Rome: Surpassing Expectations

We'll we just returned from yet another 10 day pilgrimage to Rome & Assisi. Hence, it only seems natural for student Trish Irvine to capture her thoughts:

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As we were trekking to Italy, I remembered a conversation I had with a priest-friend several months prior. He had studied at the North American College in Rome, Italy and I asked him where I should go when I was studying abroad this semester. He asked if I had been to Rome and I said I hadn’t. “Go to Rome,” he said. At the time, I was rather disappointed that I wasn’t told about little Italian cities to visit or secrets of an experienced traveler. Yet when I arrived in Rome, there was a sense that “Go to Rome” was all that needed to be said. Of course, I still want to travel to little Italian cities and see more than merely streams of traffic. Rome, however, was far more than I expected and cannot merely be reduced to a ‘big city.’

I wasn’t fond of being squished in a metro or forcing myself to be aware of any potential pick-pocketers, but there were a multitude of positives. Priests travel the streets clothed in cassocks and sisters are riding the metros of Rome along with you. After seeing pictures of St. Peter’s Basilica for so long, I felt like I had come home. The arms of Mother Church were truly embracing me and I loved it. How does one go home to an entirely new place? I’m not quite certain, but I did it.

The day after we got to Rome we were in St. Peter’s Square and happened to talk to a priest from the United States who was assigned in Rome for the time. “First time in Rome?” We nodded. “Now you know what it means to be Catholic.” That seemed the perfect way to state what I was feeling. The idea was solidified when we attended Latin Mass in St. Peter’s and the petitions were intoned in French, Italian, German, Spanish, and English. The congregation then went forward and received the same Jesus, regardless of language, culture, or nationality. Such a beautiful encompassing of peoples was something I knew in theory but experienced in reality for one of the first times.

I wish every Catholic could see what my eyes have seen, experience what I have experienced, and walk where my feet have walked. I saw the physical depiction of Christ’s conquering in many places around Rome—the pagan stone obelisks covered with the cross and Catholic churches built over pagan temples or the temples themselves converted into churches. The Pantheon, for example, is now the Basilica Santa Maria ad Martyrs while St. Clemente’s is constructed over what used to be a pagan temple.

I saw Pope Benedict XVI for the first time and I felt a deeper appreciation for his role in the Church. He is much more than an adorable man or the name on encyclicals. The Vicar of Christ helps hold the Church together and leads us with more than merely human strength.

I was able to pray in front of Venerable Pope John Paul II’s tomb. When I first went into the Tombs of the Popes, I was disappointed that his tomb was roped off—I had wanted to place my rosary on his tomb. After going on the Scavi tour (a tour that allows one to see the bones of St. Peter beneath the basilica), the seminarian that led tour was asked to place our rosaries on John Paul II’s tomb. He had to find another guard to let him do it but as he placed the rosaries on the tomb, I felt tears surge up irrepressibly. How does one man affect a girl who is generations younger, thousands of miles away, and unknown to him? It is, in part, through the unity of the Catholic Church. The role of the pope isn’t impersonal. As I found out, it is intensely personal, in a deeper way than I imagined before.

I walked down the streets of Rome and Vatican City. My feet carried me around the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, one of the last things St. Peter saw as he was crucified upside down. I traversed the aisles of many basilicas, kneeling in old pews, touching my rosary to cold tombs that surrounded saints, and walking through houses of God that are also homes to architectural and artistic genius.

Rome was not what I expected and I am so thankful for that. It surpassed the boundaries I had drawn for it and led me deeper. Rome, in a very real way, is my home. It is a place of saints and sinners, corrupt and incorrupt people, joy and sadness. It isn’t Heaven but it has one foot wedged in St. Peter’s gate. Rome is the central city of the Catholic faith and this Catholic, for a few short days, was able to rest in Mother Church’s embrace. The farewell at the end was merely “Ciao” to the physical center of the Church; we all rest within her embrace regardless of where we are.