Pentecost Sunday

This year was a beautiful and bright Sunday for the feast of Pentecost in Rome.  They usually need a lot of priests and deacons (and occasionally, seminarians) to help distribute communion.  Like every Vatican event, this requires a ticket.  So, I was able to obtain one, as I did for the Easter Sunday Mass.  There were far fewer dignitaries at this Mass than there were for Easter, so I was able to sit much closer to the Pope than I did for Easter Mass.  Here was my view for the Mass:

I thought at Easter they had far too few priests helping with the distribution of Holy Communion.  For the Mass at Pentecost, they had way, way too many.  There must have been 200 priests, deacons, and seminarians distributing Holy Communion.  For Mass, we sit together up near where the altar is.  During the offertory for Mass, we are taken into St. Peter's Basilica.  This time we went in a line to the Immaculate Conception chapel, where they had prepared hundreds of ciboria with hosts.  The are rather plain brass ciboria.  The innovation is that they have a clear plastic top that revolves.  This allows you to see how many hosts are there.  You can also slide a top piece to create an opening, and then slide it back to cover everything in the ciborium and keep them safe from the elements.

We then stand in the Basilica for the Mass, holding the ciboria with the hosts for the consecration.  Towards the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, we are brought outside to take our place among the 200,000 or so people gathered for Mass.  Some of the people distributing have guides with yellow and white umbrellas to show them where to go.  I just followed the line until one of the Italian staff pointed to a place by the barricades for me to distribute.  Then you give out as many hosts as possible.

To minimize the chances for desecration--accidental or intended--communion is given out only on the tongue, with the Latin verse Corpus Christi.  So, you have lots of people sticking their hands at you, and you have to tell them only on the tongue.  (And I also make the men remove their hats first).  This means they have to get close for me to be able to give them communion.  The problem is when you give communion at the barriers that mark the route of the Popemobile.  People want to be right at the barricade to get the best view of the Pope when he goes by--and they do not want to give up their spot.  So people behind them want to receive communion, but the people with their spots at the barricade will not move out of the way.  The most creative solution I saw was the family that simply ducked to get out of the way, and still keep their spot.

Here are the pictures from Mass at St. Peter's:

Pompeii

Pompeii with Mt. Vesuvius in the background

Just across the bay of Naples and around Mt. Vesuvius is the famous ancient city of Pompeii.  It's about a 45-minute metro ride from the main train station in Naples.  As most know, Mt. Vesuvius erupted in the year 79 AD, dumping tons of ash and Pumice over several hours on the city of Pompeii.  The effect was to completely bury the city as it existed, and thereby preserve much of it.  After the eruption, the city was lost to history for more than a millennium and a half.  After its rediscovery  it was excavated over centuries.  Regrettably, after its initial discoveries, looters plundered a great number of objects and works of art.  Still, what was left gives us one of the best glimpses of what life in ancient Rome was like.  It's street layouts are still preserved.  Many of the frescoes and mosaics were still intact.  The vast majority of buildings are still standing, although many of their wooden roofs were destroyed.

Most interestingly, in the 19th century, archaeologists noticed that after the decomposition of the plants and animals caught in the ash, airpockets were left.  So they filled these pockets with plaster, creating casts of the people exactly as they died.  They also have impressions of some of the plants, ancient roots, and the like.

Their level of civilization is also very surprising.  The city has raised sidewalks for the people to walk to avoid the muck of the streets, which are themselves paved with stones.  They even have stone crosswalks, with gaps for carts to pass through, to people could cross from one sidewalk to the other without walking in the street.  They had an advanced aqueduct system which poured water into every house in the city.  I was also surprised at the number of restaurants in the city, with counters for selling cold and hot food.  Apparently, Pompeii was very much a resort town, with a great number of wealthy visitors.

It is a surprisingly large city.  We were there most of the day, and really only saw about half of it.  Just an excuse to go back again some day.

For anyone spending time in Italy with a love for ancient Rome, Pompeii really is a must-see.  Fantastic place, and we thankfully saw it on a mostly sunny day.

Here are the pictures:

Buona Pasqua!

My very belated collection of pictures from Easter Mass at St. Peter's.  For Masses like this, the Vatican organizes about 150 priests and deacons to help distribute Holy Communion.  You cannot concelebrate, but you do assist at the Mass.  To take part, you have to have a ticket and a letter of good standing.  I have the latter, and was able to get the former.  So, I went down to St. Peter's to distribute communion.  The instructions they give us are two:  We us the Latin phrase (Corpus Christi) rather than Italian or other vernacular, and communion may be given only on the tongue.  Having confronted the crowd of people wanting communion (250,000) and the very limited number of hosts, this is the only way to preserve proper reverence for the Sacrament.

I do not take pictures during Mass--and obviously could not bring my regular camera.  These are just with a phone camera and are either right before or right after the Mass.

7 Churches on Holy Thursday

There is an ancient Roman tradition of visiting the altars of seven churches on Holy Thursday night.  This is actually pretty easy to do in a city of 900 churches.  After the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday evening, the last Mass before the Easter Vigil on Saturday night, the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in a side chapel or altar.  The Mass of the Lord's Supper commemorates especially the institution of the Eucharist, and the Church encourages devotion to the Blessed Sacrament on this day.  There is also a practical aspect--the Church often mixes the symbolic or devotional with the practical.  The altar needs to be stripped and the tabernacle emptied for the Good Friday liturgy. Over the years, the people and parishes added splendor to this, decorating the altar with candles, flowers, and beautiful cloths.  And so developed the custom, especially in Rome and then spreading to other cities, of visiting Christ in the Sacrament at a variety of different altars and churches.

The custom developed of visiting seven churches.  Why seven?  This is probably a confusion with another custom, that of visiting the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome when on pilgrimage there.  The visiting of these seven churches was often associated with a plenary indulgence.

There may have been an indulgence associated with the Holy Thursday custom of visiting churches, but there is no more.  Rather, the Church offers a plenary indulgence for the following in Holy Thursday:

A plenary indulgence is granted [under the normal conditions] for the faithful who piously recite the versus of the Tantum ergo after the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday during the solemn reposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament.

Here were the seven churches I visited this Holy Thursday here in Rome:

Gruyères, Switzerland

If you imagine in your mind a small Alpine village, I would guess that it would look much like the medieval town of Gruyères, about 30 miles from Fribourg.  It is also the town from which gruyère cheese--that perfect ingredient for the most Swiss of dishes, fondue--gets its name.  I went on an absolutely perfect day--still a bit of the winter cold, but by no means freezing.

It has a lovely little village church off the main square.  Like all Swiss churches, it is immaculately clean and well ordered.  Climbing up the hill, it has some incredible overlooks of valley and the Alpine mountains in the distance.

Here are a few of the pictures from Gruyères:

The Caelian Hill & Circus Maximus

It was a chill but sunny day earlier this week, so I made way way over the Caelian hill, at the south end of the Circus Maximus.  I had hoped to get to the ancient Roman baths of Caracalla, a huge structure built by the Emperor Caracalla in the 3rd century.  Unfortunately, however, I arrived too late and the ruins were closed.  Still I managed to grabbed some nice photos.

Just up the street from the baths is the Circus Maximus, now essentially a long, narrow field.  The shape is due to its primary use, which was a stadium for chariot racing.  There are some ruins at the south end, on which there is sporadic work done.  There is a spot over by the Aventine Hill from which one has a very nice view of the Circus and the ruins along the Palatine Hill. 

Below are some pictures from visiting both:

Prague, Czech Republic

In addition to going to Vienna last summer, I stopped for a few days in Prague. It's a 5 hour train ride (or so) from Vienna to Prague. By coincidence, I rode with a group of American college students studying in Prague.

Arriving in Prague, the city instantly became one of my favorite cities.  It has the beauty of Vienna combined with Slavic hospitality.  Our Dominican Church there is St. Giles, and is located near the old town square.  The government recently returned much of the religious property to the various orders.  The Czech Republic had some of the most repressive leaders in all the former East Bloc countries.  The religion was almost literally beaten out of the people.  For that reason, the Czech Republic has the fewest percentage of believers in God than any country in Europe.  But they have a very good Bishop in Prague, our Dominican, H.E. Dominik Cardinal Duka.

From Day 1 in Prague:



These are pictures of my second day in Prague:


Here are pictures from my last day in Prague, mostly of St Giles Church:

Dominikanerkirche

On my last morning in Vienna, I spent some time taking photos of Dominikanerkirche, as it's known in Austria, which is the Dominican Church in Vienna.  It's official name is St. Maria Rotunda.  It is in the old section of Vienna, but a bit removed from the heavy tourist traffic.  It is a beautiful example of Viennese-style baroque art and architecture.  

Vienna -- Day 4

I would love to go go through and tag all these.  But if I do that, I'll never get them all up.  I took a lot of photos.  Here are some more photos I took of Vienna when I was back there in the summer.