Day #51 : ROME, Day 4

Today was a "General Over-view of Rome" Tour, which took us from Our Lady of the Angels and Martyrs to the Church of St. Agnes, followed by an adventure to St. Cecilia's Basilica, and concluding with St. John Lateran, thus completing our visit to all four majors basilicas.

St. Rita of Cascia, pray for us!

The tour began with The Church of Our Lady of Angels and Martyrs. This church was originally a Roman bath which Michelangelo redesigned into a church. Outside the church is an interesting fountain : it has a bunch of classically sculpted nymphs around it, which in the day it was made caused quite a scandal to some people. Inside the church was one of the most beautiful statues of St. Rita of Cascia, my confirmation saint, that I have ever seen. Across from her was St. Anthony of Padua, also a very beautiful statue. At the front of the church was a small exhibit about Galileo, claiming to combine religion and science. On the right side of the transept there was a small hole near the top of the wall where a small beam of light came through, which helped to track the moon so as to determine the date of Easter. There was a really cool looking organ on the left side of the transept! I wanted it for my living room some day - and yes, my living room is going to be gi-normous some day.

A super cool organ!

Our Lady of Angels and Martyrs was followed by one of the greatest highlights of the day: the church containing Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila. This sculpture is taken from a scene in St. Teresa's book, The Interior Castle, where she describes an angel coming and piercing her heart with an arrow, where she experienced a tremendous pain and joy, she was so near to union with God in her mysticism. Bernini's depiction of this scene is breathtaking. As a Baroque sculpture, the piece is full of movement and emotion. There are no straight lines, everything is flowing and active. There are rays of golden light in addition to the natural lighting from a hidden window pouring down upon the angel and the saint. St. Teresa is totally limp, from her feet to her hands to the expression of face, surrendering herself completely in her ecstasy. It was a wondrous sight to view this piece in person, and more were to come.

Bernini's St. Teresa of Avila

We stopped at the Church of S. Andrea Delle Fratte Santuario Madonna Del Miracolo, where Our Lady had appeared to a Jewish man after he had begun to ask for her intercession, causing him to convert to Christianity. I believe St. Maximilian Kolbe may have had a connection with this church as well - he may have said his first Mass here - but don't quote me on that.
One more church we visited today was extremely interesting, albeit somewhat gruesome. This church was a Capuchin Franciscan Bone yard Church. An entire cemetery was moved here at one point, and since they didn't have enough room to bury all of the remains, the bones were used to decorate the church. There are many theories about how this decoration came into being - several theories involved the Capuchins hiding a psychotic, twisted prisoner or soldier from the French Revolution who in his free time decided to take these bones and decorate the interior of the church. However, a more plausible theory that our tour guide presented was that the Capuchins decorated the church with the bones in order to tell their visitors Memento More, "Remember your death." This friary was built on a very wealthy street in Rome, so it served as a stern reminder for their materialistic neighbors. The church was a sharp reminder in preparation for Ash Wednesday's "Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return." Inside was also a painting of the Resurrection of Lazarus, which brought to my mind one of my favorite scenes in Crime and Punishment where Sonya reads this Gospel passage to Raskolnikov, symbolizing the life that comes through Christ, through divine Love, Mercy, and Forgiveness.

The boneyard Church

We then walked to the Trevi Fountain, which was near the hotel my sister, father, and I stayed in when we were in Rome for our previous pilgrimage. It was nice to see the square again! I found the gelato shop where I think we bought gelato one time the last time we were there. There was a little church on the corner of the square which I couldn't recall if we had gone to see or not the last time we were here, so  a couple of us went to check it out. This was another little blessing unlooked for, that God sent to me as a small token of His love. The church was originally a Roman Catholic Church but it had been converted into a Byzantine Church with an iconostasis. There was a recording playing of the Greek hymn we sing at the Byzantine liturgy, the Akethyst hymn, a Marian devotion lead by a couple Franciscan students back on main campus. To give you a general idea of the beauty of Byzantine chant, check out this video: Vespers of Good Friday at the Monastery of Chevetogne. This is a Benedictine monastery in Belgium that is bi-ritual, meaning that they are part of both the Roman and the Byzantine rite of the Catholic Church. It was a beautiful moment to come into the church, to kneel and pray there for a few moments and experience the beauty of the chant and the icons before us. It definitely was encouraging to me as I am seriously considering going to the Byzantine liturgy for the Easter Triduum this semester.

The next stop on our tour was the Jesuit Church of St. Francis of Xavier, which I think we may have visited on our pilgrimage to Rome in 2003. I couldn't remember for sure though, as our stay in the church was very brief and only really to admire the ceiling, which was painted to look curved but is actually flat. However, I believe that St. Aloysius Gonzaga and St. John Berchmann were buried here.
Right down the street from the Jesuit Church was the Pantheon, built in 120 AD (yay for Art Appreciation!). Near this place was supposedly one of the best gelato places in Rome, so Joey Walsh, Nathan Maurer, Marianne and I went to check it out. I must say, it was pretty darn good! We ran into an American family in the gelato shop, too. It's odd how when you are in a foreign country there is this sudden kinship you feel with people who speak your language. A similar instance happened on the train to Siena when we ran into a couple American students from Michigan studying in Salzburg.
We then made our way to the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, where St. Catherine of Siena is buried, as is Blessed Fra Angelico, the patron saint of artists. The church also houses Michelangelo's sculpture of the Resurrected Christ, and Lippi's Carafa Chapel, which houses a series of his frescos. We could only stay in the church for a very short time, so I had very little time to revel in the beauty of the church, but I did appreciate this one a great deal. AND I did get to pray before the body of St. Catherine, an opportunity for which I was very glad.
Another unexpected gift of the day which God blessed me with was the viewing of Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew, one of three of his paintings found in the Contarelli Chapel in the church  San Luigi dei Francesi. The more I study this painting the more I fall in love with it - why I was drawn to it I wasn't quite sure at first, but I think it has to do with the general theme of the semester, of being aware of God's presence in every living creature, in man, nature, in the art and the holy places we visit. Not only the subject material of this painting but the artist Caravaggio I later learned has a lot of interesting connections which I find very intriguing. But all of this deserves its own blog post so I won't go into more detail now.
We then went to the Church of St. Augustine, where lies the remains of St. Monica. There was a side altar to St. Rita there as well, since she also was an Augustinian nun. I had forgotten how often she pops up around Rome! This church also housed one of Caravaggio's paintings, depicting the Madonna and Child being venerated by a peasant couple. There was a beautiful statue of the Madonna and Child in this church as well, which many people have received healings and miracles from venerating. She is known as Our Lady of Childbirth and was carved by Josquin Sansovino.
The last stop on our list was the square outside of the Church of St. Agnes. The Square contains a Bernini fountain called The Four Rivers. Inside the church is contained some of the relics of St. Agnes, and it may have been built over where she was martyred. I was glad to have had the opportunity to pray at the church of my big sister from household, Teresa. This signified the end of our formal tour, and now.

St. Cecilia's Basilica

One part of our journey was over, another was about to begin! I had spoken with a few girls about attempting to find St. Cecilia's Basilica. Originally the girls had wished to go to the Catacombs where we believed that St. Cecilia was buried. I had wanted to go to the basilica since I had seen the catacombs where she was buried the last time I was in Rome, but I was flexible. However, we realized that the catacombs would be closed by the time we reached that part of Rome, so we decided to go to the basilica instead. With the help of another girl in our group, she and I read the map and lead our mini-pilgrimage to the Colosseum, across the bridge and into the neighborhood of the basilica -we found it with very little trouble, praise the Lord! I can't tell you how happy I was to see the little square where the little Roman church was tucked away. We arrived just in time for Afternoon Prayer, so we were able to pray it with the sisters - yet another unexpected blessing from God.

The sisters preparing for afternoon prayer

There was a young man standing by himself in the church towards the front. My friend Regina and I decided that he was a young man from one of my favorite books, Black As Night, a modern retelling of the fairy tale Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In one of the opening scenes, the hero Arthur Denniston is seated in this very basilica meditating on the statue of St. Cecilia. Although this fellow looked European, not American - but he was the best we could do. It was beautiful to look upon her statue. You see, St. Cecilia was the first incorrupt saint, and when they excavated her body there was a sculptor there who sculpted her form as he saw it when they first opened the tomb. Her sleek, white form is draped in snow white robes, her hands proclaim the three persons in one God, there is a cut in her neck where the executioner had attempted to sever her head from her body without success. Thus, she died in agony, in her own blood, while still preaching and singing to the Lord. This was a major highlight of my pilgrimage to Rome, as I have longed to look upon her statue since I first read the scene from Black as Night, since I first became a serious musician. I was able to get a replica of the statue for myself - this was the main souvenir I wanted from Rome, and this was the only place I had seen one the entire pilgrimage, so I'm glad I was able to find one.

The statue of St. Cecilia

The painting. St. Cecilia with lilies, which are being presented by an angel if you look closely. The angel is behind the chant, which you can see faintly at the top. I wasn't able to fit all of it into the picture, but this is close.

Our Arthur Denniston, a.k.a. "Bear"

The organ!!!

There was a painting of Cecilia with the chant for her feast day incorporated into it. It was located in a little side chapel, so I sight read the chant through the grate. :-) There was a little organ there as well to which I touched my rosary from Siena. Beneath her basilica were the remains of her house. It cost only 5 euro to go underneath, so my fellow pilgrims and I decided to go. In addition to her house there is a beautiful chapel underneath the basilica which contains the crypt where she, her husband, and her brother-in-law are actually buried - we didn't realize this until later when students who had gone to the catacombs told us that she was no longer buried there. So we got to see her basilica and venerate her tomb, both! God was guiding us the entire time to her tomb! We had already been glad we had gone to the basilica rather than the tomb, but the basilica ended up being twice as worth its experience anyway!

The crypt where St. Cecilia is buried

We spent our time getting to St. John Lateran's basilica, so Mass was over by the time we reached the basilica, but we still were able to look around. In the left side of the transept above the altar there is the remains of the table from the Last Supper. Housed above the altar in the baldacchino are the heads of St.s Peter and Paul. Along the nave of the church are huge statues of the Apostles and St. Paul. Above these statues are scenes from Scripture, one side has Old Testament scenes, and the other side has New Testament scenes. The scenes correspond to each other though, which is the cool part, so Brian gave Hannah and I a little tour of the scenes, giving us all the connections and explaining the significance of each scene. It was awesome! I love being Catholic! It really made me want to take Principles of Biblical Studies with Dr. Bergsma. I just might do that...

St. John Lateran's, the Cathedral of the Bishop of Rome

The interior

The table from the Last Supper is housed above the tabernacle

St. Dominic with our Lady and the pope who was around when the Dominicans were founded!!! (I found him first and I showed it to Brian. He gave me a hug afterwards.)

St. Francis with St. John Lateran's behind him.  If you look at it at the right angle, St. Francis can be seen holding up St. John Lateran's. The Pope saw St. Francis in a dream holding up this cathedral and he knew that St. Francis would save the Church from corruption.

Thus was the conclusion of our fourth day in Rome, and what a beautiful day it had been! This was my favorite day of the Rome pilgrimage, hands down.