This is Brian, contributing for the first time since last
July. The last time I wrote, I promised to end the suspense for our readers
(our mothers and 3 spambots) about my alcohol-related injury. It turns out that
I stepped on shards of a beer bottle that had fallen out of our fridge. The
story is not so much a tale of alcohol’s danger as it is a testament to my
pathetic lack of cleaning skills. Enough
about me.
You’ll
also notice that this entry has barely any pictures.
On Saturday afternoon, I began
the long bus ride to Rome with 150 other students from our study abroad
program. The trip took about 15 hours including the rest stops every few hours
along the way. We were heading to Rome for Mother Teresa’s Canonization Mass,
and we would only be in Rome for about 12 hours before getting back on buses to
head back to Gaming.
We
arrived at 4:30am on Sunday, with a 5-minute walk to the lines outside the
security checkpoints to get into St. Peter’s Square. The trip was planned
months ago, but I only learned the week prior that we needed tickets to get seats
for the mass. Fortunately, a student we knew from last year would also be in
Rome, and she promised to pick up our tickets for us. Really my life is a
series of events that follow the same progression: Brian gets really excited
about something and commits to it. Brian realizes, too late, that he is
inadequately prepared. And finally, somehow everything works out. This
repeating sequence is a helpful reminder that God is loving, but I never learn
the lesson about the importance of preparation.
Back to the story. We are waiting
outside the security checkpoint, and we still don’t have the tickets because I
haven’t made contact with our ticket-holding friend. I figure that the tickets
weren’t really going to be be checked since the crowds would be so big. At this
point, we are too far ahead in the line to just back out, but it’s looking more
and more like everyone else there has tickets. So maybe they are going to check
for tickets. Finally, I was able to connect with our friend, who just happened
to be standing in the same line as us, about 50 feet away. I’m telling you, God
is way too good to me. We got through the line and ended up with decent seats
in the general admission area. Almost all of our students had found seats, but
then I saw several students who had just arrived and were seatless. We were
able to somehow weasel our way into a closer seating area that we didn’t have
tickets for.
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| View of the altar from our seats |
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| My seat, photographed by NBC News |
It was
a hot morning, with temperatures that reached the high 80s the time mass
started at 10:30am. The mass itself was beautiful, with the rites and prayers
of canonization taking place at the very beginning. The entire mass, including
the Angelus prayers at the end, took just under 2 hours.
I was
really moved by the whole celebration. I think what struck me the most was how
God’s providence moves in such unexpected ways. Mother Teresa never seemed to
want to be a celebrity, and now 19 years after hear death, still her name has
become synonymous with service and concern for the poor. When she heard God
call her to serve the poorest of the poor in India, it seemed that she was
being led to a smaller and smaller place of humility. And for her faithfulness
in humility, God has exalted her in an incredible way. Because of her complete
self-donation, especially in the midst of spiritual dryness and a lack of
consolation, her life will be remembered for centuries.
After
the mass, I showed some students around and then had a few cool encounters. I
met a man from the US who went through a complete conversion after meeting
Mother Teresa in the early 1990s. He gave me a candid photo he had taken of
Mother Teresa toward the end of her life. Then I had the privilege of meeting
Mother Olga outside St. Peter’s Basilica.
After meeting up with some friends and touring
Castel Sant’Angelo, we headed back to the buses. 15 hours later, we rolled into
Gaming. It was a great trip, but it was so good to be back home.
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| St Michael atop Castel Sant'Angelo |
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| View of St Peter's from Castel Sant'Angelo |
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