The [Holy Week in the Eternal City] Adventure

Spending Holy Week and Easter in Rome was a truly fascinating and fulfilling experience.  Rome is an amazing place, where antiquity and modernity meet at nearly every corner.  The history of the city is almost overwhelming—there is simply so much to learn and so much to see.  On top of that, it is a big city, with the hustle and bustle and traffic and “crap” sellers that a big city brings.  And on top of that, there were hundreds of thousands of pilgrims there for Easter.  It made for an interesting layering of sights, sounds and experiences.

We had a long list of places to go when we arrived, but we also wanted to make our primary focus spirituality.  How do you spend a touristy week in Rome and yet spend Holy Week in a prayerful and contemplative state of mind?  We managed to do a pretty good job of melding the two, and we accomplished it by staying very near to St. Peter’s most of the time.

We stayed outside of the main part of Rome, just south of the Trastevere area.  It was neat to stay in a more residential and “local” area of the city, but it made getting around a bit more complicated than we would have liked.  It wasn’t difficult to get places once we figured out the trains and trams, but it took time and energy, and once we left the apartment, we stayed out for the entire day.

On our first full day in Rome we went on a pretty comprehensive walking and sightseeing tour of the city. We saw the Trevi Fountain, the Forum (which they started charging for, so we didn’t walk through it, but got a very good view from several vantage points), the Colosseum, the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, and then we headed over to St. Peter’s Square and visited inside the Basilica.  In the afternoon, we went on the Scavi Tour under St. Peter’s Basilica, exploring the excavation of an ancient Roman cemetery and the tomb of St. Peter.  The tour was absolutely fascinating and definitely worth doing if you are in Rome (though you must reserve tickets pretty far in advance).

Thursday marked the start of the Triduum… We got up at the crack of dawn and headed to St. Peter’s Square where we waited in line for an hour and half to get seats for the Chrism Mass with Pope Benedict.  We had tickets, but once inside the Basilica the seating was open, so we lined up extra early to get a seat as far forward and also as close to the aisle as possible.  We ended up getting great seats, from which we could see Pope Benedict up-close as he processed in, and from which we could also easily follow the mass.  The mass was absolutely beautiful.  There were about 1,000 priests, cardinals and bishops in attendance, and the pope gave them all a special blessing after a renewal of their dedication to their vocation.  Everything was so beautifully done—the procession of the priests and bishops and cardinals, the procession with the oil, the blessing of the oil… it was all done so precisely and meaningfully.  Plus, it was our first mass with Pope Benedict, which is a truly powerful experience.

After the mass, we went around to the three other Papal Basilicas in Rome.  We saw Santa Maria Maggiore and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, but we did not get into St. John Lateran because it was closed for the Holy Thursday papal mass that was going to take place there in the evening.  So, after a long day with lots of walking, we went back to our apartment and rested.

Santa Maria Maggiore

St. John Lateran

St. Paul's Outside the Walls

On Good Friday, we headed to St. Peter’s early again to go up in the cupola and get amazing views of Rome.  It was lovely because we were some of the first people up there and didn’t have to fight crowds in the tiny, spiral staircases going up. We spent a long time in the gift shop on the roof of the Basilica, and then headed down to spend some quiet time in reflection around noon, praying the Rosary together in the square and just reflecting quietly. 

It was strange, during such an important and solemn time, to be surrounded by so many boisterous tourists, who though they were in St. Peter’s Square on Good Friday—and many of them were in town for the Triduum—seemed to have absolutely no concept that it was worth being solemn or reflecting on anything at all.  We found the contradiction to be strikingly apparent throughout the Triduum, and especially as we waited in line for events.

People seemed very much more concerned with seeing the Pope and getting a better seat than those waiting in line around them than the fact that we were entering St. Peter’s Basilica for the purpose of celebrating the Lord’s passion, death and resurrection.  It was definitely discouraging and distracting, but we tried to simply stay focused and give people the benefit of the doubt—their zeal and fervor and excitement for seeing the Pope were simply getting the better of them…  The very shocking part was who was acting poorly in these circumstances…  It is not terribly surprising that college guys studying abroad have a less-than-holy conversation while waiting in line.  But what was surprising was how some of the religious acted in these situations.  Nuns and sisters in particular were very pushy, cutting in line and shoving their way ahead of people.  It was strange to see such uncharitable behavior from people you expect to be more gracious, gentle and loving (and who are so tiny!).  But again, we are sure their zeal was great.  And there were plenty of people who seemed to be there for the right reasons, though they may have been distracted by trying to get to the front of the line, too.   We just tried to turn it all into a joke and take it with a grain of salt.  But if you hear us refer to nuns as conniving or sneaky, you will know where our biased comes from!  At times it felt like we were waiting in line for a pop concert, not for a mass.  But nothing can take away from the liturgies themselves, and we had nothing but beautiful experiences when it came to those.

The line for the Good Friday service started early, and we got in the very front of it, so we ended up waiting in that line for almost three hours, before going inside to sit and wait another two hours. 

It was very neat to celebrate our Lord’s Passion in the Basilica the day after celebrating the Chrism Mass.  The difference in the tone and mood of the liturgy was striking.  On Friday, the entire service was sung in Latin, including the entire Passion, and it was absolutely gorgeous and moving.  They provided wonderful booklets (at every one of the services) so that you could follow along with everything in English, so we knew exactly what was being said at every point, which made true participation much easier.  The service included the veneration of the cross, which of course was beautifully done, and we watched as the pope and hundreds and hundreds of priests venerated the crucifix.  It was extremely moving.

On Saturday, we headed to the Vatican Museums, where we waited in a very long line again!  (We became very good at waiting in lines…) We very much enjoyed the Museums, and of course the Sistine Chapel and Raphael Rooms in particular.  One of our favorite things was the map room—an elaborately decorated corridor with hundreds of frescoes lining the walls.  The paintings were of maps of the known world from the time, and it was fascinating to see the representations.  Saturday night, we went into the city and explored at night, enjoying the sites lit up in the dark.

We found Tropea on the map

Easter Sunday, we arose very early once again to head to St. Peter’s Square and…you guessed it—wait in line! This time we had to wait outside of the Square since the mass was in the square itself.  It was about a two-hour line before we were let in and found our seats for the Easter service.  The wait was worth it—we had fantastic seats!  We were only about 15 rows from the front.  There were over 100,000 people in the square for Easter Sunday mass!  The energy was incredible and the square was decorated so beautifully.  There was a massive altar with golden linens, huge candles, red velvet carpeting and drapery, a beautiful life-size crucifix and thousands upon thousands of gorgeous flowers.  Of course the facade of the Basilica makes a pretty incredible backdrop, and add to that the Holy Father and hundreds of priests, and the whole thing was quite the sight to behold!

To celebrate the joy of Easter, we treated ourselves to a lovely and delicious brunch, Roman style.  We went to a small restaurant that was full of only locals—always a good sign—and splurged by getting multiple courses and drinks!  It was a lovely way to celebrate, after which we went back to the apartment and took a long siesta…  Happy Easter!

Papal blessing after Easter Mass (he's in the window)

Monday was our last day in the city and we spent it “tying up loose ends.”  We headed to St. Maria Vittoria to see Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa, then headed back to St. John Lateran to see the massive and incredible interior.  Then, because we can’t stay away from it, we went back to St. Peter’s and went inside again to see it without any of the set-up for liturgies.  We were finally able to walk all the way around the baldacchino (they had had it blocked for the masses of Holy Week) and see some of the statues up-close.  That place is just overpowering.  It is just so gigantic and so beautiful that there are not really words for it.  We loved just being there.  And it was especially neat to know that we had truly celebrated liturgies there—after all, that is what it was built for.  We took the long way back from St. Peter’s Square and walked up along one of the hills in Rome that offered beautiful panoramic views of the city.  We could pick out all of the churches and buildings that we had visited, and it was the perfect way to end our visit.

The week in Rome was overwhelming (in a good way) and exhausting.   We wouldn’t change a thing!  It was such a true gift to be able to spend Easter in Rome with the pope, and we know that we will treasure the experience forever.  Those masses were a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and an absolutely exquisite way to celebrate the most important days of the year.