Lenten Preparations: Carnival!

+JMJ+
Ahhh I have so much I want to share but so little time to spend blogging right now!  I will briefly share the events of my day, a little bit of what last night held and what tomorrow holds

Today is Carnival in Roma, what we know as Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras.  The Italians have been celebrating Carnival for a while now, but today was the last of the big shebang.  One of the customs they observe is that children throw confetti at adults.  Our theology professor provided my classmates and I with the traditional Carnival confetti yesterday on the condition that we would throw it at our Art and Architecture professor this morning.  Fair enough.  We all ambushed our professor with handfuls of colorful confetti and lots of laughs at the end of class today.  He was a good sport about it, but told us we weren't allowed to do it again on Thursday; it's not exactly in the spirit of Lent I suppose...

In my Art and Architecture class today, we toured and studied the Pantheon (which is now the church of Santa Maria ad Martyrs), La Maddalena (a church named after St. Mary Magdalen), San Luigi dei Francesi (the church of St. Louis, king of France, the "French church" in Rome), ending in Piazza Eustachio, where apparently the best coffee in all of Roma exists.  Funny tidbit--as we were walking to the Pantheon, we passed Gammarelli.  Gammarelli is a store for priests, meeting their everyday and (mostly) liturgical needs.  But this isn't just any priest store.  Gammarelli has been the papal taylor (the company that measures the pope for his papal cassock, and really whatever else he needs.  As we were passing by this store, our professor described it as "the Armani of the clerical world."  Ha!  Such a funny concept...

I spent my afternoon in St. Peter's.  The line was much longer to get in...I can't imagine why...

Last night, some of my classmates and I went to St. Peter's square to pray for Pope Benedict, to let him know he is loved, and that we trust him and support him in his efforts to always do the will of God, what is best for Church.  My classes are cancelled tomorrow (well, today here now) so the other students and I can go to Pope Benedict's Wednesday audience and his (from what I've heard) last papal Mass.

Ok, I am literally falling asleep writing this, so I will have to go to bed now and write more later.  Please pray for the Church, the Holy Father, and for whoever the new pope will be!

"Pray, hope, and don't worry."
~Padre Pio