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.

Catching up: Sunday and Monday

Most of the pics I take for this blog are low-light in dark churches, out of focus attempts to capture something that is too far away... so, in order to reinforce the fact that it is definitely spring in Rome, I got up close and personal with this flower just outside the front door of Casa O'Toole where I am living.  Maybe someone can tell me what kind of flower that is, since knowing names of Roman flora is not my strong suit... but they are pink, so that should suit some of you.

Up and at 'em on Sunday morning.  The sun is shining, the flowers (above) are blooming and spring is in the air.  I'm off to St. Peter's Basilica to celebrate the Mass at one of the side altars.  St. Peter's is about 3 football fields long, so there are lots of side altars besides the main altar which is built, and has always been built, over the site of St. Peter's burial.  If you want to celebrate Mass at St. Peter's you have to show up at 0700 before the tourists fill the church... and obviously you have to show up dressed like a priest (with credentials, if they ask for them).  So, I put on my cassock (long black garment that buttons all the way from the floor to your neck... and brought my new alb with me.  They provide everything else.

New alb hanging outside my wardrobe

 Having arrived at St. Peter's, vested and prepared, I was led by the sacristan to the Altar of St. Gregory the Great who died in AD 604... his tomb, his reliquary, is directly underneath this altar as you will see below.

St. Gregory the Great Altar at St. Peter's, Rome

This is where I said Mass on Sunday morning.  Note the oval shaped opening in the altar frontal. Inside, under the altar lies the white marble sarcophagus containing the relics and remains of this Great Pope.

The sacred remains of Pope St. Gregory the Great, under the altar

Here is a little blurb about the altar of St. Gregory that I took a picture of:

 It is no small thing for a priest to celebrate Mass in St. Peter's and at such an altar.  I am blessed indeed.

From St. Peter's I went for the Traditional Latin Mass at Santissima Trinita dei Pelligrini... but in this case, a Pontifical Mass because Pope Francis' vicar, Bishop Zuppi the auxiliary Bishop of central Rome was the celebrant.  More about that in a moment.  Meanwhile, I am getting pretty good at finding my way around - and I often use this piazza as my 'marker'.  It is Piazza Navona:

Piazza Navona is a large rectangular 'square' where you can buy just about anything and get your pocket picked at the same time.  The obelisk is from Egypt, as are most if not all the obelisks in Rome.  Under the obelisk is a fountain carved by Bernini (he was a busy fellow).It is the Fountain of the Four Rivers of the then-known continents, which are personified in the figures at the base of the obelisk: The Danube, Ganges, Nile, and Rio della Plata.  I am sure that somewhere Bernini has left a record of why the guy on the right has a sheet draped across his face... 

As I was saying, I navigated my way through the city to get to the Pontifical Mass later that morning at Santissima Trinita. This special Mass was reported at New Liturgical Movement and Rorate Coeli, and you can click on the link for  pictures.  I was seated near the altar, in choir, on the far left, just out of range of the camera (except for the last pic of Gregory DiPippo's piece in New Liturgical Movement... I'm the fourth dot on the left).

Monday morning, bright and early for the looooooooooooongest walk to a Station Church yet.  I probably pushed myself too hard, and have been paying for it a bit yesterday and today.  I left a bit later than I usually would, and then I forgot something and had to go back, so I was even later... so I was hoofing it at a pace that was a bit too much for me in my 'weakened' condition.  Add to all of this the fact that the Church for Monday, Quattro Coronati (sounds like an Audi?) is perched at the top of a hill so that we had a fairly steep climb right at the end when you are already tired.

Still, it was amazing.  It is an ancient church, like they all are, but it is quite far out of the way and it is lovingly served by Augustinian nuns who tried to welcome us warmly.  I say 'tried', not because they didn't succeed, but because there had been an power outage and the whole place was in darkness.  I took these pictures after the Mass when the sun was up.  We had been walking in the dark for most of the pilgrimage, and there were no lights in the interior of the Church.

It actually turned out to be a blessing in my opinion.  The nuns had put dozens of candles all around the church and it was absolutely mystical.  Quiet, contemplative and oozing with exactly the kind of atmosphere that one imagines in an medieval monastery church.  It couldn't have been better.

 As the sun came in through the windows in the apse (above), it was something spiritually delightful.

Of course, I still had to walk home... and attend a two hour class on proto-Renaissance art and architecture... and then tour St. Peter's Basilica with our lecturer.  Had Elizabeth Lev not been so dynamic, and engaging, I might have succumbed to my exhaustion.  But something had to give... so, tired and sore, I neglected my blog for a couple of days.  Now, I'm playing catch-up.

At the TOP of the Catholic world.

Pilgrimage to Roman Station Church for Thursday in the Third week of Lent: St Lawrence in Lucina

On the way: spring has sprung in Rome - 30 feet of cascading lilacs in bloom:

From a different angle:

Below: St Lorenzo in Lucina

I am hoping that you remember St Lawrence from my description of the other church dedicated to him... he is the one that was 'grilled' alive as a martyr.  There are several churches dedicated to this saint.  He left quite an impression on the believers in Rome!  Today's church is one of several ancient churches in his honour.  Again, it looks pretty ordinary from the outside, but inside is as inspiring as ever.  When you see the pic of the main aisle in the nave above, you have to remember that there are usually 4 -6 side altars along each of the outside walls - beyond the pillars that you see. The painted crucifix that makes for the main altarpiece was incredible and drew my attention throughout the Mass.  It being a Friday in Lent, it was good to remember that our Lord was crucified on a Friday, and the altarpiece brought that home very powerfully.

My colleague Fr. James is looking at one of the side altars in the Church of S. Lorenzo in Lucina.

Below, I wanted to show you the pulpit, again, perched halfway up the wall and halfway into the nave where the faithful sit.  See the sounding board over top of the pulpit to direct the priest's voice down into the nave?

The Station Church is always early in the morning before breakfast... we don't 'break' the 'fast' until we have Mass.  There is always a communion fast for Catholics - minimum of one hour of fasting before Mass.  To get up, walk for 40- 50 min to get to the Church, have Mass, and walk back is a lot of energy spent early in the morning with no food... but that's just the way it is.

After breakfast, Fr. James and I decided to climb up into the top of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. You probably can't tell that there are people up there in the zoomed-in picture I took this morning... can you find them?

If I didn't tell you ahead of time that there were people up there, and that I planned to climb up there myself, would you have thought to look for them?  I never imagined, ever, that the black ring around the top of the bluish dome (just at the base of the pillars) that that black ring is actually individual people looking back at the rest of us down below.  Waaaaay down below:

See the line that I am in... winding around from the right hand side of the picture?  40 min wait to get in. I'm not really that good at waiting in lines, or in traffic, at the bank, at the grocery store, etc.  40 minutes is all the more difficult right now because I get more relief from the sciatica when I am walking, much more than when I am standing still.  Climbing stairs counts as walking:

It starts off easy enough.  There are 550 steps, approximately.  The first steps are nicely inclined and wide enough to take two steps on each stair.  See above... I am still smiling.  It is about to get tougher, though, and narrower...

You can see that the walls of the dome are angling in as you climb higher.  It is a weird sensation to have the stairs square to the ground under your feet, but the walls tilting in on an ever increasing angle... so that you are walking straight, but leaning over to one side.

Whoaaaaa! Its like a carnival fun-house the way it disorientates you.

You can see the curve of the dome in this pic... but the floor is flat beneath you.  It is harder for taller people, of course because the wall comes right over to bump you in the head.  When's the last time you had a wall bump you in the head while you were walking up-right?

Fr James, climbing up the spiraling staircase.

 The next pics are the final few (20?) steps that are a tight spiral to the top.  So, tight, in fact, that they provide a rope!

That's not a smile on my face... I am trying to catch my breath and let the burning in my calves subside.

Finally, at the top of the rope-stairs you break out into the open air.  And what a view!  St. Peter's Square (which is not square).  See the statues of the 12 Apostles across the roof line of the basilica (at the near end of the square), they are probably 20 feet tall.

I can fly!!!  Not.   

The Pontifical North American College is the group of buildings in the middle of the picture, just in between the two sections of trees.  The yellow upper floor also has a terrace where I took the pictures on Day 1 or 2, looking in the direction toward where I am standing now, that is, toward St. Peter's.  I live in the Casa O'Toole which is the cream-coloured 4 story square building in the middle-right of the pic.

I am leaning out of the safety cage putting my Blackberry at risk in order to take a picture of the Sistine Chapel from above.  It is the brown roofed rectangular shaped building just beyond the edge of the white roof-line.  In the upper right you can just see the circular columns of St. Peter's Square.

 Again, with the Sistine Chapel in the immediate foreground.

The Vatican Gardens.

 Me and my safety cage.

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Now for the descent... Yikes!

 I'm guessing that this is where the Pope has chosen to live, rather than in the Papal apartments.


When you are half way down there is a break in the journey, as there was on the way up.  Here, I am standing BEHIND the statues that you see at the top of the roof line of St. Peter's.  They are statues of the 12 Apostles (except that Peter is down in the Square, with St Paul, so John the Baptist takes his place beside Christ.

Again, only closer.  Notice: the didn't carve the backs of the statues!

Walking on the roof of St. Peter's.  What a surprise to find a restaurant and a gift shop... on the roof!

So I bought a few gifts.  This Rosary is just like the one I use, so I bought it for someone who asked for mine.

We got to stop part way up the stairs to see the inside of the dome from close up, so I will include some of those pics here, without comment...

Over top of the Bernini baldachino (four poster canopy) and the main altar

A little cherub as a mosaic wall decoration. There were 12 of them.

Close up of the portion just under his wing.  See how intricate the mosaics are?

The dome itself, from the inside.

The altarpiece viewed from an angle that most people never see.
The sun shining through the alabaster is stunning.

All the previous pics were taken through these little holes in the safety screening.  

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Last of all, and briefly, I went to the papal penitential service tonight.  The first ever by a Pope, so I'm told.  I was within 4 people of him as he walked up the main aisle in procession... but to be honest, I was put off by all the people taking pictures as if this was just another tourist attraction.  You won't see any pics of this liturgy from me.  There wasn't enough priests to hear all the confessions... but it was a good first attempt.  They will work out the details in the future if they chose to do it again.  I kept the 'program', of course.  It included a nice examination of conscience in English, but it was mostly all in Italian.