Back to Normal...

+JMJ+
For the first time in a while, I had a pretty normal day...well, if you consider touring catacombs and an afternoon at St. Peter's normal, that is.

By the grace of God, I got up at 5:20am this morning to make it to the station Mass!  Yay!  The station church this morning was San Pudentiana.  Yes, I did have to look up the name of it just now.  I don't really know anything about him/her, nor have I taken time to read about the church, but you can check it out here!  Maybe I will too...ok I just watched this 2 minute and 51 second video on the church of San Pudentia.  It's not the best video, pretty cheesy, questionable video quality, but it's alright.  From it, I learned that tradition holds the church to be built on the site of a Roman nobleman's house where Peter stayed.

Main altar in the church of Saint Pudentiana

After coffee with one of my classmate's, we met up with the rest of our class for a tour of the San Callisto catacombs!!   The tour was fairly short, but very good.  We saw the spot where Pope Sixtus II was celebrating Mass when he was martyred and the place where St. Cecilia was buried!  In these catacombs, which span 30 miles, were buried an estimated half a million Christians.  Some of them were martyrs, but not all.  Sixteen of them were popes!!  We weren't allowed to take pictures, so here's a couple from Google:

Area called the "little Vatican," where 9 popes were buried

Tomb of St. Cecilia (where the statue of her body is)

After our tour of the catacombs, we headed over to the basilica of St. Sebastian.  The catacombs of St. Sebastian are right next to the San Callisto catacombs, and the San Sebastian Basilica is right next to those.  It's one of the seven pilgrimage churches in Rome!

After that, a few of us decided, hey, why not hit up a couple more of the pilgrimage churches while we're at it?  So we walked to Santa Croce, where they have a collected a number of relics associated with the passion of Christ, and to Santa Maria Maggiore.  Both churches had adoration going on, which was such a special gift!

I pretty much went and chilled at St. Peter's, inside and outside, for the rest of the afternoon.  I like it there very much.

Tomorrow, the priest who is on EWTN's "Life on the Rock" is coming to our Villa to sit in on our classes, have lunch with us, do some interviews, and film some footage.  I'm not sure why, but it's exciting!  More about that tomorrow.  Ciao!!