Buona domenica

This morning I went to High Mass at Ss. Trinita' dei Pelligrini, where I met up with visiting and local friends. After Mass, I was privileged to walk two visitors to there luncheon engagement near Piazza Navona. On the way, as we had time, we stopped in a little church I hadn't entered before, dedicated to the Nativity of Our Lord. Inside, they were celebrating a Mass in the Congolese rite, and I felt very pale among them. It was quite a beautiful chant, but nothing like I've ever heard in Mass before. And then we continued. We found their restaurant easily, and still had time, and so stopped in to see a priest friend in a community next door. I left them to their lunch and came home to find contact information for a family in from Atlanta.
It really is incredible what happens when one lives in Rome. One's friends do come to visit, even if they never met you before. I called up the father of this family, and he had no idea who I was, but passed his phone to his son who had met me last spring on his visit here with a friend of his who does actually know me. So, we arranged to meet for lunch, and I found out that there were 8 of them here from his family. I met his four brothers, his father and stepmother, but his stepsister stayed in the hotel to rest. So the 8 of us went to my favorite little restaurant and they bought me a lovely plate of pasta. Then we wandered by the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, S. Maria Sopra Minerva (where I found one of the friends I had walked to lunch earlier), Piazza Navona, and to gelato on the way to the Ponte Sant'Angelo. That was enough for them, as they have had no sleep, so we took a bus back to their hotel, and they gained a truly Roman experience of the crowded 64. Even before we got on that bus, though, we witnessed a loud, crazy beggar while waiting for the bus that didn't come, so we took the 62 to Argentina, watched cats, and then caught the crowded 64.
Ah. Rome.