This past Monday was our last full day in northern Italy. To celebrate the end of our Verbania language studies all of us seminarians and a few of our teachers took a trip to the small city of Arona, which is located on the southern coast of Lago Maggiore. Arona is a rather well-known tourist spot along the lake and its primary claim to fame is a massive statue of St. Charles Borromeo (whose Feast Day just happens to be on my birthday and who also just happens to be the Patron Saint of Seminarians), who was born there. Over the years the statue has been turned into a well-documented tourist attraction (EVERY tourist book mentions it!) and many people visit it so as to climb inside the saint’s head—for a few Euro you can rent a hardhat and off you go. Seeing how I wasn’t sure as to whether I would ever get to Arona again I figured that I couldn’t pass up such an opportunity.
- I’m standing inside of the head.
This is the view that one sees through the statue's eye hole. For the rest of the day the joke was "Now we know what it looks like to see the world through the eyes of a saint." Bad seminarian humor.
The next day we left Verbania and headed back to Rome and its heat. After a five hour train ride (this was the fast train!) we arrived in Rome on Tuesday night and tried to get some sleep so that we would be ready for the start of Orientation on Wednesday.
On Thursday it was the Feast Day honoring St. Monica, the holy mother of St. Augustine, who spent many hours of her life praying to God and weeping for her son’s moral and religious conversion over 1500 years ago (If you have never read Augustine’s Confessions I highly recommend that you do so, or if you prefer an easier read try The Restless Flame, by Louis De Wohl). One of the traditions at the NAC is to visit the Church of Sant’ Agostino on this day and to pray for our own mothers and all the mothers of the world in front of the tomb of St. Monica. In particular, we pray, through her intercession, that all mothers would continue to know or come to know the infinite love of God the Father, the One who gave to them that great gift of motherhood (without which none of us would be here), and that they would have the courage and fortitude to respond to His love by pursuing lives of holiness and gratitude. I was especially fond of this opportunity because I have grown to love St. Augustine over the past few years and without St. Monica his life would have been drastically different. [St. Monica, please continue to pray for all mothers and their sons!]
As if all of this wasn’t enough, on Friday we had Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica, at the tomb of St. Peter. I could write an entire post on this but I will save this one for another time just because it is so amazing.
Finally, on Sunday all of us first-year seminarians at the NAC attended the Angelus with Pope Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo. The Holy Father spoke about St. Monica and her witness to the God who is Truth and Love and the role of the family in fostering a loving community where children learn to love God. After he finished his reflection he greeted all of us seminarians from the NAC with the following words:
May your time here at Castel Gandolfo and in Rome deepen your integral understanding of our faith and strengthen in you the desire to be consistent in word and deed, following the heart and mind of our Lord. Upon each of you present and your families, I invoke God’s blessing of peace and joy!
After this, all of us NAC-ers sang a song to the Holy Father (We really should have practiced more! On the video below skip ahead to the 10:30 mark to watch our less-than-stellar performance.) and then we had a tour of the Papal gardens, which are beautiful. Within the gardens we saw where Pope John Paul II used to swim and pray and where Pope Benedict feeds his fish each afternoon when he stays at Castel Gandolfo.
The Swiss Guard waits for the Holy Father to begin. They sure do have great uniforms.
I'm standing in front of the gardens.
We all pray where Pope John Paul II did and where Pope Benedict XVI does and where he feeds his fish.
There is so much more that I could write, but just as St. John ended his Gospel by saying, “there are also many other things that Jesus did, but if these were to be described individually, I do not think the whole world would contain the books that would be written” I too will end this post because I do not think that the whole world could contain the blogposts that could be written about this past week.
With my prayers and love,
Scott
