Now for some more cheerful adventures--Orvieto and Bolsena

I went to Orvieto last weekend. It was beautiful. A beautiful sunny day, and we climbed up the hill from the train station to the cathedral (though some folks cheated and took the funicular up). What a gorgeous gothic church greeted us on our arrival! And therein is preserved a corporal on which drops of blood fell from a consecrated host in the hands of a priest who had lost his faith in the Real Presence in the second half of the 13th century. After we had Mass there, our group went next door to have our sack lunches. Problem: I didn't have time to prepare any food as my alarm had not gone off, and I arrived late for the departure, and had not even time to find a store to sell me a sandwich on my way to the bus. Well, as noted in an earlier post, food appeared in front of me come lunch time, and there was no real problem. In fact, I honestly came home with leftovers who had left with nothing!

It was a wonderful pilgrimage, and I met some wonderful people--priests, seminarians, sisters and other religious, and laymen. We were quite a group, coming together from such places as Uzbekistan, Canada, Argentina, USA, Mexico, India, Ukraine, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Pakistan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Russia, Australia,...

After lunch we wandered around a little bit in the village of Orvieto before heading to Bolsena, where the miracle of the host-turned-visible-flesh-and-blood actually took place in 1263 at the hands of a German priest on pilgrimage to Rome. In Bolsena we saw the actual altar of the miracle, had time for a few short prayers, and then went back to our buses.

In our bus, we had a group of Ukranian seminarians who broke out into chant spontaneously every now and then. Sometimes their chant was related to their Byzantine office. Sometimes I suspect they were just Marian hymns, or perhaps some other sort. Sometimes it was rather more polyphonic, and sometimes more in unison. Each time was beautiful. How I enjoyed listening to them!

'Twas quite a pleasant day over all.

[check back later for photos. now my computer seems not to want to upload them from the camera. UPDATE: latest adventure seems to be that the memory card from the camera has lost everything, so no photos after all.]