A Soggy Station - S. Eusebio

Yesterday was another long haul to the Station Church for our Roman Lenten Pilgrimage, Saint Eusebius, (b.260 AD - d.340 AD) the famous first Christian historian and bishop.  He wrote our Ecclesiastical History.

It was drizzling rain when I left, steadily raining at about halfway when I finished the Rosary, and a torrential downpour for the last half - kilometer.  I was soaked, my cassock was soaked and filthy at the hem, my purple stole (wet inside my backpack) had bled its colour onto my new alb and amice, and every step I took had that detestable squishing sound of shoes that have been awash in three inches of water.  The drainage system in Rome leaves a lot to be desired, that's for sure.

Taken from the porch of S. Eusebio... having just arrived in the rain.

So we sat like so many drowned rats in an feeble attempt to appreciate our surroundings and to celebrate the sacred mysteries of our redemption.  Thank God the presider at the Mass, who also gave the homily, was reverent and devout and full of faith... oh! and the schola of singers from the seminary lifted our spirits wonderfully!  They sang Sicut Cervus, my absolute favourite from Palestrina.  Please, click on the link (later) to enjoy this beautiful motet (Note: if you click the link it will take you away from this page and you will have to click the Back arrow to return, and sometimes there is an advertisement that you can click through after 5 secs).  The words are: As the deer pants for the waterbrooks, so pants my soul for Thee, O God. which is the first line of Psalm 42.  Unfortunately it is only 2 min 22 sec long... .  When they sang that during Communion, I forgot my little aquaeous misery and was transported to a drier, happier place.

The Altar Cross is draped in purple and covered for Lent

The Altar, with the earthly remains of St. Eusebius underneath.

An attempt to give you a different angle...

Fr. James and I sat and offered Morning Prayer together as the Church gradually cleared out.

I took this pic as we were leaving in the daylight and after the rain had stopped.  But I still had to walk home for 55 minutes of squish, squish, squish... but I was humming Sicut Cervus and memorizing the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar.

Upon arrival 'home', I took a hot shower, put on a wash and hoped for the best.  All is well, all the stains came out of the alb and with a little bleach the amice will lose it purple tinge.  The sun is out and my shoes are drying, perched dangerously outside on my window ledge.

Saturday should turn out to be a lovely day... but for me, a quiet day, mostly indoors.

Vatican Museum

The Vatican Museum is the third most visited museum in the world, next to the Louvre in France and the British Museum.  We were fortunate to visit on a day when it was not so crowded.  We had the privilege of being guided through the museum by Elizabeth Lev who is a remarkable art historian and a woman of faith herself.  Instead of a secular tour guide regurgitating a series of memorized facts and dates, we were treated to the theological, liturgical as well as historical significance of many of the most important pieces in the Vatican collection.  She prepared us well for the breath-taking experience of the Sistine Chapel and it is one that can never be forgotten.

This is Liz Lev in front of the Roman attempt to copy the Greek statue of 'Apollo' which was brought to Rome by Nero, which (15 centuries later) Michelagnelo used as the basis for his 'David'.

Apollos is perfectly proportioned, so exactly that no actual human can compare.  He is aloof, poised effortlessly and his gaze is of unearthly interests.  He doesn't care about you. He is saying, 'I am a Greek god, you are beneath me and can never be me.'

Michelangelo captures David in the moment before he runs to meet the challenges of Goliath, with the stone and slingshot in hand.  His body is purposefully disproportionate; his determined gaze and furrowed brow speaks of physical and moral courage for the honour of God. You can be David.

The epitome of Greek sculpture, the Laocoon, was known, but considered lost forever... but was found in a farmer's field outside of Rome buried in rubble and covered in filth, but identified as this Greek masterpiece by Michelangelo.  

And who could forget Hercules, the hero of my boyhood cartoons, but more importantly, the bronze sculpture in the center.  Also, that porphyry dish in the center of the room belongs to Nero.  He had it carved out of one piece of stone.

What is interesting about this poor sculpture which is missing all its extremities is that this torso was used by Michelangelo for the torso of Christ in the famous full wall painting of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel.

Of particular interest to me and to the priests on tour was the earliest Christian sarcophagi which, somewhat surprisingly, never depict Christ on the cross (that only happened for the first time in the 5th century in the Church of Saint Sabina - you remember? I posted a pic of that in one of my earliest posts.)  Below are two examples of many in the museum of the burial or funerary depictions of Christians on their tombs:

What do you see?  That is the fun part... trying to decipher and then interpret the carvings.  Christ himself said in the Gospel that no other sign would be given to that generation except the sign of the prophet Jonah who was in the belly of the whale/sea serpent three days and three nights.  Do you see it? Thrown overboard (on the bottom left), vomited up on shore (on the bottom right). That's also Jonah shading himself under the gourd (top right) while he waits for the destruction of Ninevah, which, meanwhile, is repenting (top center) and delivering itself from the coming wrath of God.

More fun... figure this one out:

As the Latin inscription says at the top, this is the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus a Roman prefect in 359 AD.  He holds the same position as Pontius Pilate did.  This is a series of panels telling different stories... how many can you get?  The easiest is Adam and Eve covering themselves and being expelled from the Garden of Eden (lower left inside).  How about Daniel in the lion's den (lower right inside)? The arrest of St. Peter (top left inside), the arrest of St. Paul (lower right outside). Pontius Pilate washing his hands before the Crucifixion (top right)  It is no surprise that as a Roman prefect he included this.  Look at the top left - that is the sacrifice of Isaac, prefiguring Christ's own sacrifice.

Okay, without looking here, go up and tell me what the one in the lower center is...

Did you guess the story of Nicodemus up in the sycamore tree?  Yep.  Did you notice that Christ does not have a beard in any of these panels?  It is because they wanted to depict him as eternally youthful.

Look at the top center, where you would (rightfully) expect to find Christ.  What do you see? Sorry the pic is so bad... It is the eternally youthful Christ, seated like a teacher and holding a scroll in his left hand - probably Scripture, on the side where St. Paul stands.  He is turned slightly toward St. Peter on his right who is the first among the Apostles, and he is seated over an ancient Roman river god (they are everywhere here in Rome, there is even one on this College's property) showing the triumph of Christianity over pagan philosophy and religion.

I have a ton of pictures, of course, but I feel like I should spare you most of them.  No pictures were allowed in the Sistine Chapel.  I am including a series of pics from the rooms leading into the Sistine Chapel which cover the entire wall.  They are done by Raphael who was working on some of them at the exact same moment that Michelangelo was in the next room working on the Sistine Chapel.

A quick and inadequate explanation:  This is across the room from the picture below so you have to see them as kind of in motion from the one to the other.  Notice, that this fresco of the wisdom of this world, with all of the great Philosophers represented (Plato and Aristotle in the center) has all of the lines descending.  They are walking toward something, except there is a figure running in from the left and one exiting from the right... the passing nature of human wisdom.

The truths that Socrates, Euclid and Pythagoras discovered and proclaimed all lead to the one Truth which, if you follow the steps down and across the room, start at the bottom of the fresco and move up you will see that the movement continues up, up, up.

It starts in this world and leads to the sublime mysteries of the next, centering on the dispute concerning the truth of the Blessed Sacrament... which is the one mystery of Christ's presence in this world that has a direct bearing and connection to the world of the divine, through the Holy Spirit (dove).  You caan see the mystery of the Trinity in the ascending line to the Father... with Christ flanked by St. John the Baptist on his left and the Blessed Virgin Mary on his right.

I already had the Disputation on the Blessed Sacrament in my study on one wall, so I bought a poster of the Philosophers to put on the other wall.  That way I can continue to meditate on what I saw in the room leading to the Sistine Chapel.  My only challenge will be getting it home without creasing it.

The end wall was the miraculous release of St. Peter from prison.  Raphael had just seen the Sistine Chapel for the first time and was inspired by what he saw... and wanted to out-do Michelangelo in this fresco:

Like I said... I have lots of pictures, but I spare you the whole and thank you for your patience while I recorded a few thoughts from Liz Lev so that I can come back to this blog in days to come as a reminder.

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St. Martin of Tours - Patron of Military Chaplains

The Church we walked to this morning was S. Martino ai monti.  The 'Saint Martin' part is easy... the 'ai monti' part wasn't, since it means something to the effect of 'on the mountain-top'.  It wasn't a mountain, of course, but it was a long climb up to the top of the hill where the Church is located. It is a beautiful Church and it is dedicated to several saints, including St. Martin of Tours, who is the patron saint of military chaplains.

I have to write an article for our Military Chaplain publication: Dialogue, so I got my friend to take a bunch of photos - hoping that one of them might be good enough quality to put into print.  I will just put a caption under a few of them so you know what you are looking at... besides me, that is.

The Tomb of St. Martin of Tours, as well as St. Sylvester and others.
 It is in the crypt below the high altar.

The high altar is behind me over my left shoulder.
The crypt is just behind and below where I am standing.

The tomb of St. Martin is in the crypt, just below my left elbow.

Standing in front of the painting of St. Martin of Tours and the beggar.

Before he was a Saint, Martin was a soldier.
In this painting he is giving a beggar half his cloak / cape.
Cape is the word from which we derive the word 'Chaplain'.

Good thing I got my hair cut yesterday before posing for pictures that are going to go into a Military magazine.  With all the grey hair that I am sprouting at my temples, you can't tell if it is really really short on the sides or just not visible.  The lights around this painting were so bright that it is a wonder the camera could capture anything else.

As I was standing under the main Church, near the tomb of St. Martin...

 I noticed on my left a long, gradual stairway leading into a lower section...

At the bottom of the staircase there was a series of rooms from an older building, part of a convent or monastery from a much earlier Church building on this same site:

The 'blue' wall on the left is just because it was so dark down there that my flash lit up the closest wall with light.  The floors were dirt.  From this level, there was another set of stairs going into a crypt but it was roped off.  There are still excavations going on down there.

One of the small rooms in this earlier edifice was a little chapel.  Look carefully at the walls.  You can still see the faded frescoes painted around the central mosaic figure of Mary with a miniature Pope or Prelate, an empty space where the Tabernacle would have been and altar below that.

On the altar, which was a bit broken up, there was still the Altar Stone, and within the Stone, as there must always be, was a relic from one of the Saints to whom the Chapel was dedicated.  I brushed off the dust (as you can see) and there it was.

For those of you who don't really understand this important aspect of Catholic teaching and practice, you may remember the story of Aslan in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, and the stone of sacrifice on which Aslan was slain... From the earliest of biblical times, altars were always made of stone, and when they could not be made completely of stone, there was always a stone to top it off.  This is still true in traditional Catholic worship today when the one sacrifice of Christ is re-presented to the Father on an altar of stone.

This afternoon we are going on a tour of the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel.  I can only imagine how fascinating that is going to be.

Oh, and BTW, we are going over to St. Peter's Square a little early because Queen Elizabeth II is coming by for a visit with the Pope so we are going to cheer her on... and then make our way to the Vatican Museum, etc.

More later...

On the Outside looking In

Wednesday is Papal Audience day...

Today was a Papal Audience, which means that you are invited to sit up front near the Pope during his regular Wednesday Audience in St. Peter's Square.  The special thing about this, today, is that we were recognized by the Holy Father, Pope Francis, by name:

Santo Padre:

Saluto tutti i pellegrini di lingua inglese presenti a questa Udienza, specialmente quelli provenienti da Inghilterra, Galles, Danimarca, Norvegia, Malta, Giappone, Canada e Stati Uniti. Sono lieto di accogliere la Federazione Cattolica per l’Assistenza Sanitaria negli Stati Uniti, nonché i sacerdoti dell’Istituto per la Formazione Teologica Permanente presso il Pontificio Collegio Nordamericano. Su tutti voi e sulle vostre famiglie invoco la gioia e la pace in Cristo nostro Signore!

Speaker:

I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims present at today’s Audience, including those from England, Wales, Denmark, Norway, Malta, Japan, Canada and the United States. I am pleased to welcome the Catholic Health Care Federation from the United States and the priests of the Institute for Continuing Theological Formation at the Pontifical North American College. Upon all of you, and upon your families, I invoke joy and peace in Christ our Lord.

So, any of my blog readers who can lay claim to any kind of 'family' relationship to me are included in this invocation of joy and peace from Pope Francis.  Well done to all of you!

At last week's Papal Audience, Russell Crowe was there:

You can see the statues of St. Peter's in the background... and no, I didn't meet him, or take this picture. He was in town promoting his new movie, Noah.

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The Pilgrimage Church, or Station Church for today was St. Paul Outside the Wall.  We left at 0515... that's early.  We got there at one minute to 7 o'clock, thanks to a taxi.  We were walking the estimated hour and a half toward that part of Rome that is outside the ancient walls of the city (all ancient cities were 'walled' for protection).  St. Paul was beheaded outside the city and buried in a place that was noted, marked, and honoured by the Christians of his day and every age since then.  A Church has been built on the spot... of course.

Anyway, we were about halfway there when we were overtaken by a fast walking Prince of the Church, Cardinal Edwin O'Brien (far left).  he has been faithfully attending the Pilgrimage every morning.  God bless him for that!  

Walking with Cardinal O'Brien

Unfortunately, we got off track and ended up far from where we were supposed to be. We were outside the wall... way outside and in the wrong direction.  This is a small part of the old wall of ancient Rome, the wrong part:

So we ended up in a taxi... four of us and the Cardinal squished into a little Italian cab, and we just made it!

St Paul Outside the Wall is huge.  Here are a few pics:

We were greeted in the center of a square court yard by an imposing statue of St. Paul... looking pretty stern.  Are you sure we are being welcomed?  

What? You want a close up?

The sword is two-edged... that's how he described the Word of God.  It can pierce you...right to the soul.  It looks like he can wield it pretty well, too.  Enter, if you dare!

It reminds me of the way the Our Father is now introduced in the Liturgy: 'At the Saviour's command and formed by Divine teaching we dare to say:'  The other, softer, introductions have disappeared and we now come to the Father with some sense of awe, reverence and daring.

Inside:  The long view from the back.  You can't see that there are two more rows of columns on both sides.  The mosaics in the apse and across that upper wall are amazing.

And the view from the about 3/4 the way to the front, looking back to the entrance doors:

Just a few more pics, I promise...

This is the place where St. Paul is buried.  His friends and faithful Christians buried him, and marked the spot.  They also kept his chains.

Good luck reading this

St. Paul's chains

One end of the Sarcophagus of St. Paul

The last pic (although I have many more) of this Church is the Altar of the Conversion of St Paul, my patron saint and namesake.  This pilgrimage is an 'itinerary of conversion', so I prayed here for a deepening conversion in my own life.  It's not a bad thing to ask for.

On the way home (the same hour and a half back...) we stopped at a several shops for priests, bought some stuff, and stopped for a haircut at Franco's:

That is NOT me on the left... but that is Franco, and my hair is nearly as short as this guy's.  Franco likes it short.  It all sounds the same to me in Italian.

Day 1 of secret passageways and underground crypts...

A quick series of pictures without many comments.

First, this is where I practice trying to learn the Traditional Latin Mass... down in the basement of the Seminary.

 Just another day by the Colosseum... walking home from one of the Station Churches.  The long shadows tell you that it is still early in the morning and we have already walked for nearly an hour, worshiped for an hour and it still early.

 Couldn't resist the picture because of the beautiful blue sky and the fact that I was standing right under the Colosseum... how often does that happen?  I took this pic!!

Still walking home from a Station Church: two colleagues, Fr. Chris and Fr. James... I was lagging behind.  I love these narrow cobblestone streets first thing in the morning before they get crowded.

Speaking of crowded.  This is the danger from Vespas that I'm talking about.  Hordes of the little creatures, all seeking to run you over.  A few hundred yards from this photo location I came across two ambulances and a downed Vespa.  Not good.

 A trip over to St. Peter's by taking the secret passage in the wall.  Ooooo! Roman Catholic intrigue!

Later, after the amazing secrecy of walking through a wall nearly three feet thick, below we are at St. Peter's during Elizabeth Lev's guided tour.  I couldn't resist this picture.  How perfect is that?? The sunlight is coming in on the exact angle to bathe the altar in light... not to mention the light glowing through the alabastar (or what used to be alabastar).

Down in the Confessio... under the Basilica.  This 'passage' leads to the tombs of many Popes, martyrs and... in particular: St. Peter.

Artifacts discovered from various tombs near St. Peter's own tomb.

 The sarcophagus of one of many Popes interred down in the Crypt / Confessio.

Tomorrow... Day 2 - A trip into the Scavi or Necropolis (City of the Dead).  Actually, I did that special tour today, but I will write about it tomorrow.  Right now I have to get to bed because the longest walk to a daily Station Church is tomorrow and we have to leave the Casa by 0515.  More tomorrow.