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 2 - In the Crypt and the Necropolis / Scavi

We found ourselves down in the crypt under the Basilica of St. Peter's... 'we' meaning the 20 priests that I am on Sabbatical with.  We were honoured to be given the altar nearest the tomb of St. Peter and we concelebrated the Mass together early Tuesday morning.  Here in this picture you can see all the priests... but we are actually standing in front of the tomb of St. Peter.  Good thing, cameras are not allowed to take pictures in the crypt.

If you can make out the Latin behind us it reads: Sepulcrum Sancti Petri Apostoli - The Tomb or Sepulchre of St. Peter, Apostle.  I'm on the right with my head framed by a square granite plaque.

Due to the fact that we are not supposed to use our cameras, this is the only pic I have (apart from the ones I posted yesterday... oops! sorry.  Well, those pictures from yesterday are special, then.

In the afternoon we had a rather remarkable tour of the Scavi.  It is hard to describe.  No cameras allowed, again, so no pictures.  Imagine going down into the dark, dank basement of the oldest house you can find.  The air is close, the atmosphere is constraining and uncomfortable.  It is dimly lit and you know that it is actually a graveyard from previous generations.  Yes, there are people buried in the cellar walls and you are going down there because you want to understand the history of the place and you have heard it on good authority that someone incredibly important is buried there.

During and after WWII archaeologists uncovered an old Roman necropolis (literally 'city of death') where upper middle class Romans entombed their loved ones.  This graveyard isn't like a typical Canadian cemetery.  There was a main 'street' and on either side of the street there were 'burial rooms' for lack of a better description.  I saw these homes, each with a legal description of ownership over the doorway, with a central room with niches in the wall for the cremated remains of family members.

These archaeologists obtained permission from Pius XII to continue working their way along this road, unearthing these rooms that had been packed with earth by Constantine in 313-314 AD in order to make a solid foundation for the first St. Peter's.  Why would he build on a sacred Roman cemetery? There were laws against that, like there are today.  Why would the Emperor risk the wrath of the populous by declaring that he was going to build a Church there for the hated Christians? He gave everybody a year to claim the remains of their relatives from the niches in their burial rooms, and then filled them all in with earth.

The archaeologists painstakingly dug all of these rooms out by hand... moving every closer to the spot that would be right under the present altar of St. Peter's and finding increasingly Christian inscriptions as they progressed.  Pius XII didn't want them to dig too close to the area under the altar... but even as they tried to go around, they discovered a marble wall, a massive marble box really, set around the site directly under the altar by Constantine in 313 AD.  On the far side of the marble box they discovered an opening, and another wall inside, from the earliest century, being preserved by the marble casing set there by Constantine in 313 AD... a red wall with pillars sheltering an inner tomb with bones dating to the first century AD.  Who's bones would be so carefully preserved?

Several inscriptions on the tombs nearby indicated that later Christians were buried there in an attempt to be as close to St. Peter's burial site as possible.  The bones inside had one remarkable feature: There were no ankle bones or feet.  Because St. Peter was crucified upside down, and he was crucified in the three days in which Nero killed Christians (especially the leaders) as scapegoats for the burning of Rome, the disciples who were eager to honour the great Apostle in the midst of a horrendous persecution, had to act with great haste (the dead Christians would be otherwise discarded into a lime pit or subject to mass cremation) and so, not being able to unfasten the nail which had been driven into his feet they cut his body off at the ankles.  This has always been the understanding and tradition of the Church.  The fact that this skeleton had no ankle or foot bones was confirmation of the oral tradition.  The stresses on the feet and ankles of a body being crucified upside down would have been tremendous.  In any case, the bones in the tomb that had been honoured with protective walls, and porches and marbles shrouds are Peter's... and they rest directly below the altar of St. Peter's Basilica... and I stood there on Tuesday in that dark, underground excavation site and saw the bones that are still there.  On the opposite side of the excavation site but still opening onto the Tomb of St. Peter is the well lit crypt (pictured above) where we said Mass.

Lots of words today and not many pictures... but I wanted to share my discoveries in the Scavi, the necropolis and the Confessio.  If you want more detail on the archaeological evidence and the Church's confirmation that the foremost Basilica of Christendom rests over the burial site of St. Peter himself, you can read more about it on Wikipedia here.

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.

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.