Triduum

The high holy days are upon us, and it is a special privilege to be celebrating them in Rome this year. There are something like 600 churches in Rome, so it's not hard to find a place to celebrate; however, the center of attention is the Papal liturgies.

By one estimate, as many as a million pilgrims flock to Rome on this weekend, and we've seen the evidence of that ourselves, mostly in the form of incredibly long lines to get into the Papal masses.

Paul, Keely and Clare attended the Holy Thursday "Chrism" Mass at St. Peter's. (Video below is from the recessional.) The Mass was at 9:30AM, and we were in line about 7:45AM. They began letting people in around 8:30AM, so we then waited another hour before the opening prayers.

(If you want to attend these liturgies, by the way, you need to have special tickets--free of charge--in advance. Due to some very persistent and persuasive St. Thomas students, we have such tickets for the entire family for all of the masses.)

Unfortunately, our experience last night at the Holy Thursday Mass ("Lord's Supper") has caused us to change our plans somewhat. The Papal Mass for Holy Thursday takes place, not in St. Peter's, but in the Bishop of Rome's (that is what the Pope is) Cathedral church, St. John Lateran. As warned, we showed up--the entire family--two hours early (3:30PM). There was a large, but not enormous group of people waiting for the gates to open at 4:30. When they finally did, the Italian police began letting people in, but only two or three at a time. Each person with a backpack needed to be checked, and everyone was "wanded" for weapons, etc. We finally made it into the church about 5:30PM, but by then, all the seats were taken and where there were places to stand you couldn't really see anything at all and it was generally chaotic. Given the circumstances, we decided to leave.

Today, Good Friday, we decided to attend services at Santa Susanna, the English-speaking American parish here in Rome, at 6PM, and then go to the Papal Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum at 9:15 PM. In short, we're bagging on the Papal Masses, at least for one day.

Tomorrow, Paul will take Matthew, Katie, and Lucy to the Vigil Mass (9PM) at the "Irish College," which is near St. John Lateran. The Church in Ireland is suffering grievously right now, so it will be good to be with our Irish brothers and sisters to celebrate our Lord's resurrection.

Keely, Clare, and Paul are going to attempt the Papal liturgy at St. Peter's. It starts at the same time (9PM), but they will need to be in line by about 5PM, maybe earlier.

Note: the Vatican Website is publishing texts of the Papal homilies during Triduum.