May 19
So. Today is May 19, and I am just now sitting down to tell whoever’s interested about Holy Week and Easter Week. Procrastination? No, my friend: There is a method to this madness.
Our society jumps the gun with pretty much everything it does, but one of the most frustrating ways in which it does so is by anticipating and then sucking dry our holidays (and recall, the word ‘holiday’ stems from the Old English for ‘holy day’ – all feasts at one point in our cultural history were religious feasts). We all well know how by the time Christmas arrives, after hearing watered-down Christmas jingles, being bombarded by ads, and shopping and writing cards since Thanksgiving (if not Halloween), plenty of people are too drained to truly engage ‘the reason for the season,’ and are just glad when it’s over. Meanwhile pop culture, after the next 48 hours of post-Christmas-sales-frenzy, gladly and unreflectively starts setting up for New Year’s.
The Church in her wisdom takes rather the opposite approach. Our two holiest times, Christmas and Easter, do indeed have a preparatory buildup; but when the great feast arrives, it is not over in 24 hours. ‘The twelve days of Christmas’ are the twelve days after Christmas, culminating in the Feast of the Epiphany; and Easter Sunday itself, liturgically, extends for the next eight days – the readings in the Divine Office for the next week are the same every day, for it liturgically **is** the same day. We do this so as to offer time to reflect, to dwell upon meanings; so that we do not rush from one thing to another, always looking for what’s next. And so as the Easter Season draws to a close with the approach of Pentecost, I would like to think that it’s fitting that I now offer a reflection on how it began by recounting my Holy Week in Rome and Easter Week around Italy and Switzerland.
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HOLY WEEK
Palm Sunday
This was the first big Papal Mass I ever attended – and I have to be honest in that I was not ready for just how big it would be. It was held outdoors, in the elliptical-shaped-‘square’ of St. Peter’s; attendance, I believe, was close to 10,000. Despite having tickets for seats, we were instructed to arrive an hour and a half before Mass started – and when we got there, the line to get in was already quite long. Any crowd that size is going to have an effect on the liturgy; but then again, it is appropriate to celebrate this feast in a large group – after all, the people that gathered around Christ as he entered Jerusalem weren’t exactly few and quiet, either. (My one serious complaint: I will reluctantly accept the fact that the giant TV screens that were set up to help the people in the back see something are probably a good idea. But the camerawork was decidedly un-helpful at times. During ‘boring’ parts of the Mass – chanted Psalms, the distribution of Holy Communion – they would scan the crowd as though it were a sporting event, distracting the fans by giving them a chance to be on TV. Maybe the rationale was that showing people praying would encourage others to pray; but offering that visual distraction seemed all the more to promote a sort of viewership-passivity instead of personal engagement that is already too widespread.)
That said, though, it was still a true blessing to be there. Interestingly, everyone who had a ticket for a seat was given an olive branch instead of a palm frond (we also were given Mass booklets so as to be able to follow the Latin (although the translation to the vernacular was in Italian, so it did not help too much)). Mass started at the foot of the Obelisk, where a miniature Garden of Gethsemane – grass, shrubberies, and even a 15' tree – had been set up. And the procession from there to the main altar at the foot of the steps to St. Peter’s truly did the feast justice: led by the local altar boys, dozens of laypersons from all over the world in traditional garb preceded about 50 bishops and 20 cardinals before ‘Benedetto Sedicesimo’ (as the Italians call him) himself. Pope Benedict XVI is a smaller man than you might expect – but he carries himself in a manner truly befitting the dignity of his office, and as he has demonstrated first at Regensburg and now in Brazil, even if you disagree with him, he simply cannot be ignored.
The most deeply moving part of the Mass, for me, was towards the end of the long Gospel reading, where the Passion narrative is recounted in full. When we come to the part where Christ hands over his spirit to the Father, all kneel – and, yes, that includes the Pope. The Church is often accused of being stuck in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages are vilified as having been a time of gross inequality between persons. But were it not for the classical and Medieval Christian emphasis on man’s fundamental equality before God (‘the soul of a peasant is the same as the soul of a king,’ one dictum put it), the ‘Enlightenment’ never would have inspired such declarations as “all men are created equal.” But to see this so visibly – two Swiss guards carrying out an ornate kneeler, placing it before the aged Pope, and all of us joining in silent prayer on our knees with the successor of Peter – it is something that my heart will not easily forget.
Monday
Monday of Holy Week, as far as I know, is not a special feast – but it happened to be the two-year anniversary of the death of Pope John Paul II, and in Rome, that is something very much worth commemorating. Again, there was a Mass at the foot of St. Peter’s celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI; again, the crowds and TV screens got under my skin enough to distract me. But again, it was powerfully moving nonetheless. How beloved of a father JPII was to all of us was plainly visible; there were crowds, but there was a very different atmosphere than any other gathering of so many thousands of people would have. Our society likes to say about such moments, in a well-intentioned but somewhat empty way, ‘his presence could be felt.’ But if we believe that Karol Wojtyla is truly in Heaven – and when he is shortly canonized, that will be the Church’s way of saying that he indeed is – then in a quite literal way, he **was** there with us. As Christ is truly present in the Eucharist, a host of angels and the Communion of Saints are present too at every Mass, for all are united with their Lord. And hence for a few brief moments at that Mass, hearing JPII’s good friend and successor speak about him, I felt just as close to the man who so deeply impacted our generation and myself in particular as I did when I saw him in Toronto at World Youth Day 2002.
Holy Thursday
This was one of the best days of the semester, hands-down.
A few of my friends from the Notre Dame program in Angers, France were in town for Holy Week. Again thanks to the fantastic program I am studying with, I was able to get extra tickets for the Papal Chrism Mass (where the pope blesses the holy oils used in the Diocese of Rome for Baptism, Holy Orders, and the Anointing of the Sick), so we all were able to attend. This was held inside of St. Peter’s, which made it much easier to focus on the Mass than the outdoor celebrations had been. And my friends got within ten feet of the Holy Father, which probably will be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for them.
After Mass, I took them to Campo San Teutonico, colloquially known as the ‘German Cemetery’ inside Vatican City. Because I am a student at a Pontifical University, I was able simply to walk up to the Swiss Guards, show my ID, explain where I want to take my friends, and go past while receiving a salute. (Yeah, that’s pretty cool.) This cemetery was founded during the reign of Charlemagne. After the fall of the Roman Empire, it was quite unsafe for centuries for anyone to make a pilgrimage to Rome; but with the return of the Emperor, the roads were reasonably safe again, and Frankish pilgrims began to come to the Eternal City once more. Because the journey took weeks or months, some were unable to make it back, though; and thus a cemetery was established. It is still in use today: Overseen by an order of German nuns, when I first visited it with my parents there was a freshly raised tomb with a name inscribed with a spring 2007 date of death. A beautiful garden with trees and flowers amongst the graves, it contains the best perspective on death that I have ever seen: A celebration of life in the midst of death, and a preparation for our own passing away by reflection upon those who have come before.
While there, we happened to run into a seminarian acquaintance of mine from the Angelicum. He is from Germany and lives in the ‘German College’ nearby in Vatican City; and as he had half an hour free before lunch, he was able to give us a tour of the cemetery and the attached chapel, and then sit us down and give us a brief organ concert (playing us a traditional German hymn for the Palm Sunday triumphal entry).
Continuing the theme of seeing the foundations of the Church after having celebrated Mass with its current Petrus, we went off to the Priscilla Catacombs, where hundreds of the earliest Christians, some of them martyrs, were buried. The catacombs are a somewhat eerie, very powerful, experience for those who have never been. Six miles long, four stories one under the other, the poor people of ancient Rome dug graves underground to save money – the walls of the tunnels are lined with gaping six-foot-long, two-foot-deep holes, for just as sailors on submarines have their bunks piled one on top of another, so too were these Romans buried. One can distinguish Christian from pagan tombs by the symbols inscribed on the marble or terra cotta gravemarkers – the ‘Jesus fish’ we see plastered on cars or mocked by Darwinists regains some of its ancient dignity when it is seen chiseled into a 1900-year-old tomb.
More powerful for me was the fact that this segment of the catacombs, in one of the more wealthy tombs, contains the oldest known painting of Mary, dating back to roughly A.D. 150. She was simple, serene, and still quite beautiful after all these years. The guided tour quickly moved on and we only had time to pray for a moment – but it was enough.
After grabbing a bite to eat, we headed off to two more of my favorite churches, where I was able to be a moderately well-informed guide thanks to having had visits with my church architecture class. First was the San Clemente Basilica, which I wrote about earlier; the other was St. Paul Outside the Walls, which is perhaps the second-most-impressive church in Rome. It’s a favorite for its extremely rare and precious alabaster windows – and for the fact that it has a large portrait of every single Pope in mosaic around the walls, from Peter through Benedict XVI. I probably should not forget to mention that it’s also where St. Paul was buried after having been beheaded as a treasonous Roman for preaching the Gospel; his tomb is there for pilgrims to pray at, which we did.
We ate dinner at La Griglietta, which has become my favorite restaurant; the wait staff knows me and I no longer even bother ordering off the menu any more, simply trusting the kitchen to serve up something very authentic and very, very good. And finally, we ended the day by grabbing gelato on our way to Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps, where we chatted and took in la vita Romana.
Few of my days have been this full – but only in Rome is a day like this possible to begin with.
Good Friday
We started the day off with a visit to the Vatican Museums – Michelangelo’s Last Judgment seemed a fitting way to begin celebrating the day Christ died for our sins. This is already really long so I’ll not digress much – but for everyone who has been indoctrinated into the usual ‘Michelangelo was gay and secretly sneered at the institutional Church’ postmodern academic posturing, let me just say that you need to book a tour of the Museums with Dr. Elizabeth Lev, a brilliant and compelling professor of art history at Duquesne who offers tours in and around Rome. Michelangelo is buried in Santa Croce in Florence wearing the habit of the Franciscan order – which was his desire and prerogative as a faithful 3rd Order (lay) Franciscan. His late-in-life worries that he would go to Hell are often used to theorize that he was a homosexual; but the simpler and more compelling explanation is that he had committed a much greater sin, pride – for example, we know that for the rest of his life he deeply regretted his rash act of carving his name (in big Latin block letters, nonetheless) into the sash of the Madonna on the Pietà. Having returned a second time and spent well over two hours in the Sistine Chapel (which is nowhere near enough time), my favorite scene/image/part is definitely his portrayal of Eve just moments before the Fall. I doubt I will ever again see a more compelling image of feminine grace and beauty coupled with true strength.
And then, arriving in time to be there at 3 p.m., the hour of His death, we went to the Scala Sancta, the Holy Steps, which pious tradition holds to have been the very stairs upon which Pilate stood with Jesus to condemn him. There are few tourists here, mostly pilgrims – in part because you are not allowed to take pictures and are expected to climb the steps not on your feet but on your knees; kissing each step before you ascend it is encouraged. I took over an hour to climb the twenty-eight steps; it was quite exhausting and rather painful – but that served to help me enter more deeply into the meditations of the Stations of the Cross than I ever have before, truly catching a glimpse of the meaning upon each step of the way. Here’s yet another place where secular interpretations simply cannot understand, because they are looking at instead of looking along with: just as with The Passion of the Christ film, it is all too easy to dismiss such things as mere masochism; and yet the deepest insight I gained from the mediations, paradoxically, was a greater understanding of the **dignity** of man. That despite all efforts to humiliate and ridicule Jesus, he could not be defeated; not that ‘the human spirit’ or some nice-sounding abstraction can triumph over suffering, but that God Himself lowered himself so far so as to raise us to Him. It is an awe-inspiring truth to have sink in, soaring to the Heavens precisely because you are on your knees.
I went to Mass that evening at St. John Lateran, the third of the four ‘major Basilicas’ in Rome. And the next morning I went to Mass and confession at St. Mary Major, just to round off the bunch.
Easter Vigil / Easter Sunday
We had tickets for the Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s, again celebrated by Pope Benedict XVI. But despite the fact that it is the highest feast in the Church (as well as one of the ‘coolest’ Masses, thanks to the candlelight procession into the enormous, pitch-black Basilica), I decided not to attend, as I had another opportunity to see the universality of the Church in an even starker way. One of my good friends here is a Byzantine Catholic seminarian – in union with Rome by recognizing the Pope as the true successor to Peter, but of a different rite than we Roman Catholics. He invited me to attend his Easter Vigil at Sant’Atanasio, and I accepted. It was truly an eye-opening experience. The Mass, which lasted from 10 p.m. to about 1:30 a.m., began with a procession down Via Babuino, a major thoroughfare just off Piazza del Popolo; no police, no forewarning for the traffic, just sixty-odd people with lit candles chanting in Greek stepping into the street and forcing cars to stop so that the incense and the crucifix and the giant-icons-on-poles had plenty of space to be carried with dignity. When we reached the doors of the church, there was an elaborate ceremony of the bishop ‘breaking’ them down by pounding on them with the long wooden crucifix, symbolizing Christ’s conquering of death: The Church that we had left in pitch dark had ‘miraculously’ been transformed during the procession into a room blazingly alive with dozens of dancing candles. Mass itself was, well, long, with lots of chanting in Greek (I can kind-of-almost follow Latin chant, but Greek is a whole other ballgame) and incense-and-bells and kissing of icons. But despite me getting lost at times, my friend in the cassock would give me updates, and the Eucharist was the Eucharist. To shouts of “Christos Anesti” – Christ is Risen – we closed the Mass by exchanging kisses of peace with the bishop. And then, like good Eastern Christians, we celebrated; everyone was invited back to the Greek College for the breaking of the Lenten fast. Never before had I been handed a bowl of molten chocolate and told to drink it straight – but never had I celebrated Easter at two in the morning with Byzantine Catholics, mostly from Ukraine, with whom I chatted in Italian and sang in Greek.
My friend and I returned home a bit before three, and had planned to finish the Easter celebrations with a party on our terrace, awaiting the rising of the Sun to testify to the rising of the Son .. but alas, the rest of the house was exhausted and asleep. I wish I could say that the two of us stayed up anyhow and celebrated. But despite the fact that I did not last until the sunrise, I can say in all honesty that this was the most intensely packed, emotionally involved, grace-filled Holy Week that I have ever had, and for all of it I could not be much more grateful.
