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:)