am staying.  It is called Casa O'Toole... funny name for a Casa in Italy, no?  But I'm part Irish, so I'm good with it.

Casa O'Toole

My room is on what appears to be the third floor... the two windows in the centre, to the left of the open window.  But it only appears to be the third floor.  When you get in the elevator, and in all the bulletins and internal correspondence it is actually the FIRST floor.  The entrance is called -1, the main floor on which you would find the Chapel and where we eat (refectory) is called level 0 and I am ... you guessed it, on the 1st floor.  It used to be a psychiatric care centre, which may explain the numbering?

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In any case, today I left about 05:55 for a 07:00 Mass at St. Lawrence in Panisperna.  Don't let the Panisperna part confuse you.  Its the name of the street / section of the city where you find the Church... but it has meaning, as all names do.  In fact the street name came afterward.  Panis is the Latin word for bread.  There is a famous Catholic hymn called Panis Angelicus which talks about Christ as the Bread of Angels, or the Manna / Bread that came down from heaven. Sperna is ham, and Panisperna refers to the diaconal distribution of bread and ham to the poor on 10 August every year on the feast day of St. Lawrence, the Deacon... the day he was martyred in 258 AD.

I will talk a bit more about his martyrdom in a moment, but for now I will point out something I saw along the way which was quite dramatic and took me by surprise.  I was making my way toward the Church and was still a good 15 minutes away when I decided to take a short cut.  (See how daring I am getting?)  Taking a different path from the one you know can be enlightening and, in this case, pleasantly surprising.  I was winding my way around yet another ancient church that is under restoration and on the other side of it I saw this:

... and then I looked up, and I saw THIS:

It is Trajan's Column.  You have to get up close to it to fully appreciate it.  Look:

Now scroll up to the full picture and imagine this kind of detailed carving spiralling all the way from the bottom of Trajan's Column to the top.  Wow!  Its amazing, really.  It is a victory column, finished in 113 AD, telling the story of Trajan's victory in the Dacian Wars (101-102 and 105-106 AD).  There are actually winding stairs inside so that one could climb to the top... not that I would want to these days.

That is how Trajan commemorated his victories in war.  A little way away there is a Church dedicated to St. Lawrence which commemorates a different kind of victory.  A victory that looks for all the world like miserable defeat.

Not being Aug 10 today, there was no free bread and ham being distributed, but something better.  The approach to this ancient church looks like this:

... but only after you are through the gate into this courtyard.  I didn't go in right away.  See the little door off to the right?  I went in there first.  It is a grotto built on the spot where St. Lawrence was burned to death.  Early Christians made sure that these sites were identified, remembered and that relics associated with the martyrdom were preserved.  Lawrence's friends and fellow believers marked the spot and kept the relics.  They would gather on the spot to pray.  That's how it gets preserved.  That's why I can visit it today.

Inside the church there is a depiction of the martyrdom by fire on the back wall behind the altar.  I tried to take a decent picture of it, but I'm not sure that it really turned out that well.  I couldn't take my eyes off of it.

St Lawrence, the seventh of Pope Sixtus' deacons, in the lower center is being killed by burning, stretched out on a 'gridiron', yes, grill, to be tormented.  The murderous emperor Valerian is a mere shadow in the background as the angel of the Lord descends from heaven with a martyr's crown in his hand.

Also remembered in this Chapel are the martyrs Sts Crispin and Crispinian - brothers who were missionaries in France - tortured and killed like Lawrence, with beatings and fire before being beheaded.  Their relics which were held precious by believers were brought back to Rome and placed under this altar.  I had the privilege to say Mass here as a con-celebrant in the sacred liturgy, as I do every morning.

Then at 0930 I walked to Santissima Trinita dei Pellegrini for my first 'lesson' in saying the Traditional Latin Mass.  More about that in another post.  The morning finished with another session in Moral Theology, followed by Pranzo (lunch).  I didn't make it to the afternoon session because I got caught up doing this blog post... hrmphf!