Journal of a Roman Deacon (from Rome)

Greenville News | 9 March 2005 | The Rev. Don Christopher Smith

[Mershon]

A Journal of a Roman Deacon Posted Tuesday, April 5, 2005 - 10:04 pm

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During the Twilight of John Paul II and the Dawn of "Glory of the Olive" Why This Journal?

The Roman Major Seminary at Saint John Lateran is where the Bishop of Rome sends his own men to study for the priesthood, and in this large complex in back of the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, mine is the only room from which you can clearly see the cupola of Saint Peter's. It is Tuesday in the second week of Easter and I am listening to Tomas Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum watching the spring sun recede behind the chapel. It is April 5; I was not here when the Sovereign Pontiff, John Paul II, breathed his last. How strange: I came to Rome as a romantic zealous convert to Catholicism at the age of twenty-two six years ago, determined to live in this city, O Roma felix, of saints and martyrs, of popes and artists. Six years, if not literally under the shadow of the dome of Saint Peter's, certainly figuratively. Never far from it for too long, while some of the greatest events of history were taking place in Rome, I was not there. But more on that later.

I have never been good at keeping a journal. I am always amazed at those who can record with such loving detail the comings and goings of a life that few others would even consider, both for their skill and for the fact that for most, it is an exercise that will end not in a marble-engraved monument, but in a landfill. But so many of my friends on the other side of the Great Pond that is the Atlantic have wanted my impressions on these historic days, and so I write in confident hope that my musings will be one of those things that a future reader might find quaint, even as I find the events herein described as being of a magnitude that none but those who experience them can truly fathom.

Prelude

The Fifth Sunday of Lent was traditionally known as Passion Sunday and the Basilica of Saint Peter is the site of that day's station, from the days before Avignon when the Pope and his court would celebrate in a different Roman church each day of Lent. This ancient custom is still observed and it was the day for the greatest basilica in the world to expose her relics on the High Altar and for the clergy to process singing the Litany of the Saints. It is very little until, after my Roman experience, I go home to South Carolina to work in the vineyard of the LORD as a priest, so I want to take advantage of all of those occasions that the Roman Church offers. As I processed in cassock and surplice through the vast expanse of Saint Peter's, I reflected on this Eternal City, in gratitude for the years spent in the footsteps of the same saints and martyrs whose names we sang with the fervent invocation, ora pro nobis, pray for us!

At the end of Vespers, we all processed once again in front of the Altar, and from the loggia a bell rang, One of the canons in his magenta robes, a colour called paonazzo in Italian, brings a large frame with a piece of linen cloth in it. It is said to be the veil with which an anonymous woman named Veronica wiped the face of Jesus on His Way of the Cross, a veil on which was impressed forever the Holy Face of the Redeemer. I sank to my knees on the cold and hard marble floor as the relic was waved over the four corners of the basilica and the world in blessing. A moment best described as numinous: one may doubt the authenticity of such an episode which does not occur in the Gospels or of a relic from such a long time ago, but my worship was to that God made Man who let His face be cleansed by a woman who took pity on Him. I had a flashback to John Paul II. His XXVth anniversary as Servant of the Servants of God, as the appellation has it, he was to celebrate the Mass of Thanksgiving. It was time to intone the Gloria and he hesitated. The Vatican Masters of Ceremony, with their unfailing grace to make the undignified into the beautiful, shielded the suffering face of an old Polish man and wiped it, an act of mercy And the Pope intoned the Gloria and the congregation sang the Missa de Angelis with great emotion.

I was reminded of the first time I served Mass for the Pope. My first year in the seminary, bronzed by several clandestine escapes in June from the seminary barracks to the beaches of Ostia, I was called to serve the Holy Father. The feast of Corpus Domini, or Corpus Christi as it is known in English-speaking countries, is in honour of the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood, and John Paul II had the custom of celebrating Mass on the sagrato, or piazza in front of his cathedral, Saint John Lateran, and carrying the Blessed Sacrament in procession to Saint Mary Major, where he held Benediction over the teeming crowds. My job at the Mass was not a principal role: I was water boy. Three times, I came to the Bishop of Rome and knelt in front of him with an ewer of water and a basin, while my partner, a seminarian from Trastevere named Andrea, held the towel for him to dry the hands I poured water over. A ritual gesture, a small part of the sacred drama of the Catholic liturgy, but I thought much of those hands. How many children's faces caressed, how many priests ordained, how many blessings bestowed.

How much time had passed since that Corpus Domini handwashing and being blessed by the Veil of Veronica. I had been ordained deacon by the Cardinal Vicar of the Pope for Rome. I had served the Pope at Mass more times. I had questioned my vocation to the priesthood, my very belief in God, and come through the seminary system fortified by the touch of grace.

The Roman Seminary was the first seminarium, or seedbed for vocations, founded after the Council of Trent's call to reform the education of students for the clergy. Pope Pius IV in 1585 founded it to send young Romans to study for the priesthood, and from its ranks have come a long list of popes: Gregory XV Ludovisi, Clement IX Rospigliosi, Innocent XII Pigantelli, Clement XII Corsini, John XXIII Roncalli. Saints like Vincent Pallotti and Canon Oreste Borgia formed young Romans to be men of God, and cardinals with illustrious names such as Ottaviani, Palazzini, Gaspari walked the halls. There are today living five cardinals and sixty bishops among the alumni as well as countless priests. But for all of them, the centre of the seminary is a small neoclassical chapel with a tiny icon called La Fiducia. Painted by Chiara Isabella Fornari, a Poor Clare nun in Todi, this miniature of Our Lady with the Baby Jesus pointing to her as an image of virtue was brought to the seminary in 1774.

Ever since, the seminarians have found Our Lady of Confidence their patroness along the way, and it was in honour of her that John Paul II instituted the practice of coming to the seminary every year to celebrate her feast on the Saturday before Lent. My first year in the seminary I remember the weeks of work to get the house ready for the visit. Polishing silver, arranging flowers and singing oratorios filled those days of expectation for the feast in which the New Men received the cassock, the long black garment proper to the Catholic clergy, and were to be presented one by one to kiss the ring of the Pope and kneel to receive his blessing.

We awaited his coming in the chapel as Monsignor Marco Frisina rehearsed those gathered to sing for the Pope. At a signal, all of the seminarians quietly and gracefully filed out of the chapel, and as soon as they hit the chapel door, ran like leopards catching their prey to the Great Doors to welcome the Holy Father to his seminary. The top of the black Mercedes went down and he had to hold his hears from the noise that 200 loud and obnoxious young men screaming Viva il Papa! made in the cloister. The Pope then went to pray alone before the Fiducia as we regathered the chapel. As he entered the chapel, we sang a powerful piece, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it, from Matthew 16.18. After the oratorio, we sent all of the guests home and sat down to dinner, just seminarians and the Pope. All of the tables arranged so that no one had their back to the Roman Pontiff, a simple dinner of tortellini in brodo, the only time in the year in which in our dinner hall you could hear a pin drop. The Holy Father was at home with his future priests, and he said, "Tomorrow I am going to visit one of the parishes. One day you will all be parish priests too, and it is the most wonderful thing in the world." Plates cleared and Chianti bottles emptied, I entered with the community to be presented to the Holy Father, How nervous I was, aware of that starch linen collar around my neck, worried about kneeling correctly so as to not trip as I rose, thinking what I could say to the leader of 1 billion Roman Catholics. The Rector introduced me as the only American in his seminary. I knelt, I kissed the ring, and he broke the usual protocol, and said, "USA!" and caressed my face. What was I to do? And so the only thing that came to mind was lifted from the Marines, Semper fidelis: America, always faithful. I know not how much time elapsed between that ten second episode and when the seminarians formed a human chain on both sides of the papal car to escort him out of the piazza, singing all way, but it seemed like an instant, an instant permanently engraved on the waves of memory.

The image of a shepherd who had fought so hard for the dignity of man and for the Gospel, of many other times when I was in his presence, filled me as I returned to the sacristy after the blessing with the Veil of Veronica on that Passion Sunday. I returned to the sacristy and looked around me: cardinals, bishops, canons, monsignors, altar boys, seminarians like myself, the indefatigable Sisters of Saint Joseph, and I thought how much my life had brought me. From the rolling hills of a Baptist Greenville childhood to becoming a man and a priest at the throne of Peter in the Eternal City. I felt gloriously home at Saint Peter's as I might have at home with my mom and dad: Baroque splendour and ceremonial dignities had become one in my experience with the simplicity and forthrightness of the Christ-haunted South.

I passed through the doors of Saint Peter's that Sunday with many thoughts and memories, and as I descended those steps I had been up so many times, sometimes to pop into confession to one of the pious old friars, other times with a golden thurible swinging incense, I heard the murmur going through the crowd, "The Pope is coming home!" The Via della Conciliazione which leads to Saint Peter's was lined with pilgrims already awaiting the first return of the Pope from the Gemelli hospital, all hoping to catch a glimpse of a man many have come to call John Paul the Great, many travelling from all of the parts of the globe to see the 264th successor to the Fisherman. But I did not tarry to see him: I had seen him so many times. I pulled my cloak around me over my cassock as the cold penetrated the spring evening. Little did I know that on that Passion Sunday, Karol Wojytla was to begin his Passion in earnest.

The only pope I have ever remembered, ever known, was John Paul II. We all knew that death comes for all, but who would have thought to someone who was such a part of our lives? Young seminarians dedicating their lives to Christ behind the walls of a Roman college prayed for the health of the Pope and prepared for Holy Week. I was off to London to serve as Deacon at the Brompton Oratory, and could not help but see my meditation on the suffering and death of the Redeemer in light of what was going on in the Apostolic Palace quietly furious with activity and expectation.

During Holy Week, Catholics celebrate the institution of the Lord's Supper, the Mass, on Maundy Thursday. In this London church, I proclaimed the Gospel, singing the words of Jesus to Peter at the first washing of the feet, I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you. After Mass, we transferred the Blessed Sacrament in a sumptuous procession through the church to the sepulchre in the side chapel, and like the apostles with Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed and kept watch with the LORD. The repository ablaze with flowers and candles, we adored God under the form of bread and wine, and the clergy went to strip the altars. The tabernacle door was flung open and we ripped off the cloths to all of the altars and threw them to the ground. I could not help but think of both Our Lord and the Holy Father, as the force of events brought them to their deaths, At midnight, the candles were extinguished and the Sacrament removed. The massive breadth of London's most beautiful Catholic church was empty. Jesus had been taken away from his friends, just as the Pope would soon also be taken away.

But for Catholics, the celebration of the Resurrection came very soon, and so I mounted the pulpit of the great Father Faber and sang the Church's brilliant Easter proclamation, the Exsultet, the only light coming from the Paschal candle and the small red reading lamp. This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave, O happy fault, o necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a redeemer! The Christian world rejoiced in the vanquishing of death by the love of God and the Pope appeared at his window, blessing the throngs in the Square his last Easter blessing, so eloquent in its silence and such a portent of what was soon to come.

Easter ceremonies finished, I left London for Spain with an American friend, Gregory. We kept abreast of the watch in the Vatican, and saw the throngs beginning their tireless vigil in the Vatican from the BBC in a hotel room in Toledo. We said the traditional Commendatio animae, the prayers for a departing soul, and on Saturday, I said to my travelling companion, "I think he will die on Divine Mercy Sunday." We watched the BBC and went to dinner at a Syrian restaurant. The Roman clerical tradition is that the first toast of a dinner is to the Holy Father, and so we clinked glasses of San Miguel to John Paul II, when my phone buzzed with a message: The Pope has just died, from a confrere in the seminary.

The faithful were in Saint Peter's Square saying the rosary when Archbishop Sandri announced that, at 21:37 the Holy Father "had gone home to the Father." We downed our hummus and shawarma dinner as we talked on the phone with friends in Rome, who all said, "You won't believe what the City has become like! So many people!" Six years so close to the Pope and as he died, I was in another country! We went to a small chapel near the Primatial Cathedral of Toledo and prayed, and the Archbishop of Toledo came out to say Mass. Divine Mercy Sunday Gregory and I spent amidst churches, museums and phone calls from just about everyone.

Monday I came back to Rome and re-entered the Vatican extra-territory that is the Lateran just in time for when the porter was going home. All of the seminarians had just come back to a somber dinner. The Roman clergy were all called to the Sala Clementina in the Apostolic Palace, where they, along with the cardinals and bishops, transferred the body of John Paul II to Saint Peter's Basilica. The Pope alone with his priests and seminarians for a final farewell, the basilica empty of people, its hallowed doors closed to those outside as the Romans sang in Latin psalms and canticles. The Holy Father, dressed in red chasuble and white mitre, was placed on the catafalque and the doors were opened as the faithful began to pour in. It is now midnight on April 5/6 and they have not ceased to pour in.

The superiors of the seminary have divided the seminarians up to keep watch with the body, and I have been assigned Thursday night from 10-12. I may very well be one of the last people to see the Holy Father before he is placed in the three traditional coffins for the funeral, and so I thank God for this great grace. Today, I went near Saint Peter's. I missed the private viewing that the seminary had because of my late entrance, but I thought I would at least see what was going on.

I have seen the record breaking crowds of John Paul II. I was there with him for the beatification of Mother Teresa, I sang his XXVth anniversary Mass, I witnessed the crowds for Padre Pio and Josemaria Escrivá. To see Saint Peter's Square and the Via della Conciliazione full is nothing new for me. But today was different. Men and women in tears, praying, speaking softly, clutching pictures of the Pope, being interviewed by all manner of journalists in very media possible and in every language of the Catholic globe, thinking nothing of waiting up to seven hours to get into the basilica. Requiem Masses are being said at all hours in all the churches, and the closest collaborators of the Pope have been stretching themselves into exhaustion to attend to the needs of the faithful in this the greatest crowd perhaps in world history.

I made my way back to the oasis of the Roman Seminary, on the other side of the Tiber, this afternoon and we are already busy preparing for the Vigils and the Funeral, as well as getting back to the business of classes and house duties amidst speculations about conclave and the next pope.

The stars are out and I can see the famous dome from my window. The See of Peter is vacant sede vacante, and there is an eery feeling of real absence, much like Good Friday. The Church is like the dead body of the Saviour on Holy Saturday, awaiting a miracle to bring it to life again. Quiet activity reigns over the lives of these 120 men preparing for the priesthood. The famous Prophecies of Saint Malachy, which have been remarkably accurate for the past 100 pontificates, say that the next Holy Father will be The Glory of the Olive and will reign over a period of peace in the Church and the world. As for me, it is no time to speculate, but to pray my night prayers as I do every night, and as did the Pope from the Breviary, Into thy hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.

[Mershon]

Please ping other Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, etc. who might be interested in an "inside view" of the current happenings in Rome.

[Mershon]

This is someone I will need to introduce you to once he is ordained. He is responsible for many drastic changes in my life since meeting him 8 years ago as a 19-year-old college student.

[Tantumergo]

"He is responsible for many drastic changes in my life since meeting him 8 years ago as a 19-year-old college student."

I hope you're not referring to the guy in the pink tutu!!!!!

[ninenot]

THANKS!!!

Easily one of the most powerful pieces I've read on the topic.

[ninenot]

This blog is a must-read. Let She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed take a gander, as well....

[gbcdoj]

Thanks! :)