Roaming in Rome

You’ll have to pardon my tardiness in arriving at something that may seem all too obvious, but for one who is exceedingly slow in mind, stubborn in heart, and slothful in spirit, (my confessors could tell you as much) I count it as nothing short of a personal and interventional divine revelation. In the evening of this Wednesday, St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day, I went with a small group of people from my Liturgy and Spirituality class to the Basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva where (at least part of) St. Catherine’s relics are kept. This was the only day of the year when one is supposed to be able to go into her actual tomb and be able to touch it. Well, I never actually got to go into St. Catherine’s tomb because they were having Mass when we arrived and I had to go because I had a dinner appointment. However, I think that St. Catherine did at least ask God to bless my efforts.

Our group arrived at the Basilica during the Consecration of the Host. It was when the Eucharist was being distributed that the choir began to sing the “Ave Verum Corpus.” I have heard this song many times since I sang it with the Concert Choir at Forbush High in my senior year, and have been able to translate it myself for at least the last four years. (God used the hand of Mozart to put some very beautiful music to these words by the way!) Here are the lyrics:

Ave, verum corpus
Natum de Maria Virgine,
Vere passum immolatum
In Cruce pro homine,
Cujus latus perforatum
Unda fluxit et sanguine,
Esto nobis praegustatum
In mortis examine.

Hail, the true body
Born of the Virgin Mary,
Truly he suffered. He was sacrificed
On the Cross for the sake of mankind.
His side was pierced

And it flowed with water and blood.
Be for us a foretaste
In the test of death.

You can listen to it here.

It was not until standing there watching this assembly take communion that I truly understood the words in my soul–I suppose I had to see the words in combination with the action. Of course! The song is not merely some pious reflection on the Lord’s crucifixion, but its true meaning is “hidden” in the final sentence, “Be for us a foretaste in the test of death.” It’s the Eucharist that the song is talking about when it says, “the true body”!!! Duh! The temporal sacrifice of Christ, taken up into the Eternal and re-presented in each Mass. Thus is it the “foretaste” because we are brought into sacred time, the reign of God–into the presence of him who was, him who is, and him who will be. Our prayer in that moment is, “May death be a test that we face with hope for what has been promised us!” How he made my soul to burn with true love in that moment, such as I have not felt in a very long time! As though a seraph had dropped on it an ember from the furnace of the divine love to, at least temporarily, consume all of the dross that lie hidden there! It was, in it’s own humble way, another kind of foretaste that God gives to keep the soul pining for Beulah–in the words of Richard of St. Victor in his treatise “Of the Four Degrees of Passionate Charity” where he says that God gives the soul, “a spiritual feeling sweeter than honey enters into her soul and inebriates her with its sweetness, so that she has honey and milk on her tongue and her lips distil the honeycomb.”

I must also here confess that I know very little about St. Catherine other than the fact that she is one of three female doctors of the Church, a mystic, and she was often a thorn in the side of Pope Gregory IX (I believe). I found out only on Wednesday on the way to her tomb that she was a Dominican. This leads me into my next topic for the current blog post: that I have been better acquainting myself with the Dominicans and their lifestyle over the last few weeks. To remind, the Dominicans run the Angelicum where I’m studying here in Rome.

I had never met a Dominican until going to Franciscan, and my overall experience of them has been, how shall I say it, more agreeable than my experience with the Franciscan TORs. I have, as you may have guessed, discovered that the Dominicans, like any other group of people, have members who act as though they have perpetual burrs up their hineys; but I have to say that I’m pretty much convinced that I like the Dominicans–a lot. In fact, my discernment has been such this semester that if ever I become a priest, I think I’m going to be a Dominican because their witness has been so powerful–starting with Fr. Giles and Sr. Mary Michael at Steubenville up to Fr. Monshau, Fr. Benedict, Br. Pacificus and others at the Angelicum. On the whole, I would say that they have a fire among them like I’ve never experienced among other consecrated groups.

I have actually started attending Vespers with them at the Angelicum on Monday through Friday in the evenings. Vespers is the eventide prayers in the Liturgy of the Hours. I would go to Lauds with them in the morning only the gate to the school isn’t open at 7 when the start. I started going to Vespers after the choir’s first performance on the 18^th of April. We had Vespers and an award ceremony for a Cardinal Foley (more on that in a minute). I decided to take another leap of faith the next time I had class with Fr. Benedict and I approached him with, “I want to learn your ways.” I figured to myself, “Well, the Liturgy of the Hours is like Mass, it’s technically a liturgical event so it should be opened to anyone.” He was, of course, compliant when I asked him, and he has kindly taken me under his wing as it were in learning to say the Office–it’s in Latin too, by the way. I remember when I lived in Weirton I would sometimes say morning prayer with a guy I lived with at the Franciscan house, Ryan, and I remember that being sort of a complicated thing in English. But, yet again, it’s not so much the language that’s difficult as it is the process. It’s like anything, though, it just takes time.

I actually got to go with Fr. Benedict and an Indian priest, Fr. Cyprian, to St. Peter’s on Friday morning to celebrate a “private” Mass at one of the side altars there. Apparently any priest who’s been given faculties to celebrate the sacraments in Rome can go to St. Peter’s on any weekday around 7 or so in the morning and ask to celebrate Mass on one of the side altars. There were some Italian kids who spoke English who ended up joining us. Later we went to see the tomb of John Paul II, and then went to have a cappuccino. I have a confession to make–I had never drunk a cappuccino before coming to Italy, and now I’m some sort of addict who goes into withdrawals after a couple of days when I’ve gone without one. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home. Hopefully the American counterpart will be comparable.

Conducter: Fr. Max. Left to Right: Fr. Wilfrid, Fr. ?, Br. John, Br. Pacificus, some obscure person, Sr. ?, Edda, Theresa, and Sylvia.

I mentioned that the choir that I joined had had a performance. Well, it was at the Vespers and the Alumni Award Banquet for Cardinal Foley. Cardinal Foley was a student at the Angelicum in the 1960’s–back when the classes were conducted in Latin (What happened? Vatican II. The modern equivalent of the Renaissance struck Heaven’s native tongue another fatal blow). It was fun. We had non-alcoholic cocktails (what?), dinner, and then we had our choice of an espresso shot or a night-cap afterward. I chose the espresso even though it was dark out–I figured I’d sleep like a fat baby (Dad, that’s for you) regardless after what we had for dinner.

During the session with cocktails, I got to talk to a Fr. Luke Buckles, another Dominican, for the first time. It was a very interesting conversation and he helped me get a new lease on dealing with Italian ways. I’d like to title our conversation, “Italy: A Study In Excessive, Aimless, Wearisome, and Highly Exasperating Bureaucracy.” I don’t know how we got started on it, but I know that I didn’t initiate it. I did not, however, mind contributing! Well, Fr. Luke’s experiences have been more manifold and frustrating than mine have been, but then he’s got a few years up on me. He told me about these cats they call “pignolos” (I’m anglicizing the plural here), whose job it is to look over someone’s paperwork and try very hard to find something wrong with it, and if they don’t, he said, they seem to get upset. I did some limited research of my own about this word, and I found the word “pignolo” which is an adjective meaning “persnickety, over particular, or fussy,” in English. There’s also a plural noun “pignoli” which means “pine nuts.” I don’t know, you be the judge.

Well, in any case, he gave me some advice that a nun had given him when he first moved here back in the 1980’s. “Brian,” he said, “think of yourself as being on pilgrimage here.” He launched into a very welcomed lecture about how sainthood is achieved in small stages–it’s not some great and decisive moment out there in the future where God is suddenly going to beam his light down on you and flush all the negative aspects your humanity away. He’s working right here, right now in some capacity, and he is offering you the opportunity to respond to the grace he gives you in order to sanctify you at every moment of every day. Think of all the opportunities you have while you’re here to offer God your frustrations (and here there are ample) and let him transform them for your own good or for the good of others. That’s the great thing about God, he wants what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what makes us angry, etc. all in an effort to make it more meaningful. Now, I probably could have told myself all of that, but sometimes even the most dazzlingly brilliant (that’s tongue in cheek for those of you who do not know how very facetious I am) need to be reminded of very simple things.

Okay, I’ll go for now!

Arrivaderci!

Brian