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Today at the 7:30 Mass, I lectored for the second time. Thanks be to God we remembered to reset the clocks!
Describing the events of one year ago today
Imagine: an elegant flat just outside Rome; twenty loud, animated Italians talking simultaneously; food enough for fifty. The noise was deafening, the laughter contagious despite the language barrier, and of the food and wine there was no end.
One cousin and her husband announced a pregnancy. We all signed the cast of Leone's younger son (a football injury, proudly described).
Hovering over all was the presence of the patriarch, Uncle Settimio: an artist as a youth, now a retired insurance adjuster.
Vain and dapper, he dyes his perfectly coifed hair and uses makeup to hide the blemishes of old age. He habitually dangles an unlit cheroot from his fingers. When he speaks, he is accorded the respect of silence as is no one else.
When the talk turns to politics, he ventures no opinion, but even this is enough to deflate the loudest of the pro- and anti-Berlusconi invective.
In the midst of this, one of the more animated cousins, Gianni, who has all the gravity of the class clown, receives a phone call.
His face falls. He addresses Uncle Settimio, but he's really telling us all.
"Il papa รจ morte."
And just like that, the rest of our schedule is scrap.
In the next few days, five million people would descend on Rome.
O Blessed Trinity
We thank You for having graced the Church
with Pope John Paul II
and for allowing the tenderness of your Fatherly care,
the glory of the cross of Christ,
and the splendor of the Holy Spirit,
to shine through him. Amen.
Describing the events of one year ago today
Imagine: an elegant flat just outside Rome; twenty loud, animated Italians talking simultaneously; food enough for fifty. The noise was deafening, the laughter contagious despite the language barrier, and of the food and wine there was no end.
One cousin and her husband announced a pregnancy. We all signed the cast of Leone's younger son (a football injury, proudly described).
Hovering over all was the presence of the patriarch, Uncle Settimio: an artist as a youth, now a retired insurance adjuster.
Vain and dapper, he dyes his perfectly coifed hair and uses makeup to hide the blemishes of old age. He habitually dangles an unlit cheroot from his fingers. When he speaks, he is accorded the respect of silence as is no one else.
When the talk turns to politics, he ventures no opinion, but even this is enough to deflate the loudest of the pro- and anti-Berlusconi invective.
In the midst of this, one of the more animated cousins, Gianni, who has all the gravity of the class clown, receives a phone call.
His face falls. He addresses Uncle Settimio, but he's really telling us all.
"Il papa รจ morte."
And just like that, the rest of our schedule is scrap.
In the next few days, five million people would descend on Rome.
O Blessed Trinity
We thank You for having graced the Church
with Pope John Paul II
and for allowing the tenderness of your Fatherly care,
the glory of the cross of Christ,
and the splendor of the Holy Spirit,
to shine through him. Amen.
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