I was a little groggy this morning, and a bit slow getting ready for Mass. When I did get ready, and run out the door, I was down a couple of flights from my apartment when I noticed that while I had my umbrella, I had not my purse. So, I went back up and decided I wouldn't get to the 9:30 Mass near where I live, and decided to the 10:30 across the Tiber. It wasn't until I was walking over that I thought of the consequences of that decision. First, it meant I would be right on hand for Pope Benedict's final Angelus. Second, it meant that it might be difficult to get to/from the little church for Mass as there would be hordes nearby and lots of press and security, and probably blocked off roads. So it was a good thing I left early! True enough, I had to take a slight detour from my normal route to the church (known as La Nunziatina, being a tiny church dedicated to the Annunciation), and soon after I arrived, others started coming and coming, too, for Mass. Usually, about 15 or so people attend that one, but today, probably about 60 or so squished in. Right after Communion, though, several of those people started squishing out, eager to find a place to see the Holy Father in St. Peter's Square! When Mass ended, everyone else hurried out, too. I didn't make it onto the square, but was close enough to see Pope Benedict in his window. The whole square was full, plus the Pius XII square right outside it. People were on the roofs of various nearby buildings watching, also. My guess is at least 20,000 pilgrims were there in attendance.
Oremus pro pontifice nostro Benedicto. Dominus conservet eum et vivificet eum et beatum faciet eum in aeternum.
UPDATE: Vatican news just announced 200,000 pilgrims in the square today.
Quote (to fill in a bit from Friday's quote from The Pain of Christ):
Lent can help us. Whenever we deny the flesh we strengthen the spirit, we make make it easier to avoid those sins in the future. And as with poverty so here too we must see the thing in a larger context. Mind and body affect one another. It is not only that a lack of harmony between them leads us into sins of the flesh: it is also that the tyranny of the flesh, of senses and emotions, can harm the mind, can cloud our vision and our judgment. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God; but to be clean of heart means also to be clear in vision, to be candid and genuine and to see things as they are and not as our senses and emotions would like them to be. You know how passion and greed and jealousy can distort the vision: that is what we have to avoid; and that is what chastity of heart can help us to do. And so, when you school yourself to resist the sham and shoddy and the meretricious, when you force yourself to see things truly, to be really candid and to worship the truth; when you train the senses to play their proper part in the whole personality's search for the knowledge of the truth and the love of the good and the beautiful; then you are being clean of heart, you are restoring something of the original harmony, you are bringing humanity nearer to God's ideal for it. But again you are doing something more. For this too is not to be achieved except by labour and self-denial and perhaps much suffering; and so again you can take part with Christ: you can feel that in this moment of the Passion too you are with him: you can not only undo some of the evil done, you can take an active and creative share in this moment of his redeeming pain.
No comments:
Post a Comment