Category Archives: Uncategorized

We have made the remarkable transition from home to away, a journey of mind as well as body, and as I unpacked I sensed I was unpacking myself too – the bits and pieces of my life that traveled with me.  In some ways, here on Lake Como, I am the same person, and in some ways, I am different, as though the foreign senses – the smells, the sounds, the lake itself – reflect a different me.

The hotel sits on the edge of the village of Cernobbio, the name dating to the times of a monastery here, a “coenobium.”  Cernobbio itself fronts the lake and spreads up the flanks of Mount Bisbino.  Historical records date to 4,000 BC, and since that remarkable time Etrurians, Romans, Longobards and Byzantines have settled here, the town of Como has dominated, Spain has taken possession, and war was fought with the village of Torno across the lake. In the eighteenth century paper mills revived the economy of the area, and villas began to appear with names like Villa Geno, La Rotonda, La Gallietta, Villa Olmo.  The convent along the river Garovo became a villa that would be home to Cardinal Gallio and eventually our hotel.

We could take the ferry up the lake, and stop at other villages that dot the shoreline.  We could visit Como and its cathedral.  We could stay right here in Cernobbio and explore its three churches – San Vincenzio, Il Redentore, and Our Lady of Grace.  We decide to sit by the lake and watch the water lap the shore, sparrows chirping in the shade trees.  The sun is warm on the skin.  Perhaps we shall explore later.  Today we shall stare at the water catching the light as it ripples over the lake’s surface of dark crystal.  We shall read some from our books.  We shall doze.  Church bells from San Vincenzio echo through the humid air, reminding us that time is sliding, slipping, care-less.  So are we.

We sang “Holy holy holy, Lord God Almighty” today as the clergy processed up the aisle in Saint Thomas’.  One of my favorite hymns, triumphant, joyous, full of praise.  “Early in the morning my song shall rise to thee…”  It is a hymn I sang as a child in our Presbyterian church and the colorful notes still fill my heart with a poignant delight.

We had a visiting celebrant today, Father Mautner from Napa’s Saint Stephen’s.  He spoke the words of the Mass with great intention, paying full attention to each syllable, so full of meaning.  His care and clarity rang through our vaulted space, and I thought how this man, once Jewish and today Christian, knew better than any of us the full import of the Messiah coming to save us from our sins, our preoccupation with self.  He knew a salvation textured with Old Testament depth.  I recalled he is also a poet, one who values language.

But before the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, that moment when Christ becomes present in the bread and wine, our Deacon McNeely preached on the Trinity.  What is it?  This great mystery has been explained by many scholars and theologians, but today we considered the Trinity of the Cross – God the Father sending God the Son to actively love us.  It is this active love that is the Holy Spirit, and it is this active love that saves us.  We too must practice active love for others.   In the vertical of the Cross God reaches down to us; in the horizontal of the Cross we reach out to one another.  Profoundly true.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost.  Our Trinity of salvation.  God’s active love transforming our own lives and our world.

I left our little chapel once again thankful, having been strengthened by the Eucharist, having been fed by the words of the sermon.

We will not return to Saint Thomas’ for a few weeks, for we will be heading back to Europe soon – northern Italy, southern France, and Lourdes.  What will God show me?  I pray for his active love to open my eyes to his many wonders.

We celebrated the coming of the Holy Ghost today in our little church of Saint Thomas’ in San Francisco.

What is the Holy Ghost? our archbishop asked in his sermon, as he stood before us in the central aisle.  Archbishop Provence appeared full of thought, his hands clasped quietly, his eyes pausing on various members of his flock.  For he knows each of us, or if he doesn’t, would like to.  I prayed that the Holy Ghost would use him to teach us, touch us, with God.

And the Holy Ghost did – He worked through our priest, came among us, gifting us with God Himself.

Pentecost, named for the Jewish holiday celebrated fifty days after Passover, over time took the name Whitsunday, named for the second day of baptism (the first being Easter) when the person dipped in the pool of cleansing waters wore a white robe.  Whitsunday also came to be associated with Confirmation in the English church, a ceremony in which the candidates wore white as well.  In the Christian calendar, Whitsunday comes the Sunday after Ascension, which is hooked onto Easter, a variable feast.  So each year Whitsunday lands on a different calendar day but is always the week after Ascension Sunday.

Pentecost-Whitsunday is the celebration of that remarkable event described so forcefully in Acts when the Spirit descends upon the disciples who wait (Christ had told them to do so), assembled in Jerusalem.  The Spirit comes upon them like “tongues of fire” and they are given the ability to speak in many languages.  They leave that Jerusalem room, telling all who will listen about the amazing acts of God, each one speaking in the language of the hearer.

We too assembled there in our chapel, waiting.

Our archbishop told how when God created the world, his Holy Ghost moved over the waters; when he created Man he whispered the words, then breathed life into him, rather like a kiss.  The Holy Ghost, the third person of the Trinity, shows God is an intimate God.  A loving God.   Yet a God of power and majesty.

We too have God’s power and majesty breathed into us, kissed into us.  We are given the ability to do marvelous acts.  We breathe in and breathe out (I thought of the Jesus prayer), praying our lives to him, our years, our hours, our minutes.
And soon we would hear the whispering of the Holy Ghost in the words of the Mass, prompting us, leading us, strengthening us, inspiring us.  Soon we would be kissed by God in the Body and Blood of the Mass.

I left our little chapel this morning, not speaking a new foreign language, but perhaps thinking one, as my heart, mind, and soul were filled with the whispers and kisses of God.

Saint Thomas’ Anglican Church, 2725 Sacramento St., San Francisco,http://www.anglicanpck.org/; Sunday Mass: 10:00 a.m.

We celebrated the Ascension of Christ to Heaven yesterday, Sunday, May 24, concluding Eastertide, the great yearly celebration of the Resurrection.  Christ walked the earth for those forty days between Easter and Ascension, giving his disciples proof, even the doubting ones.

And with Christ’s resurrection and ascension comes our resurrection and ascension. I thought about this, gazing at the thick Paschal Candle with the five wounds of Christ carved into the wax.  It stood in the chancel, to the left of the altar in our little church of Saint Thomas’.

Saint Thomas’ is of course dedicated to that doubting disciple, the one who had to touch his Lord’s wounds to believe in his resurrection.  Do we need to touch his wounds in order to believe?

For belief in Christ’s bodily resurrection from the grave after his death on Good Friday is crucial, central, to living on this earth.  I’m one of the lucky, fortunate, blessed ones, I suppose.  Belief was easy for me, Lewis’ argument moving from there is a God because there is a moral law, to Christ’s claims to be the Son of God, to the historicity of the Gospel accounts and the behavior of the first Christians.  One cannot deny history, and for me, the evidence was, and is, clear.

So I live each day knowing the hours count.  I live each day knowing my final destination.  I live with God’s presence and I partake of his body and blood, the once doubting Thomas touching wounds with fingers. I too, having been reborn, having been resurrected by belief, am slowly ascending to Heaven, day by day, as I journey through my time on this earth.

Easter to Ascension. A time of great glory.  And thanksgiving.

We visited Saint Francis of Assisi Anglican Mission in Danville today.

A small group of faithful Anglicans meet in a converted (no pun intended) Women’s Club on Sundays to pray and celebrate the Eucharist.  Using the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, with its liturgy that goes back to the sixteenth century, the simple setting is transformed with the texture and reverence of Elizabethan words and syntax.

As we entered we picked up our hymnals in a box by the door.  We sang as the deacon and two acolytes, one holding the crucifix high, one bearing a flaming candle, processed down the center aisle.  We prayed together, kneeling on portable cushions.  We sat on folding chairs to hear the epistle read.  The altar, I knew, would be removed later and stored, for the premises do not belong to the congregation.

But the tabernacle was on the altar, the red candle burning, announcing the Real Presence of Christ.  Tall tapers stood at either end of the white draped altar, a substantial crucifix above, reminding us of the real sacrifice of Christ two thousand years ago and once again today.  And with sacrifice, comes resurrection and new life.  This we knew and believed, and recited thunderously in the Nicene Creed, of one mind, one accord, as the Holy Spirit descended upon us, weaving among us, binding us.

Deacon Brown preached on prayer, for it was Rogation Sunday (from the Latin rogare, to ask), and with thoughtful phrasing explained how prayer was not only our spontaneous words to God, but indeed Psalms are prayer as well, and the liturgy itself is prayer.  Prayer is our life, a way of living with God.

We prayed the liturgy and received Christ with all of the solemnity of a grand cathedral as the language of ritual, the poetry of liturgy, ensured a sacred silence before God.  Worship.  Adoration.

The deacon prayed a benediction from the back of the room and the candles were snuffed out.  Soon the chairs would be folded and the books packed away.  We rose to greet one another over coffee, to mingle as the Body of Christ, to love.

In this simple setting the Great Liturgy had been offered and we had partaken of eternity.

Saint Francis of Assisi Anglican Mission, 242 Linda Mesa, Danville, California; Sundays: 10:00 Holy Communion

Father Seraphim of Nazareth House, tall, gaunt, long graying beard, preached today.  He preached on the Holy Spirit.  What is it? he asked.  Many are unsure, and that isn’t right, since the Holy Spirit seeks to make all things clear for us. He wore a white cotta over his black robe and I knew his beads were looped at his waist.  For Father Seraphim prays, almost, perhaps, unceasingly, as Saint Paul exhorts us to do.

We learned a great deal from Father Seraphim in the last few days.  He gave two workshops on prayer, uniting the ways of the East and the West, guiding us on our own prayer journeys.  We learned the Jesus prayer, the prayer breathed in and out, that becomes an innate part of each of us.  We learned to live in the moment, for that is where God is.  And we learned much more from this saintly man.

Father Seraphim speaks in a relaxed manner, with a deep voice that comes, like his prayers, from his breathing, deep from his heart.  He laughs at himself, his own foibles, and we laugh with him, thinking they are ours too, which of course, they are.  He is a simple man who loves God (the vertical of the Cross) and loves his fellow man (the horizontal of the Cross.)  And the Holy Spirit connects us all.

For the Holy Spirit is the bond linking our relationships.  He teaches us to love.  He prompts, coaches, suggests, leads.  He comforts, encourages, strengthens.

In the last few days, as many of us in the Anglican Province of Christ the King joined together in our annual Synod, I knew the Holy Spirit was doing all those things, weaving among us, pulling in the odd strands, making a whole cloth, one of infinite beauty.

Many moments ring in my memory, golden notes, pure tones.  One was the sermon preached yesterday, Saturday, at our Eucharistic celebration.  The priests of our Diocese had processed down the red carpeted aisle of Saint Peter’s Oakland, the incense swirling before them, the torchbearers holding their flames steady, the crucifer raising the great crucifix over all.  We sang, Alleluia, Sing to Jesus, and that we did, our voices soaring, uniting, in this song of love.

Our preacher that Saturday, Father Mautner of St. Stephen’s Oakville in the Napa Valley, climbed to the pulpit and leaned toward us, his voice and eyes on fire.  The Exodus was the journey of the Words, the tablets, he tells us.  Commandment means word, and the Ten Commandments were the Ten Words of God carved on stone and given to Moses.   The tablets were shattered, broken.  Christ will be the new broken tablet on the Cross, laid in the tomb, the ark of His testimony, the womb of our salvation.  Bread would be broken, the bread that was and is Christ’s Body, broken for us then on the Cross and now as the Host.  Just as the tablets had been placed in the Ark of the Covenant, so the Word made flesh, made Host, enters our own bodies, our arks, becoming Words written on our heart.   The Testimony, the Words, the Eucharist, is broken, blessed, given.  When you receive, our preacher says with a clear urgency, hear the shattering as your hand holds Him, and you become the Ark of the Testimony. Taste and touch and vision – we are arks carrying the Words.  Obey, drink, discern, see, know Him.  Allow God to write his law on the table of your heart. This is how we add our stories to His Body.

Stunned with the images, I received the Word, the Host, the Body broken for me.  I joined the line of my brothers and sisters, linked by the Holy Spirit, and soon to be made one flesh in the Eucharistic Word, the Host.

Two great preachers in two days, two shattering Hosts entering my flesh, uniting me with Christ’s Body, a great blessing indeed.

Gratia Deos

We arrived home earlier in the week to a shipment of my second novel,Offerings!  Hooray!  I opened a box and pulled out a copy and held it in my hands.  Published!  Soon we will update the website with cover, press release, excerpt.

I gave thanks to God today for this blessing, this third Sunday after Easter, Easter III, that my little book was in print.  And thanks too for a safe trip home.  My groggy mind, still jetlagged, was filled with images of Rome’s churches – domes, frescoed apses, vaulted holy space.  London too, added to the wealth of image and song, for we visited Farm Street Church last Sunday, a Victorian Gothic church in Mayfair run by the Jesuits.  Stained glass, mosaics, Latin liturgy soaring through the aisles, a packed church.  A famous church – Edith Sitwell, Evelyn Waugh, many others called it home.

And today I looked about our little church in San Francisco on Sacramento Street, a lovely Romanesque chapel with a simple stone altar, a sweet Madonna in the Gospel corner, a green tiled floor, large bouquets of flowers celebrating the Resurrection of Christ – pinks, oranges, yellows, greens all jostling together.  The choir sang gloriously, and our priest preached on the example each of us sets as we go about our lives.  We are strangers and pilgrims in this world, Saint Paul explains in his epistle, and folks will judge our faith by our actions.  I recalled the early days of the Church and how Christians’ love for one another, and for their neighbor, was a marked change in Roman social mores.  Christians buried babies they found that had died from exposure, abandoned outside, unwanted.  They nursed the sick.  They cared for the poor.  These actions eventually founded the great institutions of the West, the hospitals, schools, almshouses, recently so taken for granted.  Many Romans remarked on these odd Christian behaviors, and were converted to belief in the simple carpenter from Galilee, the Son of God.

I received the Eucharist, holding the Host in my palm, and thought how Rachelle in Offerings called her palm a crèche when she received, and now each time I receive I remember her words.  Indeed, my palm was a crèche and I was thankful, joyously thankful.

Ever since we visited Saint John Lateran and spoke to the Sisters of Divine Revelation, I wanted to visit their famous Grotto near the Abbazia delle Tre Fontane (Abbey of the Three Fountains).  It would be good to visit San Paulo Fuori le Mura (Saint Paul outside the Walls) nearby as well, for it is the year of Saint Paul.

The abbey complex, consisting of the Trappist abbey and two smaller churches, was built on the site of Saint Paul’s martyrdom.  Here, it was said, three fountains rose where he died, marking the site as holy ground.

We walked down a shady drive through a eucalyptus forest to the monastery.  Pilgrims walked quietly as well, mostly in groups of twenty to thirty, before us and behind us, toward the churches.  We visited two of the  three shrines, Baroque and mysterious, busy with attendants and pilgrims, and lastly entered the main abbey, a silent, large dim space.

It was 12:15 and bells rang.  As my eyes adjusted to the light, I realized that iron grillwork separated the massive choir from the rest of the nave where we knelt alone, except for a single Franciscan.  Six white-robed monks soon entered and began to sing, haltingly, with elderly voices, the noon office.   One lesson was read, more Psalms and the Gloria Patri sung, and by 12:30 the monks processed out slowly and silently, heading for lunch, one remaining to close up.

We left, thankful for this moment of peace, this moment of touching the lives of these men, who continue the long line of ora and labora, prayer and work, offering it all to the glory of God.  I learned later they are cloistered.  They make chocolate and a medicinal liqueur for sale in the shop.

We found the Grotto of the Divine Revelation outside the gate of the Monastery, across the highway, and up a forested drive. The Grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared in 1947 to Bruno has been made into a small chapel, covered partially with a tented structure.  The grounds are filled with thank you plaques for graces and miracles.  The story was so reminiscent of the vision of Bernadette in Lourdes, France, a story I tell in my second novelOfferings, that I was particularly touched.  I would like to learn more about Bruno and his three children.  Evidently he died in 2001.

We found a taxi and headed for San Paolo, the massive pilgrimage basilica built over the grave of Saint Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles.  The Pauline epistles, Paul’s letters to the early churches in the first century, explained the Christian creed to a Roman world.  A brilliant Jew and a Roman citizen, he bridged the gap between the culture in which Christ was born, lived, died, and rose from the dead and the culture of the classical world.

Second only to San Pietro in size, San Paolo is immense, and today the golden coffered ceiling was lit, the baldachin and High Altar were bright as well, and the vast apsidal mosaic spread across the transept in glory.  We walked down the center aisle, craning our necks, to the Saint Paul’s tomb beneath the altar, seen through a panel of glass in the floor.

Thanking God for Paul’s words and images, his commanding rhetoric, his humility in allowing God to work through him to God’s glory, we slipped out a side door and headed back to our hotel.

Today, Wednesday, the sun came out!

Last night we visited our niece in Trastevere (I finally learned to pronounce the accent on the second not the third syllable which is progress of a sort) who is here for her UC Berkeley semester in Rome.  We dined at Sabatini, a wonderful place on the colorful Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere.  Good wine, great food, and charming atmosphere, and I even enjoyed the serenading.  The owners posed with us for a picture before leaving.

This morning we donned our dark glasses and, with two copies ofPilgrimage tucked in my bag, headed down the hill to the Spanish Steps, on to the Anglo-American Bookshop on Via del Vite where a pleasant young man accepted my little book and the announcements of future releases.  We moved on down the hill to San Sylvestro in Capite, the English Church in Rome.

We had visited this church several times in the past, fascinated with their very important relic, the head of John the Baptist.  I wondered why it wasn’t under the high altar, but venerated in a small shrine off the north narthex.  The church is delicate and Baroque, and I paused in the first pew to say a prayer.

We found the Priest-in-Charge in an office off the narthex.  The charming Father John Fitzpatrick was most gracious about my novel.  He gave me a book on San Sylvestro in exchange and said a new reliquary was on its way for their famous relic.  I made a mental vow to attend Sunday Mass there the next time we visit Rome.

We continued down the Corso to Santa Maria in Aracoeli (altar of heaven).  I knew Franciscans cared for the church and hoped for more gifts for my Franciscan friend at home.  We climbed the 124 stairs of the Capitoline complex to reach the church (our workout for the day), a 13th-century basilica built over earlier churches that rose over a Roman temple.

The church has a layered and ancient history, even for Rome. It is said that Emperor Augustus asked the Tiburtine Sybil whether there would ever be one greater than he.  She replied that a God from heaven was soon to come to earth.  Augustus then received a vision of the Madonna and Child in which the Virgin stood on an altar and said, “Haec est ara dei coeli,” and Augustus built an altar on this hill, where a temple to Juno Moneta stood.

We entered the light and airy nave and looked up the long passage to the altar, the columns processing up the aisles, the many artworks, the frescoes lining the clerestory windows high above.  The miraculous Madonna di Aracoeli, painted on beech in the 10th century is venerated over the High Altar, a thoughtful image.  In the north transept Saint Helen’s remains lie in an urn over the 13th-century fesestrella altar.

We looked in on the Chapel of the Holy Child off the north transept.  A Franciscan in Jerusalem carved a statue of the Christ Child, using olive wood from the Garden of Gethsemane.  The original image dates to the end of the 15th century, but it was stolen in 1997, and the image we see today is a replica.  It is said that an angel finished the original painting of the sculpture when the friar ran out of paint, and other miracles of healing were attributed to the image as it made its way to Rome.  Today mothers visit the chapel to receive a blessing before giving birth and children sing here on Christmas Eve.  The Holy Child, the Bambino, is displayed on the Capitoline Hill on the Feast of the Epiphany.

Franciscans have cared for the basilica since the 13th century.  We found their gift shop off the north transept and added to our mementos a few small icons, a book on the church, and two taper candles.

(Open: 9:00 am-12:30, 2:30 pm-6:30; Masses: Feriale–8 am, Chapel of the Holy Infant), noon; Festivo–8 am, Chapel of the Holy Infant).

Nearby is Il Gesu, the Church of Jesus, and we arrived just before it closed (12:30).  The first Jesuit church in Rome, the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus grew from the Church of the Madonna della Strada (Madonna of the Street) honoring a miraculous Madonna that had become popular roadside shrine.  Ignatius prayed before this Madonna, and the new church created a chapel to house it.  He lived in the rooms next door.

We entered the nave of gold and marble, and stepping up the center aisle, looked to the ceiling and the fantastic trompe-d’oeil (trick of the eye) figures that seem to fall from the heavens. In the northern transept we found Ignatius’ shrine where his remains lie beneath the altar.  I paused before a massive sculpture, Truth Vanquishing Heresy, which I used in my Il Gesu scene in Pilgrimage.  The image, showing a woman with the lamp of truth conquering the snake of lies (a mirror of Mary in Revelation) continues to encourage me in this age of relativism.  While I realize everyone might see truth differently, objective Truth exists apart from our take on it, and that Truth is not changeable.  While we respect one another’’s beliefs and their individual journeys, each of us must search for that Truth in our own span of life. As a Christian, I believe that Truth is God, and that Christ is God’s revelation to us, a revelation of love, and I am blessed to journey with His Body on earth, the Church, a fabulous pilgrimage through time.

We stepped into the neighboring Chapel of the Madonna della Strada, and honored this ancient image of Mary, a sweet consoling face,which still moves me after all these years.  To think I was praying before it just as Ignatius of Loyola once did! Thank-you plaques for graces received line the walls.

We headed for a light lunch, our heads and hearts and minds full of color, image, soaring prayers, and thankfulness.

(Open: 7 am-12:30 pm; 4 pm-7:45; Ignatius’ rooms: 4-6pm; Masses: Feriale-every half hour from 6 am; Festivo: every hour from 6 am ,http://www.chiesadelgesu.org/ )

Tuesday was a remarkable day.

Umbrellas protecting us from a few sprinkles, we headed up the hill from our hotel to Feltrinelli’s International Bookstores on Via V.E. Orlando, near Santa Susanna, and dropped off a copy of Pilgrimage and information on the upcoming titles, Offerings to be released in May, and Inheritance this fall, then headed for the Economy Bookstore on Via Torino which had closed.  I wondered how many small book stores would be seriously impacted by the economy.

We decided to take Via Torino straight out to Maria Maggiore, the main Marian basilica in Rome and one of our favorite churches.  The road runs straight, like a spike, from Santa Susana, ending at Maria Maggiore.

The Basilica of Mary Major stands on the Esquiline Hill.  In 350 the wealthy citizen Ionnes Patricius had a dream of the Virgin Mary.  Mary asked him to build a basilica on the hill where snow would soon fall.  Pope Liberius had the same dream.  The following day, in the heat of August, snow fell on the Esquiline Hill, and Liberius planned a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

We entered the vast space.  Circular tiles of russet, green, and pink marble cover the floor.  White marble pillars line the nave under a Peruvian gold ceiling.  Confessionals stand in side aisles and light streams through clerestory windows.  Four giant columns support a square bronze canopy above the altar.

We walked down the central aisle and turned left at the transept, heading toward the Holy Sacrament Chapel.  As we approached, a mass was in progress, and the priest had just finished the consecration.  He held the large priest’s host up for adoration, and we genuflected, then paused in the back, as the faithful lined  up to receive the Eucharist in this chapel of pink-and-white marble, golds, and bronzes.  Above the altar hangs an earthy image of Mary dating to the 1st century, Sta. Maria ad Nives, Holy Mary of the Snows, known popularly as Salus Populi Romani, said to have been painted by St. Luke.  Revered in Rome, she is thought to be miraculous, having saved the city from the plague in the Middle Ages.  Above the icon is a bronze frieze of Pope Liberius marking out the site in the snow.

We turned back to the nave and the high altar and descended to the confessio where wood from the Christ Child’s cradle is enshrined in a gold-and-glass reliquary ark.  A giant marble sculpture of a pope kneels before the holy wood.  Once again I was touched by the earthy material made glorious, the simple stuff of wood and ancient pigments, of bread and wine.  God entering our earthy world, our wordly earth.

Every August 15 the Ceremony of the Snows is held.  Petals of “snow” fall from the coffered ceiling onto the congregation.

(Open 7 am-6:45 pm.; Masses: Sunday 7 am, 8, 9, 10 (Latin), 11, 12 noon, 6 pm; Monday-Saturday 7 am, 8, 9, 10, 11, 3 pm, noon, 6 pm;http://www.vatican.va/ )

Since I devote a scene in Pilgrimage to this church, I wanted to drop off a copy at the shop in thanksgiving.  We found the shop next to the baptistery off the southern aisle and purchased an icon of the Salus Populi.  She is a dark Madonna, serious and young, holding a boy Jesus on her hip, her face full of concern, her eyes carrying anticipation as she looks away to her right.

We walked down Via Carlo Alberto, a straight boulevard leading to the Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, another major pilgrimage basilica.

Saint Helen, mother of Emperor Constantine, lived in the Sessorium Palace on this site.  In 329 she returned from Jerusalem with a piece of Christ’s cross and other relics from His passion.  When she died, Constantine converted part of her palace to a church to house the relics, called Church of the Holy Cross of Jerusalem.We entered the tiled narthex, and were startled to find a Russian icon exhibit.  I love icons, those carefully delineated, almost symbolic, renderings of holiness, that can be an encouraging reminder on the wall or a colorful aid to prayer.  Icons, they say, are painted with special pigments on wood, layered with gold leaf, and with each stroke the painter prays, a curious blending of spirit and matter.  This collection was Russian,with many from Moscow, from homes and from churches, 17th to 19th centuries.  They were mounted in the side aisles, and we toured slowly, captivated by color and detail, pausing to view the cerulean apsidal mosaic of the basilica itself, to me the loveliest part of this church.

We descended stairs to St. Helen’s chapel in the crypt, the original sanctuary, where the Sacrament is reserved above a golden altar, the vaults covered in pastel mosaics, and where the offices are said by Cistercians who occupy the adjoining monastery.

We returned to the nave and the Chapel of the Holy Cross and Relics off the north aisle.  Here, behind glass and protected in silver reliquaries, are displayed fragments of Christ’s cross: the sign reading, Here is the King of the Jews, two thorns from the Crown of Thorns, the finger of St. Thomas, bits of the column of scourging, a nail from the cross.

The lovely basilica, the story of Saint Helena, and the spectacular icon exhibit would be images I would hold close for days.

(Usually open: 6 am-12:30 pm; 3:30-7:30, http://www.santacroce.it/ )

Saint John Lateran, another major pilgrimage site, was nearby, and we took the wide path to this Cathedral of Rome, the seat of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope.  A giant Saint Francis faces the huge basilica and raises his hands in blessing, the heavy traffic racing past.  It was here that the Pope granted Francis permission to form his Order of Friars Minor, after dreaming that the beggar from Assisi was holding up Saint Peter’s Basilica.

After defeating Maxentius in battle in the 4th century, Emperor Constantine built this church on the site of Maxentius’ barracks.  The adjoining palace was the papal residence up to the 14th century.

We entered and paused on the marbled tiles in the center of the nave.  At the transept crossing, the heads of Sts. Peter and Paul rest in the baldachin over the altar.  Giant marble statues of the Apostles leap from the side columns.  The ceiling is coffered in golds, reds, and blues.  Frescoes fill the apse.   I recall being overwhelmed by this church the first time I visited, its size, its shininess, its perfection, but over the years I have come to love it.

We walked up the central aisle and turned toward the northern transept chapel where the Sacrament is reserved beneath the frieze of the Last Supper table, said to cover a piece of the table itself, then turned to the glorious apse and the episcopal chair, and on to the shop off the southern transept.  After purchasing a few Saint Francis mementos for a Franciscan friend at home, I asked the Sisters at the counter what order they professed, noting their dark green-and-white habits.  One of them disappeared to a back room and returned with a sister, actually a postulate, from England.

Their story was remarkable, and completely new to me.  They are an order founded after the Virgin Mary appeared to Bruno Cornacchiol and his three children on April 12, 1947 in the grotto at the Abbey of the Three Fountains, a church on the site of the beheading of Saint Paul.  Bruno was Protestant and anti-clerical and had planned to kill Pope Pius XII.  Mary informed him that she was the “Virgin of Revelation.”  She converted him, and stated that she was bodily assumed to Heaven, a doctrine called the Assumption proclaimed by the Pope three years later.  She promised to “convert the most obstinate sinners with miracles which I will work with the soil of the Grotto.”  And according to my new postulate friend, Mary did just that, and the grotto is filled with plaques describing miracles and intercessions.  The new order called themselves The Missionaries of the Divine Revelation ( http://www.divinarivelazione.org/ ) and took on the job of education: catechism classes, tours to shrines in Rome.  At the Abbey of the Three Fountains, Minor Conventual Franciscans care for the Grotto, and the Sisters assist at the weekend liturgical services held in the Grotto.  I hope we can visit before we leave Rome.

All in all, a remarkable day: new visions, new friends.

(Saint John Lateran is open 7 am-6:30 pm; Masses: Sunday, 10 am, Latin, 5 pm, 6 pm; Winter: 7 am, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 noon, 5 pm; Summer: 7 am, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 noon, 6 pm, http://www.vatican.va/  )