The Day I Wished I Were a Baby

+JMJ+
Ok, I owe y'all some posts, so let's get started.

Today I went to Pope Benedict XVI's last papal audience.  Oh wow.  What a blessing!!!  He had his audience in St. Peter's square instead of inside.  The entire square was PACKED and overflowing!!  It made the busses I've been squeezed on feel spacious.

My view from the line this morning...we got in line at 6:30, 2 hours before the gates were supposed to open, 4 hours before the audience.  So worth it.

Once we got in, the seating set up all through the square was already full!  We (one of my classmates and I) got a great spot though, right up against one of the barriers blocking the path the pope mobile would take.  We could even see Papa during the audience while he was speaking!

My view from where I was standing

When the pope came out, he came out in his pope mobile and drove through all of the aisles to greet the people.  And kiss all the babies.  Babies were literally being crowd-surfed to the pope mobile to be held and kissed by Pope Benedict XVI.  I wanted to be one of those babies!  We were SO CLOSE.  I could see his his gestures, facial expressions, even the expression in his eyes.  It was so good to see this man up close, who I've seen six times from afar, who I've been praying for ardently and following religiously (ha...get it?).  Truly indescribable.  He is so close to God and filled, no, overflowing with, exuding love for the Church.  I could see his unconditional desire for the salvation of and love for all people just in the gift he gave of himself there at the audience today, a small extension of the gift of himself he gave as a priest, as pope, and finally now, in his resignation.  In all of these acts of selfless gift, the Holy Father has always ultimately been giving himself to the will of God, which in turn, is a gift of himself to the Church, to the world.  Whenever we give ourselves to the will of God, we also give a gift to the world.  Pope Benedict has given us a great model to follow in giving that gift of self to the will of God and to the world courageously, totally, and unconditionally.  

Pope Benedict greeting the crowd (heading toward me!) in the pope mobile

I picked out a couple highlights from Pope Benedict's address to share with you.  This first one is part of the long, general address he gave at the beginning in Italian:

"I feel I [ought to] carry everyone in prayer, in a present that is God’s, where I recall every meeting, every voyage, every pastoral visit. I gather everyone and every thing in prayerful recollection, in order to entrust them to the Lord: in order that we might have full knowledge of His will, with every wisdom and spiritual understanding, and in order that we might comport ourselves in a manner that is worthy of Him, of His, bearing fruit in every good work (cf. Col 1:9-10)."

This second highlight is from his message to the English-speaking pilgrims:  

"The decision I have made, after much prayer, is the fruit of a serene trust in God’s will and a deep love of Christ’s Church. I will continue to accompany the Church with my prayers, and I ask each of you to pray for me and for the new Pope. In union with Mary and all the saints, let us entrust ourselves in faith and hope to God, who continues to watch over our lives and to guide the journey of the Church and our world along the paths of history.

I commend all of you, with great affection, to his loving care, asking him to strengthen you in the hope which opens our hearts to the fullness of life that he alone can give. To you and your families, I impart my blessing. Thank you!"

Here's the full text of his general address, and the full text of his address to the English-speaking pilgrims.  Read what the Holy Father wants to tell you!!

On a slightly different note, the best dressed award of today goes to....*drum roll please*...

Hot pink ankle boots with American flag elastic!!  Haha...and it was obvious that the person wearing these was not American...

Well, I have yet another early day tomorrow (it's been a week full of those!) and I learned the hard way that if I don't let myself get some sleep, then I will sleep right through my alarm.  Hence, I must leave my blog at this for tonight and tell you about my grand adventures of Tuesday tomorrow.  I bit out of order, but bear with me.   

Coming soon on Erin's blog:

• The Villa Borghese: The Art of Art
• A Walk through the Park
• The Spanish Steps: Just Call Me Aubrey Hepburn
• Erin and Gracie's Guide on How to Use the Metro
• The Scavi Tour: Erin Goes Underground!
• February 28: Goodbye, Papa Benedict!!

Warning: this list may be idealistic

I've Got Chills...They're Multiplyin'!

+JMJ+
Today was cold.  Bitter cold.  Bone-chilling cold.  It may have been only 40 degrees or so, but in the Mediterranean, it is wet.  Why did this leave such a deep impression on me?  Because I waited for the bus for two hours today.  It legitimately took me 2-3 hours afterwards to thaw out.  I had gone to run an errand at St. Peter's (ha, you know, just running errands at St. Peter's...yeah this is my life), and then the busses decided not to come.  I was going to go to Mass at 4 on my way back, and it was only 2 when I started waiting, so I wasn't too worried.  Usually I'd be more than fine allowing just an hour.  Not today.  I was praying SO HARD for that bus to come!  It finally did and I made it to Mass JUST as the Gospel was starting.  God is so good!!  I had even read the readings and Gospel in English on the bus to be ready.  Praise be to God!!!

After class in the morning, that was pretty much the extent of my adventuring today.  I stopped at a coffee bar walking from the bus stop back to the villa, hoping that a hot coffee would calm my violent shivering.  Cleaned my room tonight, and heading out early tomorrow for a station Mass at I don't even know which church and then touring the Gallery Borghese!  AND, we'll see if I make it, but I'm tentatively planning on tracking down the church where St. Josemaria is buried tomorrow.  It's unacceptable that I've been here almost a month and haven't found that yet!  I'm coming, Josemaria!!!

Did I mention I'm going to Venice this weekend?  Yep, working on getting ready for that too!  So much going on!

Pope Benedict's Last Angelus

+JMJ+
Guess what is special about this Sunday?  Aside from what is obvious from my blog title, today is GET INTO THE VATICAN MUSEUM FOR FREE DAY!  Yay!  Apparently, every last Sunday of the month is like that.  Alright!  I've been hearing that the Vatican Museum will be closed all of March, so today was an especially good day to go.  We were really hard core about it.  I thought it opened at 8am, so I got up at 5:30 and was at the bus stop by 6:15, hoping to get in line an hour early.  Well, when we arrived, there were only about 20 people in line in front of us.  Why was the line so short?  The museum actually opened at 9am.  Two hours early!!  Yeah!  One of my classmates was with me.  We made friends with an American couple that was in line in front of us.  The husband worked for NASA and was on a business trip in Russia!  Crazy.

When the museum opened, we rushed in and ended up splitting up.  Since we were the first ones in, the museum was empty before we went in.  I found myself the only one in many of the exhibit halls, which was really cool actually.  It was quiet and beautiful.  I saw a gazillion sculptures and two gazillion Etruscan pottery pieces (you know, like in Disney's Hercules?).

I saw so much, it was hard to take in all at once.  You would need hours, and I only had an hour and a half (because I wanted to get out to St. Peter's square for the Angelus with Pope Benedict).  Some famous things that I saw that you might recognize:

Laocoon and his sons being killed by sea monsters, an image
from Virgil's Aeneid

School of Athens

I have a confession to make.  I always thought of "The School of Athens" as a medium sized painting in a nice frame hung on a wall.  Well, I was wrong.  I walked into one of the exhibit rooms and BAM there it was, larger than life, painted right on the wall.  Oh, so that's what it's like....

I also saw this giant pine cone sculpture. Pine cones are a big deal here in Rome and are a symbol of renewal and rebirth.

Looking out the window, I also discovered this inside the Vatican walls:

The papal tennis courts and playground!  Ha!

Pope Benedict's last Angelus was so good, so beautiful.  I was blessed that I found my RD in the crowd (a miracle, really) and she was able to translate the Italian the pope spoke.  He commented on the Gospel for today, the Transfiguration.  He said that he felt this Gospel reading is for him in a special way right now, that God is calling him to come up the mountain and be with him in the way of prayer and contemplation.  He is not leaving the Church, but doing what he has always done, that is, trying to do the will of God, which is God's will for the whole Church.  Papa Benedict is a man of such humility and holiness!  I found this blogpost that someone wrote, before Pope Benedict's announcement of his impending resignation, about how Pope Benedict reacted to becoming pope and the humility he showed in that, the same humility with which he now steps down from the papal office.  (Only takes a couple minutes, definitely worth a glance if you have a moment!)

I obviously didn't take this picture, but I was in the front!! (by the fountain that is halfway hidden by Pope Benedict's head)

I went to Mass in English this afternoon.  I am pretty sure I was the only native English speaker there.  Haha!  It was really cute, such a great effort and love put into the Mass by just a few people who sort of knew English, but you could tell they were regulars at that English Mass.

Well, I must be off to bed!  I spent the evening working out details for a trip to Venice next weekend.  Exciting!

Just Your Typical Lenten Friday...

+JMJ+
Catholics like to celebrate things.  We'll pretty much take any opportunity we get to have a party.  Today, for example, is the feast day of a chair.  But this isn't just any chair we're talking about.

The Chair of St. Peter today, adorned with candles

It's not even this chair, elaborate and ginormous as it may be, that we are celebrating.  Today, the feast of the Chair of Peter, we're celebrating the concept that this chair represents: the authority Jesus gave to Peter as the leader of His Church, His Body here on earth, an authority that has been handed down in an unbroken chain of 265 (soon to be 266!) popes who, guided by the Holy Spirit, have led the Church infallibly in matters of faith and morals over the course of 2,000 years.  That's what we celebrate today.  BAM so worth getting excited over!  It has been especially awe inspiring to be in Rome for this feast day, where the pope, the successor of St. Peter, is!

Mass was at 5pm.  Afterwards, the group of us that went to Mass got pizza at Cardinal Dolan's favorite pizza place then prayed the Stations of the Cross with the seminarians at the NAC.  Such a good Friday.  

A couple more things: 

Remember that banner I posted about that we took to St. Peter's square and held while we prayed for the pope on the day that he announced he would resign?  A picture has been found!  Check it out!

Ok, this is really cool.  This account from 251 AD shows how the primacy and authority of the pope has been recognized and respected and accepted from the very beginning of Christianity!

"The Lord says to Peter: ‘I say to you,’ he says, ‘that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. ... ’ [Matt. 16:18]. On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep [John 21:17], and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. . . . If someone [today] does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church?" (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4; first edition [A.D. 251]). 

And finally, I took this picture yesterday but forgot to put it on my blog post.  The best dressed award of yesterday goes to:

Lady with a fox on her head!  

If you want to learn more about the papacy, this is a great resource!  With all the recent excitement, now is a great time learn about the pope:)

Roma, Roma, Everywhere! And Still So Much More to See!

+JMJ+
Today has been a very full day.  I love having full days here!

I left the villa at 5:45am for the station Mass, which was at St. Lawrence today.  St Lawrence has a great saint story, so I will share it briefly.  St. Lawrence was an early Roman martyr; his dedication to the Christ and His Church cost him his life.  St. Lawrence was a deacon; a deacon is not a priest, but an ordained minister who assists priests and bishops in carrying out certain tasks, such as teaching and distributing food.  Anyway, St. Lawrence witnessed Pope Sixtus II being arrested and led to his own martyrdom and begged to accompany the pope.  Pope Sixtus II denied his accompaniment; instead, he instructed St. Lawrence to distribute the material goods of the Church to the poor.  Pope Sixtus II also prophesied to St. Lawrence that his (Lawrence's) martyrdom would soon follow.

St. Lawrence did as Pope Sixtus II said and distributed the goods of the Church to the poor.  Sure enough, he was arrested a few days later.  The emperor demanded that St. Lawrence hand over the riches of the Church.  When sent to gather the riches of the Church, St. Lawrence returned to the emperor with the poor and said that these, the poor, were the riches of the Church.

As you might imagine, the emperor didn't take to this too well.  In fact, he didn't take to it well at all.  Enraged, he ordered that St. Lawrence be executed by being burned alive on a grill.  St. Lawrence faced his cruel martyrdom not only bravely, but also with a sense of humor.  In the middle of being grilled, he called out to his executioners, "You can turn me over, I'm done on this side!"  Joyful and *totally* (as you can see) in love with the Lord and dedicated to His Church, St. Lawrence gave his whole life for Christ to the very end of it.

The church I went to this morning was built at the site of St. Lawrence's martyrdom.  There is a fresco painted behind the altar, the second largest fresco in Rome (after the Sistine Chapel) that depicts St. Lawrence's martyrdom.  Mass was beautiful.  It was especially wonderful to have a lot of American deacons there where St. Lawrence, who was a deacon, gave such a powerful witness and example.

Fresco depicting the martyrdom of St. Lawrence

After Mass (and after coffee, of course; this may be assumed from here on out), I was off to the Vatican Museum!!  My classmates and I got a free tour because it is the Year of Faith!  The sister that gave us the tour was SO GOOD.  We only five or six things and were only able to go into great detail about two or three of them, but it was such a good tour, very focused on the faith, how it has been written into creation from the very beginning and how it is the same today.  I could go on and on, but I already used up my on and on rant about St. Stephen, so I must move on.  I have other work to do and I'm sure (I hope) you have other things to do besides read this blog.

The sister who gave us our tour

So, Vatican museum.  We saw an early Christian sarcophagus from somewhere between 330-340 AD. It was around this time that Christianity had become legal in the Roman empire; hence, it was the first time the Christian faith was being expressed in art.  This sarcophagus is decorated with the earliest explicit depiction of the Trinity that the world has, the banishment of Adam and Eve from the garden, Daniel in the lion's den (which represents Christ's crucifixion), some of the miracles Jesus performed during his public ministry, and the life of St. Peter.  We know from this sarcophagus that the Catholic faith we profess in the creed today was understood from the beginning by the early Christians.

On to the SISTINE CHAPEL!!!  This is one of a few things that I have seen that I have specifically noted is truly infinitely better than seeing a picture or poster.  Too much for words on a blog post on which I've already used up my ranting space.  It was especially cool to be there knowing that in a few weeks, that is where all the cardinals will be electing the next pope.  Woah.  I saw the door to the "Room of Tears" (the room where the new pope will dawn his papal vestments for the first time; it's called the room of tears because he usually cries.  Being the leader of the Universal Church whose purpose is the salvation of souls is a great and serious responsibility) and the place where the wood burning stove will sit to send up either black or white smoke to tell the world the results of the conclave.  I want to write so much more!  Must limit self...maybe I'll do a post on special things having to do with the papal election that I'm learning...

This is the gallery of maps, the longest gallery in the Vatican Museum.  There are maps of different parts of Italy along the walls and paintings of saints that correspond to those parts on the ceiling.   You have to walk through this gallery to get to the Sistine Chapel.

You aren't allowed to take any pictures in the Sistine Chapel, so I stole this one off of the internet.  Just so you know, it's not anywhere close to sufficient.  

Next up, the Colosseum!  I told you today was a big day!  We followed a couple tour groups around just to listen to what the tour guides had to say and to try to get into the parts you had to pay extra to get into (which halfway worked, then we were found out).  Here are some lovely pictures:

Thanks for the cross, Blessed Pope John Paul II!
A good way to recall the countless Christian martyrs who lost their lives here... 

A couple quick stops we made today:

Victor Emmanuel Monument

Adoration!

Bedtime for me, I've got a date with Dante in the morning!  Other things to look forward to tomorrow include:

-Class

-Mass at St. Peter's on the altar of the Chair of St. Peter on the feast of the Chair of St. Peter

-Lenten Pizza

-Stations of the Cross with the American seminarians at the North American College (AKA the American seminary here in Rome, the NAC)

-the weekend!

A Walk Through Rome: UNGUIDED

+JMJ+
Greetings from Roma!

I have lots of pictures today!  So, I will attempt to tell my tales picture book style:
After a failed attempt at making it to Mass at the station church this morning, my RD and one of my classmates and I ended up going to Mass at the only perpetual adoration chapel in Rome.  I hadn't been there yet, and I have to say I was surprised.  It was not ancient and ornate; it was modern and plain.  At first, I was disappointed, but then my RD pointed out that because it is plain and modern, it keeps the tourists away.  This leaves a quiet place prayer in the heart of the city, which is practically unheard of.

After Mass, we had time to spare, so my classmate and I went to get coffee, of course.  We had breakfast too.  When you order cereal here, it is served to you in a bag!  So weird!

My cereal, in a bag, next to my itty bitty coffee cup

Just kidding.  That was a lie.  They don't actually serve cereal in bags here, though I wouldn't put it past the Romans.  They're not really sure what to do with cereal.  This is just how I packed mine this morning, so I guess I have no room to judge.  I don't think the guy at the coffee shop was too thrilled that I brought my own bag though...

Can you handle the classiness of my breakfast?

We were going to go to the catacombs for class today, but the buses were on strike today from 8:30am to either 12:30pm or 5pm, I'm not sure which.  Yep, they just do that here for fun.  The bus to the catacombs wasn't running, so we opted for plan B: St. Paul Outside the Walls.  The explanation for the name of the church is simple: St. Paul, because St. Paul's relic's are there/the tomb of St. Paul is there; Outside the Walls, because the church is built outside of the Roman walls.  BAM.  Here are some pictures:

The facade of St. Paul Outside the Walls.  The statue is of, you guessed it, St. Paul.  Shocker.

Inside St. Paul Outside the Walls (from the front of the church, facing the back...which is the front door, if that makes sense

Check this out: the windows are made of thin slices of alabaster!  Crazy!  Beautiful when the light shines through.

Now THAT is an Easter candle candlestick (tall pillar-looknig thing to the left of Gracie)

After our class, I had arranged to meet up with my RD for lunch, so I ventured out ALONE to meet up with her.  It was a humbling adventure.  I was determined to not be that tourist who has to pull that map out in the middle of the city, but after a half an hour of unproductive wandering, I had to consult the map.  *shame*  I finally made it to our meeting point...a half an hour late.  Needless to say, my RD was long gone, but I was just happy that I had finally made my way there.  Take that, Roma!

While waiting for the bus after class, I noticed this sticker on the bus stop sign.   Best encourage-vocations sticker ever!  Haha.  At least, that's what I thought it was...I hope it's not something horrible or anything....

I was on my own for lunch, so I took the remainder of my classy cereal-in-a-bag to a fountain in the middle of a busy piazza where a market was set up, ate my cereal, and read The Merchant of Venice  for class.  It was so lovely and enjoyable!  I can't even say how much I loved the combination of the atmosphere of the market piazza and Shakespeare.

My view from my lunch/reading spot

After reading for a while, I decided to walk to St. Peter's.  The walk to St. Peter's from where I was goes along the Tiber River.  Normally, I just walk on the sidewalk along the street that overlooks the river from above (the streets and city are way above the level of the river).  However, today, I decided to mix things up a bit.  I had noticed before that there is a path down by the river at river level and there are stairs that go to this path by the bridges.  Today, I decided to take that path.  This is what happened:

Check out hat mud!

The path was covered in mud!  I couldn't tell from above, but once I started out, I was slipping and sliding and sinking all over the place!  I kept telling myself, "It's just this one spot.  If I go a little farther, it won't be muddy anymore."  After about ten minutes of that, I realized I was wrong, so I turned around and went back to the normal sidewalk.  There was a gypsy woman sitting on the stairs who got a good laugh out of my efforts.  I'm glad somebody got to witness and enjoy it!

When I arrived at St. Peter's, the line to get into the basilica was HUGE.  But it moved quickly and would be worth the wait, so I got in line behind a group of Asian tourists.  I overheard some of their conversation and could tell they were Japanese! (I took Japanese in high school).  So, I joined their tour group, unannounced.  It was so fun!  I didn't understand most of what was said, but I picked up on a few words and phrases here and there.  The best part were the expressions of the people who started to realize that I was following them.  Too good.

Candid picture of my Japanese tour group.  The guy by the gates with his hand up is the tour leader.

My day pretty much just wound down after that, although I did have the excitement of finding BBQ sauce and soy sauce at an international foods store later.  That stuff is pretty hard to find around here!

Assisi Pictures

+JMJ+
Here are some of the promised Assisi pictures!  Since I lost my camera in Assisi, I don't have any that I took, but here are a few that one of my classmates captured.  Enjoy!

Ok, so I know I just said these pictures are all from my classmate, but there's one or two that I stole from the internet.  This is one of them.  This is the San Damiano chapel that St. Francis built and where St. Clare and here sisters stayed.  The rectangle to the upper left of the circle window in the middle is special.  Once when the monastery was about to be attacked, St. Clare held up the Eucharist in a monstrance to the approaching enemy, and they ran away, terrified.  That rectangle is the door in which she stood holding the Eucharist!  

There's Assisi!  This was the view from our room where we stayed

Ok, I admit, another stolen picture.  This is the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli.  It was a short walk from the apartment where we stayed and a location where St. Francis lived much of his life and where he died.

View looking out from the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi

Me, when we had almost reached St. Francis' hermitage.  What a hike that was!

A beautiful lookout from the town of Assisi my classmate and I found off the beaten path

Assisi countryside.  Beautiful, peaceful, and refreshing.

Another picture from our mountain hike

The enclosed courtyard in the Basilica of St. Francis.  Can you see the snow?  I had just walked out here when the snow started!  It was so incredibly beautiful!!

Praying with Papa Benedict

Pope Benedict greets the crowd when he appears to lead them in praying the angelus on Sunday, February 17, the second to last angelus he will lead in St. Peter's
(yes, I stole this picture off the internet)

+JMJ+

Hello!
It's the beginning of another week here in Roma.  I've already had an exam today, a coffee outing, and I have a paper due in a few hours.  I'm hoping to get a group together to go out somewhere tonight, but we'll see what happens.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...what did I do on Sunday?  Well, let me tell you.

The day started off with breakfast at 8:30, a half an hour later than usual, which means I got to sleep in!  Then, we all were spoiled with French toast, eggs, and fried salami (imagine salami bacon...that's what it was like).

I went to Mass at...I don't know the name of the church for sure, but it was something that ended in "...of the Immaculate Conception."  This church is right down the main road that leads to St. Peter's, where the Pope says the angelus with everyone in the square at noon every Sunday.  I really wanted to go; Mass ran over, so I had to run (wearing a dress and my boots) from the church "...of the Immaculate Conception" to St. Peter's.  I made it in time, thanks be to God!  It was so incredibly crowded!!!  I read that even an hour before, thousands of people had already gathered and by noon there were between 50,000 (says the Vatican) and 100,000 (say the local authorities) people gathered in the square to pray with Pope Benedict!  I (charitably) pushed my way close to the front where I could get a good view of him in his window.  Everyone was so happy to see Pope Benedict!  He kept saying "Thank you, thank you!" over and over again.  It truly is an amazing time to be here in Rome, to share with the Pope and the Church here in the heart of the Church.

My view for during the Angelus

Crowd gathered to pray the angelus with Pope Benedict
(I also stole this picture from the internet...)

After praying the angelus with Pope Benedict, I headed to the market!  "The market" is a giant, well, market, where tons of vendors that sell everything from scarves to kitchenware to antiques gather every Sunday to try to make people pay too much for whatever they're selling.  It's also where customers go to try out their haggling skills.  Haggling is much more intimidating when you don't speak the language...I was certainly no pro and didn't do too much shopping, mostly just walked around and observed.  I'm sure I'll get my courage up eventually to agressively get some deals.  After all, every girl that goes to Rome can't come home without at least two or three new scarves, right?

A very small section of the Sunday market

Well, I am off to Mass and then to class, then hopefully some sort of adventure out in the city tonight!  Ciao!

Spending the Morning in the Past

+JMJ+
I spent today in the ruins of a 2nd-3rd century society.

This is Ostia, the old Roman port.  Some of my classmates and I spent the morning exploring the ruins with our professor.  It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that these ruins are at least 1,700 years old!  That's just crazy!  There's nothing that old hanging around in the United States!

Some of the mosaics on the floors are still in tact!  Amazing!

Dr. Connell, our professor.  Class is this intense all the time.  Woah.

After Ostia, four of us took the train about 10 minutes farther and arrived at....

the Mediterranean beach!!  It was warm enough to take our shoes and coats off, walk along the beach, bask in the sun, and get some reading done.  It was simply lovely!