God is good.
Once again, today was an early morning to make it to Santa Maria in Trastevere for the station Mass. By ten of seven the piazza was crowded with seminarians, the sun was hitting the golden church facade, the air was wicked cold, and the gates were still locked. We met with Robert, the seminarian who would give us our Scavi tour later, and Taylor, who usually comes for our Wednesday adoration hour at the villa. Mass began late, but was beautiful, and in English, and the music was amazing and it ended exactly at eight, giving us time to get coffee at a cafe I've never tried before (it looks a lot like cafe's at home, which was a nice break) then walk to St. Peter's to meet our other classmates.
The tour began with an overview of early Christian history, the persecutions under Nero and the development of the necropolis to the Basilica that stands today. As we descended into the Scavi part, Robert reiterated the story of Constantine in battle and how Christianity became legal and then the official religion of the Empire. We crossed through the sliding glass doors, through crypts millenia old; it smelled like dirty river water, then it just smelled damp, then it only smelled old.
Robert had said that the Scavi tour would take 20 minutes; we took well over an hour because no one was in front of us and there was only one group pretty far behind us. He told us the story of the excavation, the communications between the archaeologists and Pius XII, and the pressure of WWII during the excavation. We passed through the Clementine chapel, the most beautiful chapel I've seen yet in Rome, then finally we came to the bones and prayed before the remains of St. Peter, our first pontiff.
A large group of us went to the Abby Theater for lunch, then back to the villa for a short time before we returned to St. Peter's for the Pope's departure.
Our group, maybe because we're small and not the type to fade into a crowd, has developed an impressive ability to serendipitously converge at important events. Gracie, Erin, Mary, Alyson, Alan, Kim, Dylan, Stephen, and I all found each other just before five in the unnervingly quiet crowd, waiting for any sign of a helicopter. We joked about racing to Castel Gandolfo to meet him, but it would take as much time to get to Piramide as the pope-copter to reach the summer house.
It was so beautiful. The helicopter flew so low over the square, and the applause the broke out was so full of respect. They displayed his entire flight and arrival in Gandolfo on the great screens, as well as his address to the waiting people. He ended with a smile and "Buona notte", and left. But he didn't leave, exactly, because he said, over and over again, he is united to us in prayer, and leaves us in the hands of the Holy Spirit.
How blessed to see the crypt of the first Holy Father, Christ represented on Earth, the same day our current pope steps down.
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