The Pope.... Again!

     As if the Papal Mass on Sunday wasn't enough, I got to see His Holiness again on Wednesday! That did, of course, involve getting up early, walking for fifteen minutes with wet hair, and starving for a couple of hours, but that's okay. (Especially since Erin and I got to pick-pocket Theresa while bored in line. That was fun.) As close as I was to the Pope on Sunday, I was even closer on Wednesday. Front row, man!

 

 

Not zoomed up. :) We were THIS CLOSE.

 

   Christendom College was also announced during the English part of the audience, so that was really cool. Besides speaking in German (duh), English, and Italian, the Pope also spoke to the people of the following languages: Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Arabic. It was so cool to hear the Pope reading in Arabic. I was really surprised that there were Catholics in the square who were from the Arabian world. Good for them! Go Catholics of Kazakhstan! The cutest part was when the Pope got to speak to his flock in his native tongue. He barely glanced at his notes for the first half of the German part. It was so nice. I like German. I don't know why some people insist that it's an ugly language. (Then again, I'm the girl who will listen to 80's British pop, Bollywood soundtracks, Japanese techno-pop, mainstream 90's and 2000's things everyone knows, modern Arabian hits, and Korean boy band songs in the same sitting..... Then I'll often go from that energetic stuff and change the mood with opera and chant. Apparently that's not exactly normal.)

     Anyway, we and our families got a special blessing from the Pope at the end of the audience. I loved the fact that people were there from all over the world. There's nothing like going to the Vatican to really feel the universality (catholicity; "catholic" means "universal") of the Church: you've got people of every age, language, and color all packed in the same space to see their spiritual father on earth and show him their love. You get the same feeling going to the Vatican at any time, really. You hear all sorts of languages as you wait in line; you see Korean nuns and African priests; you find vacationing couples from everywhere stopping in the adoration chapel to say hi to Jesus. Can you guess what my favorite foreign country is? :-) :-) So happy to be here... Now I know what the Christendom brochures mean when they stress the coolness and importance of being here "in the heart of the Church." It really is spectacular if you take the time to notice it.

 

There was this group of Italians in traditional dress; they all got
 up and danced at the end of the audience. I soooo wanted to join them.

The group above had a billion pictures taken with the Swiss Guards;
 during the photoshoot this one guy looked SO bored, that I just had to get a picture.
The look of sheer and utter ennui on his face was just hilarious.
And I knew my brother would appreciate a shot of a dude with three medals.



     And speaking of taking the time, I learned something in the first week of the semester: DON'T always take pictures of cool stuff. Don't. It's a bad idea. (Taking the pictures above, however, was a good idea. ;-) ) Sometimes you really just need to relax and to look with your eyes only. It's more rewarding in the end. Sometimes you ought to take pictures, and you'll be so glad that you did, but other times you just can't. They won't always do the subject half the justice anyway. This is why I was really glad, though vexed at the same time, that a lot of the churches on Pilgrimage forbade the taking of pictures. Of course, some people do it anyway, but that really is to their detriment. If you're just seeing everything through your camera, you really miss out on the experience. Sometimes technology just needs to hide in a corner and not exist. I didn't take my laptop with me on Pilgrimage, and that was such a good decision. Did I miss it? Not till the end. I was relieved to not have it with me. I felt as if a great burden was taken off me. It's amazing how attached and addicted we get to things. Those things grab us and hang on; we want to let go, but we're to weak to even try.

     Anyway, back to the chronicling of events. After the audience and lunch, we headed toward the Catacombs of St. Priscilla. When I hear that name, I tend to think of a stereo-typical British spinster, prudish and everything. It's actually a Latin name, though. If I'm not mistaken, it is the feminization of "Priscus," as in Tarquinius Priscus. (Roman naming was patronymic: all the kids were named after the dad; kind of like the Russian naming tradition, only the Russians had the middle name of the child be the father's, not the first name.) Not sure what the name means, though.

     On the way to the catacombs, I learned that the Capuchin monks invented cappuccino. Thank you, brothers!

 

Yeah.... Some of the guys stopped at Burger King after lunch to get MORE food...
And yes, they wore those cardboard atrocities all the way to the catacombs, not taking them off until we got there.

     Down there, we got to see THE oldest painting of the Madonna and Child known to us, dated around 180-220. We saw some other early paintings: the three men in the fiery furnace (from the Book of Daniel), the trial of Susanna ("), the Good Shepherd, Jonah being spit out by the whale, Moses striking water from the rock. We had Mass after the tour, said for us by Fr. Sean, an American priest.

     Yesterday, the Pope officially declared the start of the Year of Faith. Alas, we were not there when he did, for we had class.

     The Terminal, a weird place where we had group lunch on class days, is such a priest hangout. After being at St. Peter's Square, they'll often go to the Terminal for lunch, dozens of them in cassocks. It's so cool to see priest in cassocks; way cooler than the normal outfits you see priests wear back home.

 

Bishops looking cool in their cassocks and whatever-the-sashes-are-called

 

     Last night was a small dance party held in honor of Katie Shannon's birthday. I was SO happy to finally dance for the first time in five months. I even got to do this (in a simpler and sloppier form)!!!



 

 

     By the way, O you who will come here later, have fun with the singing washing machine. :)