The last two weeks...read my previous 2 posts first

Sunday Oct. 13th we got to sleep in a bit and then headed over to St. John Lateran for mass. It was very exciting because this is the Pope’s church. Many people think of St. Peter’s as the Pope’s church but actually as the bishop of Rome this is his church. The Pope lived here until the 1400s when he moved to St. Peter’s. It is quite amazing and contains the heads of St. Peter and St. Paul! This is also where all the synods take place…and there is actually one going on right now!

More amazing and one of the great proud times in our time here was that all thirteen of our seminarians got to serve there! It was really funny because there are so many of them that every one just got a small “job” as a server…but we were so proud! It was awesome to see them up there.

Afterwards Fr. Carola took us to visit the Little Sisters of the Lamb, a beautiful religious community that my friend Susan Verly just joined in France! There are about 8 sisters in this particular convent, and they live absolute poverty, even begging for their food, but in that they bring Christ’s love and Word to the people they encounter.

Every Sunday night we have community dinner. I was able to sit with Mrs. Cavenaugh (Dr. Cavenaugh is teaching a class on Martyrdom and his wife and three boys live with us as well) and two of their little boys who are HILARIOUS. I am excited to talk to her more because I found out she has a degree in Social Work and does therapy in one of the hospitals in the Cities.

Monday the 13^th marked our first real day of school! We started out on site at St. John Lateran for our Art and Architecture class. We ended up not being able to go in though because there was the thanksgiving Mass for the first (East) Indian saint that had been canonized the previous day! There were hundreds of Indians who had made the pilgrimage for this joyous occasion. It is so important because there is immense persecution of Christians going on in India right now, I believe from the Hindus, and the government just sits back and watches. The witness of this saint is sure to be a model for all Christians, especially Catholics, of the joy of loving Christ and following Him even amidst all the persecution.

Also in the afternoon we had Italian, followed by the first women’s night with Nina our chaplain. I’m very excited to have this time of formation and fellowship, and Nina has so much to offer us.

Tuesday we had our first class with Dr. Cavenaugh—Martyrdom. About halfway through class someone accidentally opened the door and looked around confused and Dr. Cavenaugh, trying to help him out, asked “Are you looking for martyrdom?” The guy was very confused and left and after that Dr. Cavenaugh realized that maybe that wasn’t the greatest way to phrase the question. J

After that most of us (minus the seminarians and some others who are taking a Philosophy course) headed to Patristics. This class is taught by a Dominican priest, Fr. Ditton. I met some Irish seminarians, as well as many of the seminarians from the NAC. We were the largest group of laity in the class. It’ll be a very exciting class going over the history and works of the early church fathers! J

After that we all went with Fr. Carola to the Missionaries of Charity. They have a house where they take care of men off the streets. This is also the place where Mother Theresa would stay when she came to Rome. We were most blessed to be able to see the room where she stayed. This is also where they are putting together the information needed for her Beautification. Please keep them in your prayers and ask for Blessed Mother Theresa’s intercession!

The sisters are absolutely beautiful in the joy they have of their vocation and the love they pour out to care for the men here. Myself and at least one other girl and some of the seminarians are going to serve here this semester. I’m very excited for what this time will bring!

Wednesday our early morning class is Spiritual Theology with Fr. Paul Murray, another Dominican priest who was a confessor for Blessed Mother Theresa when she would come to Rome. It is so beautiful…it’s basically like sitting in spiritual direction, except with 50 other people.

At night on Wednesdays we always have our community dinners. We start off community night with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for an hour, a very high Mass (with a lot of incense), a short discussion—this time we were able to hear more from the Little Sisters of the Lamb, followed by community dinner and ending with night prayer.

Thursday classes consist of Martyrdom again, Italian, and Christian Anthropology. Christian Anthropology is taught by another Dominican priest (can you tell I go to a Dominican Pontifical University?) Fr. Luke Buckles. It is also just like spiritual direction. His focus is just education us for life. It’s the study of humans from the Christian perspective. We’ll be reading some Theology of the Body, The Dignity and Vocation of Women, The Splendor of Truth, and some other pretty rockin’ stuff.

At night we went to mass on top of the Spanish Steps. Fr. Carola was saying mass for the Jerusalem religious community there—a French religious community. It was beautiful…their singing echoed wonderfully in the church. It was also strange and amazing to hear Fr. Carola speak in French!

Later we just hung out on the Spanish Steps for Marisa’s birthday. Lemoncello is horrible and I had my first Big Mac ever…in Rome (don’t judge—lol). It was yummy and amazing!

Friday we were supposed to go to the beach but it was raining. But it was amazing because we don’t have any classes scheduled for Fridays so we spent the rainy day doing homework, napping, and some of us girls watched My Fair Lady. At night some of us went to the San Lorenzo youth center. It’s a youth center commissioned by JPII in the 80’s for students and pilgrims to come to pray…and the World Youth Day cross is there right now! We started with an international rosary followed by Holy Mass which was said by a bishop from Ecuador who has been here for the synod. We met people from all over the world. The youth center is run by the Emmanuel community…a Charismatic community of lay people and some priests rooted in France.

Saturday we left early for Perugia and Eurochocolate Festival! It was great to get out of the city…but the festival was still quite crowded. We managed to find a place to eat overlooking the valley, town, and near hills around us. Had some yummy hot liquid chocolate and Milka bars and chocolate liquor. To the left is the view from the place we ate lunch.

Sunday me, Lizzie, and Sarah went to Mass at Christo Re, where again the priest was very excited to see young people and we met a seminarian from Cologne who was trying to translate what Fr. Was trying to say to us. He is studying here and somehow I wound up speaking German again. Why do I always find myself speaking German here? My Italian will never improve but my German might! Then later I went to a small prayer meeting with my friend Katherine from St. Paul’s Outreach back at school and we had community dinner again.

Monday we had class and went back to St. John Lateran to finish our tour. At night we went out to the Nag’s Head, a Scottish pub, for Justin’s birthday. The girls are getting into the habit of making up sweet renditions of songs for birthdays, so we sang him a rendition of “hold onto that feeling” it was quite impressive I must say…and I’m sure the whole pub was annoyed by the loud weird Americans.

By the way…they were playing Bruce Springsteen all night! I was soooo excited. J (And kind of shocked/confused! Ha)

Tuesday we had class and then I went to the youth center for adoration and mass. Ran into Katherine there which was a pleasant surprise.

Wednesday class. Holy hour, mass, discussion, and dinner…

Thursday we had class, and some of us went out to lunch with our Italian teacher. I just listened but it was good to try to soak up some more of the language. Then three of the girls and I headed to our Christian Anthro class and came back absolutely wiped out.

At 9pm though they were having mass and then adoration with a bit of praise and worship so a small group of us went to that. That was beautiful and made me miss First Fridays and Cor Jesu at St. Thomas really bad. I miss praise and worship songs that I know. Although we all laughed to ourselves at the opening song for mass because it was non other than “On Eagle’s Wings” and we just thought Fr. Joncas would be itching back at St. Thomas that his song was being played in Italian over here! It was soooooooooooo funny!

The priest who said mass was from Toronto so he was so generous to us that the first part of his homily he spoke in English to us. It was beautiful because he spoke of the synod going on. The synod is a meeting of bishops from all over the world. (I believe they do this once a year). This one they were focusing on the Word of God. He was saying it has been so amazing to be with the bishops from all over the world because you always hear about news about persecutions and things in other countries, but to actually have a priest from India where a lot of his flock are being killed is so real and present to you that you know the importance of strengthening the Church with God’s Word and why we are here.

Please, I beg of you, pray for these holy priests from this synod. It concludes on Sunday and will definitely have a huge impact on the Church. Also pray for those being persecuted…especially for the Christians in India.

I have been very moved and impressed by all the people that I’ve met and all the experiences I’ve had so far. I cannot believe I’m blessed to have so many more months here.

Please keep us all in your prayers.

In Christ and Mary,

God love you,

Sam

Blessed Mother Theresa-pray for us!