Assisi

I leave for Assisi tomorrow morning (Monday) at 0900.  I doubt that there will be WiFi in the village and I am not taking the laptop.  I get back on Friday, leave for home on Sunday.  This could very well be my last blog post.  For those of you who have followed along and enjoyed some of the posts: God bless you!

Some pictures from Assisi, but without comment for now... just so that I have a place to store the memories of such a memorable visit.

It's bubble-gum.  Everyone wants to leave behind some evidence that they had been there at the top of the mountain.

Yes, that's me and the haricut Franco gave me in Rome the week before...

The Bishop of Assisi's reception room, where Francis stripped off his clothes and walked away from his father and his fabric business

The Basilica in Assisi, where Francis is now entombed in the crypt below.  There are three levels to this church.

Taken from the Church in the above photo, same courtyard with the curved arches, but with a landscape view from this side

See the fortress in the background?  That's the top of another mountain.  Gives you an idea of the climb we were doing on foot.

A break in the foot-climb up the mountain to St. Francis' Hermitage.  Friends: Frs James, Patrick and Rob (taking the pic)

Gated entrance to the Hermitage... maybe I don't want out?

You can't see it because of Fr Bill, but we are looking at an old warrior's helmet that has been turned upsided down and made into a flower pot.

St Francis was here... so was I, about 800 years later.  He made this hermitage sacred by his prayers.

The famous cross of St. Damiano through which Christ told Francis in 1185 AD to 'build my Church which has fallen into disrepair'.

Close up

The ancient 'hospital' at the foot of Assisi where the first Franciscans stopped with a dying Francis.

Guess most of you can't read this (Italian).  Francis got to the bottom of this steep hill from below Assisi on his way to die in Porziuncula, and asked them to stop and lift him up so that he could have a last look at the town of Assisi, and bless it.  The blessing is included on this plaque.

I made the long walk from Assisi in to the valley where Francis is buried in Poziuncula, then we climbed back up as well.
This is the view that Francis would have had, looking back up.  I stayed in a place of Franciscan hospitality off to the right, and the darker, blue mountain on the right is where we climbed up to the hermitage.

The little chapel call the Porziuncola chapel is still perfectly intact within this larger Church.  St Mary of the Angels is beautiful in its own right, but famously it holds the Porziuncola Chapel where Francis worked and prayed and gathered the early Franciscan friars.

St. Mary of the Angels in Porziuncula

The family of doves that were present at his death have never left in 800 years.  They nest in that basket.  

Same roses growing year after year for 800 years, the unique thing is that they don't have thorns.  They did... until Francis, in trying to quell his passions, threw himself on them.  Now they grow without thorns... and come up every year.

I have lots of pics of the Assisi country side... because it is so beautiful and breathtaking.

In Speleto, an neighbouring community which would like to claim Francis as their own.

Roman aqueduct from the time of Christ, build by Roman ingenuity just outside Speleto.  There is a escape path on the other side of this wall.  The water runs in a trough on top...  of course I had to take the escape path to the other side and climb up that tower too.

Same Roman aqueduct, used to keep the castle supplied while under siege, and on the backside an escape route. See the little portico / half-moon opening in the middle upper section?  There a nice pic coming up of 4 priests posing there...

That's Fr James and I discussing the relative merits of a photo, while Frs Patrick and Ed look on.

Away we go... only two brave souls: Fr James and myself going along the escape route.  

Halfway along the aqueduct and viaduct we stopped at the aforementioned portico for a picture: myself, Ed, Patrick, James, and Paul

Gawking around inside the Church of St. Mary of the Angels with my head on a swivel with my jaw hanging open - as usual, that's how I spent most of my time in both Rome and Assisi.

Side Street Churches

Today I got up around 5 am, did some stretching exercises, and launched out on a back street adventure in trying to find Thursday's Station Church (Saints Cosmas and Damian -twins and martyrs).  It was good to walk, it actually helps... and it was a lot of fun finding my own way there.  Actually, I get close and then look for the horde of seminarians steaming up behind me at a far brisker walking pace... from there I just follow them to the actual church.  No stress.

As I descended those brick steps of the Juniculum Hill... more slowly than usual, I recalled my friend referring to them at one point in Italian as the 'Scale dall'inferno': steps from hell.

What I noticed, though, at the foot of the steps and out onto the path beside the Tiber was that at some point during my week off the trees had budded and the little leaves were giving a shade of light green to my morning walk.

That's the Tiber River on the left, through the new leaves.  Spring has sprung in Rome... although to be honest, it was 18*C and sunny pretty much since I got here.  This week has been cooler and rainy - so not quite as pleasant.  I know you folks in Canada don't really feel that sorry for me.

So, like I said, I wound my way through multiple back streets to get to the Church of Sts Cosmas and Damian this morning.  The church is very old, of course, and it is situated in a marshy, flood-prone area of Rome, so at some point the floor was actually raised 20 feet so today it was really interesting to sit in 'choir' because we were sitting close to the original ceiling!  You could really see the beauty and detail in the mosaics when you are 20 feet closer to the top of the building.

The church is tucked in behind this magnificent building, that I showed you before:

It's called the Vittorio Emmanuel II national monument.  Pictures don't do it justice.  Around to the left of this photo is Trajan's Victory Column I showed you earlier:

So, walking in between the Vit.Emmanuel monument and Trajan's column, amidst other ancient ruins of the Roman Forum... and before you get to the Colosseum, you discover the Church of Cosmas and Damian.  So, in this pic you are now behind the Vit Emmanuel monument - see it in the background - and the ancient ruins are at your feet in front of you, and the Church is still a little farther to your left (not in the pic yet):

If you do a 180* turn and look behind you, you will see the Colosseum in the distance (being restored -hence the scaffolding on the far left):

Looking at the picture above, today's Station Church is just on your right, but not yet in the picture (again!)

Yep, that's it.  Not much to look at from the outside, eh?  See the pilgrims waiting to get in?  Also, notice the yellow police tape?  That's right, Obama... again.  I was happy to see his helicopter leave this afternoon from the Vatican.  Remember I am close to the Vatican, so I saw it go.  Now they can take down all that tape.

Meanwhile, the Mass inside the Church with the raised floor was quiet, intimate and very peaceful. There were two Cardinals with us, Cardinal O'Brien who has been with us every day, and another one who celebrated the Mass but I didn't get his name.  The music by the seminary schola was excellent and added a very solemn mood to the Lenten spiritual reflection.

See what I mean about being close to the ceiling?  Usually that apse is waaaaay above your head. Those wooden benches that follow the rounded wall of the Apse is the 'choir' where I sat this morning... behind the main altar, so I couldn't actually see what was going on.

It wasn't hard getting a picture of the main ceiling (above) in the nave.  It was like you could reach out and touch it.

In a manner similar to my method of getting to the Station Church this morning, I took a series of back streets home.  Honestly, there was a church every second street... back street.  Churches that would be like cathedrals back home are tucked into the corners of little piazzas (squares that aren't square).  I stopped in at about 6 of them and took a few pictures.  I can't remember the names of them all.  Its really quite amazing.

The exterior

The interior space

Same church... the altar piece - a little bit like the sunburst at St. Peter's.

Another church, I liked the painting of St Michael the Archangel.

The choir loft and pipe organ.  You can't see it very well, but painted all across the balcony of the loft are a multitude of the heavenly host praising God on a variety of musical instruments.

Yet another church in the corner of a small piazza on a backstreet in Rome.  That is a pulpit on the left, halfway up the wall.  Many of the churches still have these... kind of different and perhaps not really needed in a church that is not the size of a basilica.

This is the altar piece of that same church... Mary and Joseph with Jesus and a Levitical priest (probably Simeon) in the temple in Jerusalem.  In ALL these churches, the biblical record is preserved and proclaimed through art for those who could not read... which was most people at the time.  Now-a-days, you often can't tell what a modern or post-modern artist is trying to communicate.  Here, art is in the service of the gospel and is meant to convey truth and reality as beautifully and as clearly as possible.

While I was in this church a man walked in, stopped at the open Bible and read the Scripture readings for today, and then went on his way to work.  What a great idea... which was probably more common when not everyone could afford a Bible. Don't believe that nonsense that Catholics weren't allowed to read the Bible.  After the disaster of the Reformation where each man interpreted the Bible for himself (resulting in 30,000+ Protestant denominations and counting), Catholics were not encouraged to make themselves into the sole interpreting authority of the Scriptures, but rather were encouraged to seek the mind of the Church (which wrote the Bible, BTW) on how it had historically interpreted difficult passages... but were they permitted to read the Bible, yes.

The Church near my house is 'Holy Spirit Parish' and it has a place for a round Rose window (as they are called).  Since the church is new, there is just clear glass there now.  I took this picture to show the Pastor there.

If I can get inside this church, I will get a picture of how the light shines through the window and take a picture of the details of the window.

I don't know how many pictures of Churches you can take.  I saw lots... I am posting a fraction of what I saw.  I can't describe the insides of each church... they are full of wonderful art, sculptures, mosaics, etc. and it gets to be overwhelming after a while.

If the door is open, I go in.  I can't help it.

Ah! Below is the exterior of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere.

The oldest, or nearly the oldest surviving mosaics in Rome:

And then... this.  Can you figure this one out??  Click on it to enlarge (like all pics)

 What do you think is going on in this painting?  Who is the lady in the blue dress who takes up the foreground (and therefore the primacy of place) in this painting.  What is she wearing on her head? Yep... that's the papal tiara.  Was there really a Pope Joan???  I see six cardinals in the back left, in some kind of disputation or presentation to a gathering of clergy... but no Holy Father, unless... hehehe.

No, this is actually of the Council of Trent and that is holy Wisdom in the foreground.

 I'll leave it there for tonight.