Vatican City, Apr 2, 2018 / 05:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Easter Monday, Pope Francis encouraged Christians to celebrate Easter with their community of family and friends, taking time to renew the brotherhood and sisterhood that is a fruit of the Lord&… […]
Washington D.C., Apr 2, 2018 / 03:39 am (CNA).- According to the Pew Research Center, only 46 percent of Americans under the age of 18 live in a traditional family with two parents in their first marriage.
For those who are now adults and grew up in a divorced family, the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C. is seeking to help heal wounds that remain after parents divorce.
Many suffer silently from their parents’ divorce, according to Daniel Meola, who leads the ‘Recovering Origins” healing retreats for the shrine.
“Regardless of the amount of individual love our parents give us, what we’ve lost is the love of our parents together,” Meola explained to CNA, drawing on his own experience of his parents’ divorce. “We have to recognize that we have something to grieve.”
“Children of divorce are not, as a rule, asked how they feel about their parents’ divorce — not as a child and not in the decades that follow,” Catholic writer, Leila Miller, wrote in her 2017 book, “Primal Loss: The Now-Adult Children of Divorce Speak.”
“Our society says that the kids should be alright. There should be no problem. There’s a lot of happy divorce talk … so that can kind of silence us,” explained Meola.
Although many children of divorce learn to silence their feelings, their wounds really begin to show themselves in young adulthood and in the ability to form and maintain relationships, according to Meola.
There can be “this deeper anxiety that many of us have that any good thing can turn bad at the drop of the hat or always expecting the piano to fall,” said Meola, who added that trust issues, anger, and depression are other common struggles.
Many participants in past retreats have expressed fear of repeating their parents’ mistakes. The key to addressing this concern is practicing the Church’s teaching of merciful love, Meola said.
“The form of marriage is merciful love … I think that if we can forgive our parents or even just start to forgive them that we will be starting a really good foundation for our own love and our own marriages,” he commented.
“You can love your parents and still hate the divorce,” explained Meola. “We have this beautiful distinction in the Church, at least I found very comforting, between the person and his acts. I found this very comforting actually for grieving that ‘Ok, I can hate this act my parents did, but I can still love this person deeply and profoundly.’”
“I’ve always found it really beautiful and fascinating that Christ’s strongest words on marriage in Matthew 19, saying it is indissoluble, are preceded by his strongest words on forgiveness in Matthew 18 where he tells people to forgive 77 times 7 times,” he continued. “I think that what the Scripture is suggesting there is that the form of indissolubility is merciful love.”
The Church’s teaching on self-giving love in marriage can also seem counterintuitive to adult children of divorce. “I think that one of the temptations when you are wounded is you just want to self-protect rather than give, even though giving is what is key for happiness, especially in love,” explained Meola. “Another sign of self-protecting is leaving at the first sign of problems and not addressing conflicts.”
“Cohabitation can also be a form of self-protecting,” he added.
The goal of the retreats is for the participants to bring these wounds and anxieties to Christ’s healing love. “As John Paul II said in Salvifici Doloris, if we have eyes of faith and we encounter Christ in the wound, then it can awaken love. That is the deepest level of healing that we are looking for.”
At the heart of each retreat is a detailed meditation on the Our Father. Small group discussions focus on more practical aspects of navigating healthy boundaries with one’s parents and in relationships after divorce.
“When your parents divorce, they are in survival mode and so are you, and what often happens is that you feel like you need to be the parent to the parent, rather than the child. And what I mean by that is that they often turn to you as their emotional confidant because they do not have their spouse any longer, so what happens is you don’t feel the permission to share your feelings with them because they are dumping so much on you and you feel the need to help them figure out their emotional life. But in a healthy marriage, it is flipped — the child is supposed to be getting direction about their emotional life from the parent … when you are married, you need to be each other’s emotional confidant… We do have to draw a boundary,” explained Meola.
“We tend to think of boundaries as pushing the other person away, but they are actually at the service of reconciliation and having a good relationship. Because what is going to push you away is if you have an unhealthy relationship. You are going to collapse and get really angry. Boundaries are actually at the service of a good relationship with your parents,” he continued.
“Verbal abuse can be very prolific. Because we are a child of both parents, when one parent bashes the other parent, that really hurts us, because we are a fruit of that, we have qualities of that parent that they might be bashing,” continued Meola who said that the retreat can empower young people to speak up when this occurs.
“Each parent is half of who the child is. When the parents reject each other, they are rejecting half of the child. They may tell the child, ‘We still love you; we just don’t love each other.’ The child cannot make sense of this impossible contradiction. In my opinion, this is the underlying reason for the well-documented psychological, physiological, and spiritual risks that children of divorce face,” wrote Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, the founder and president of the Ruth Institute, in the introduction to Miller’s book on adult children of divorce.
The “Recovering Origins” healing retreat was born out of an earlier symposium hosted by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in 2012 that brought together scholars who have studied the impact divorce has had on children, including Elizabeth Marquardt, whose groundbreaking book, “Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce,” was one of the first studies on the impact of divorce on young people.
Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, saw how fruitful the symposium was, and decided that the Church should offer more opportunities for healing. The Knights of Columbus and the John Paul II Institute developed the retreat, which was first held in 2016.
Each retreat is usually capped at 25 participants to encourage discussion. Speakers at the last retreat at the Saint John Paul II National Shrine on March 23-25 included Fr. Jim McCormick, MIC and Dr. Jill Verschaetse, both of whom are adult children of divorce.
The next retreat is scheduled for September 7-9 in Arlington, Virginia.
Vatican City, Apr 1, 2018 / 04:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his Urbi et Orbi Easter blessing, Pope Francis said Jesus’ death and resurrection provide hope to a world marred by conflict, proving that modern tragedies such as war and violence won’t have the final say.
“We Christians believe and know that Christ’s resurrection is the true hope of the world, the hope that does not disappoint,” the Pope said April 1, Easter morning.
Like the parable Jesus told of the grain of wheat which has to die before bearing fruit, Francis said that “it is the power of the grain of wheat, the power of that love which humbles itself and gives itself to the very end, and thus truly renews the world.”
“This power continues to bear fruit today in the furrows of our history, marked by so many acts of injustice and violence,” he said, and pointed to the plight of migrants and refugees, and victims of the drug trade, human trafficking and other forms of modern slavery.
He asked for peace throughout the world, especially in the “long-suffering” nation of Syria, “whose people are worn down by an apparently endless war.”
“This Easter, may the light of the risen Christ illumine the consciences of all political and military leaders, so that a swift end may be brought to the carnage in course, that humanitarian law may be respected” in order to facilitate access to aid, and to allow those who have been displaced to return to their homes.
Pope Francis also prayed for the Holy Land, which in recent days has seen an increase in violence, for Yemen and for the entire Middle East, “that dialogue and mutual respect may prevail over division and violence.”
“May our brothers and sisters in Christ, who not infrequently put up with injustices and persecution, be radiant witnesses of the risen Lord and of the victory of good over evil.”
He also prayed for those who yearn for “a more dignified life,” specifically children and those from areas in Africa that suffer from hunger, violence and terrorism, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan.
Francis also prayed for the process of peace and dialogue on the Korean peninsula, and for Ukraine, that humanitarian aid would be able to reach the people and that recent steps to promote peace and harmony in the nation would be “consolidated.”
Turning to Venezuela, Pope Francis said citizens are living “in a kind of foreign land within their own country,” and prayed that with the grace of the resurrection, the nation would be able to find “a just, peaceful and humane way to surmount quickly the political and humanitarian crises that grip it.”
Prayers were also offered for children who lack education as a result of war, for elderly who have been “cast off by a selfish culture that ostracizes those who are not productive,” and for world leaders, that they “may always respect human dignity, devote themselves actively to the pursuit of the common good, and ensure the development and security of their own citizens.”
Pope Francis closed his address repeating the question the angel posed to the women who came to the tomb and found it empty, asking: “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
“Death, solitude and fear are not the last word.” he said. “There is a word that transcends them, a word that only God can speak: it is the word of the resurrection.”And by the power of God’s love, “it dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, drives out hatred, fosters concord and brings down the mighty.”
Vatican City, Apr 1, 2018 / 03:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Easter morning Pope Francis said God’s announcement to his people always comes as a surprise, like the shock of the disciples who found Jesus’ tomb empty after his resurrection, and told Christians not to waste time responding to the good news they’ve been given.
“The announcements of God are always a surprise, because ours is a God of surprises,” the Pope said April 1, on Easter morning. “From the beginning of the history of salvation, from Abraham, who God tells to ‘go, get up and go to the land I send you to,’ there’s always one surprise after another.”
“God doesn’t know how to make an announcement, a proclamation without surprising us,” he said, “and that surprise moves your heart, it touches you. It happens when you don’t expect it.”
Francis also spoke of the haste with which the women and the disciples in John’s Gospel responded when they heard news of the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection, and he posed a question to those present for the Mass, asking “what about you?”
“What about me? Is my heart open to God’s surprises?” he said, urging Christians to ask themselves: “Am I able to go with great haste, or do I stay back and say, ‘I’ll go tomorrow’?”
Pope Francis celebrated Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square after presiding over the Easter Vigil inside the basilica the night before, bringing a close to the Easter Triduum and the events of Holy Week.
The altar during Mass was bedecked with some 50,000 flowers of different varieties, which were a gift from florists in Holland.
Though he usually sticks to his text during formal liturgies, Francis did not prepare a homily for Easter morning, and spoke to pilgrims in brief, off-the-cuff remarks. He did the same thing last year, meaning a spontaneous reflection Easter morning could be a new trend for the Argentine pope.
In his short homily, the pope focused on three aspects of the day’s Gospel passage from John, in which Peter and John run to the tomb after Mary Magdalene tells them she found it empty earlier that morning.
The three aspects Pope Francis focused on are the surprise of the announcement, the haste with which the women and the disciples ran to the tomb, and the personal response of each
Please see below for the full text of Pope Francis’ homily:
After having listened to the word of God, this passage from the Gospel, I want to say three things. First, the announcement: the Lord is Risen. That proclamation, that from the tine of the early Christians they would greet each other this way: the Lord is risen! And the women that were there to anoint the Lord’s body, they found themselves in front of a surprise. The surprise. The announcements of God are always a surprise, because ours is a God of surprises. So from the beginning of the history of salvation, from Abraham, who God tells to ‘go, get up and go to the land I send you to,’ there’s always one surprise after another. God doesn’t know how to make an announcement, a proclamation without surprising us. And that surprise moves you heart, it touches you. It happens when you don’t expect it. It’s a surprise from ‘down low’, it takes you off guard. God’s announcement was a surprise.
The rush, the women ran, they went in a hurry to get to the tomb, to say ‘we found this!’ The surprises of God put us on the path, on the journey right away, without waiting. So they run to see, and Peter and John, they run. The shepherds, the night of Christmas when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, ran…the Samaritan woman runs to tell her people, ‘this is new, I met a man who told me everything I have ever done!’ These people run, they leave what they’re doing. The housewife leaves the potatoes in the pot, and they’ll be burned, but it’s important to run, to see that surprise that announcement. Today this also happens to us in our neighborhoods, when something happens and people go to see it. People go with great haste. Andrew didn’t waste time and he went to Peter to say: ‘we found the Messiah!’ The surprises, the good news, are always given like this, with great haste. But in the Gospel there is a person who takes their time, who doesn’t want to take a risk, but the Lord is good, and he waits for him with great love. This is Thomas, who said ‘I’ll believe when I see his wounds.’ The Lord is patient with those people who do not get up and leave with great haste.
Thirdly, is a question: and me, what? What about me? Is my heart open to God’s surprises? Am I able to go with great haste, or with that chant, do I stay back and say ‘I’ll go tomorrow’? What is the surprise saying to me? John and Peter, they ran to the tomb. John in his Gospel, tells us to believe. Even Peter, believed, but in his own way, with that faith that is a bit mixed with remorse for having denied the Lord. The announcement that has made a surprise, to run and go with great haste, and the question: what about me, today, in this Easter in 2018? What about me? What about you?
Vatican City, Mar 31, 2018 / 02:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At the Easter Vigil Mass on Saturday, Pope Francis said the announcement of Christ’s resurrection was the greatest message in history, one that broke the silence of his death and gave us hop… […]
Rome, Italy, Mar 31, 2018 / 01:40 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ Holy Thursday Mass at a prison in Rome was more than just another event for the inmates who participated – it was a sign that while invisible to the world outside, they had not been forgotten.
“Yesterday is a moment that I think is going to resonate through the prison for at least the whole next entire year. I think it’s a moment that touched every single guard and every single prisoner who was there,” seminarian Alex Nevitt told CNA March 30.
A seminarian in his third year of theology studying at the Pontifical North American College, Nevitt does prison ministry at Rome’s Regina Coeli prison, where Pope Francis celebrated yesterday’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper for Holy Thursday.
The pope washed the feet of 12 inmates and visited the infirmary, as well as “Section VIII” of the facility, where prisoners who have committed serious crimes or who have certain mental illness live.
After the pope’s Mass, which commemorated the night Jesus himself was arrested, Nevitt said many of the inmates were moved, because “this is their lived experience that they know.”
“These are men that are easily forgotten,” he said, noting that at one point a representative from the prison spoke to the pope and thanked him “for making sure we’re not forgotten.”
“Sometimes it’s very easy to forget those who are in prison because we don’t see them,” Nevitt said, explaining that as seminarians, “it’s a privilege” to serve the inmates because it helps them to better understand “where the fringes of society are.”
Nevitt, who is from the Diocese of Patterson, NJ, has been working in the prison apostolate for two and a half years. He is in charge of the other eight seminarians who are involved in the ministry, five of whom are currently working inside the prison, and three of whom will start in September when they finish training.
As part of their ministry, the seminarians lead bible studies and catechesis. They work most directly with English-speaking inmates, the majority of whom are migrants from Africa. Since the prison does not provide a list of English-speakers, the seminarians will often walk around looking for people.
The people they work with, Nevitt said, are there for a variety of reasons – anything from illegal immigration to petty street crimes, such as selling merchandise like toys or purses on the street illegally.
Although there are not many life sentences, they actual time a person has to spend in prison is not well-defined, Nevitt said, explaining that some people are from Europe or have gained Italian citizenship legally, but have no family, making it harder to access bail or be released without a support system.
“You hear some backstories of prisoners who don’t want to write back home because they’re ashamed of being in prison,” he said. “So I think the pope’s message of forgiveness probably spoke very much to those types of prisoners, to not be ashamed, and they can be forgiven and move forward.”
A total of three popes have visited Regina Coeli, the most recent being St. John Paul II in 2000. Pope Francis’ visit meant a lot, Nevitt said.
When people heard that the pope was coming, they “were extremely excited…Regardless of whatever religion they were from, [they] were excited that the pope was coming, so there was a huge amount of energy in the prison for it.”
During the Mass, the pope washed the feet of 12 prisoners from different religions – including Catholics, Muslims, an Orthodox Christian and a Buddhist. The inmates were from various countries, including the Philippines, Nigeria, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Morocco, Moldova, and Italy.
Nevitt said they work with a many non-Catholics, Protestants and Muslims, in their bible studies. At one point they had prepared a man for baptism, and after being transferred to another prison, he came into the Catholic Church.
Another of these non-Catholics is a Nigerian man named Oladipupo, who has been in their bible study for two years and whose feet the pope washed on Holy Thursday.
Oladipupo is a Pentecostal Christian, but has come to the bible study regularly, and even wrote a letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Liturgy and the Discipline of the Sacraments, after reading Sarah’s recent book “God or Nothing.” And he got a response back.
“We’re hoping that Oladipupo will soon be called to the Catholic faith once he’s ready for it,” Nevitt said, explaining that after yesterday’s liturgy, he spoke to Oladipupo, who was amazed to see “the humanity of the pope, to see this man who is the leader of the Catholic Church in such a human way.”
Similarly, Nevitt said he also spoke with a Muslim man after the Holy Thursday Mass, though he didn’t know the man was a Muslim at the time. The man had been so moved by the liturgy that he had wanted to receive communion, and is now going to start coming to the bible study led by the seminarians.
Many people were moved by the pope’s homily Mass, Nevitt said, during which Francis emphasized forgiveness, condemned the death penalty, and told prisoners that Jesus would never abandon them, but would “take a chance” on them.
“Throughout the whole homily everyone was quite captivated at every word the pope was saying, and you could see even from a couple of the guards who were standing around me, there were a lot of head nods,” Nevitt said.
The space itself was very intimate, he said, noting that the rotunda where the Mass took place was small and only a limited number of guards and prisoners were able to sit inside the area, while the rest watched from different wings.
“There were certain moments, especially when the pope was kneeling down to wash the prisoners’ feet, you could see people crying,” Nevitt said. “There was a very humanness to seeing the pope kneeling down at his age, sometimes he would have difficulty…getting back up, and people [were] just crying at his example of humble leadership.”
Paris, France, Mar 31, 2018 / 12:31 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid a push to legalize physician-assisted suicide in parts of Europe, 118 French bishops signed a declaration this week promoting end-of-life care and explaining the Church’s opposition to… […]
Vatican City, Mar 31, 2018 / 09:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Paul VI’s love for life, highlighted in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, is at the center of the miracles that paved the way to his beatification and canonization, both of which involved u… […]
Vatican City, Mar 30, 2018 / 02:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- During his annual Good Friday Via Crucis at the Colosseum, Pope Francis made a heartfelt prayer asking God to give Christians the grace to be ashamed of their sins, to repent and beg for mercy, and to have hope that his love is stronger than death.
“Before your supreme love, shame pervades us for having left you alone to suffer for our sins…shame for having chosen Barabbas and not you, power and not you, appearance and not you, the god of money and not you, worldliness and not eternity,” the Pope said in his March 30 prayer.
Christians also feel shame for all the people, including some clergy, who “allowed themselves be deceived by ambition and vainglory, losing sight of their dignity and first love,” and those who have left future generations a world “fractured by divisions and wars” and “consumed by selfishness.”
Above all, Christians are ashamed “for having lost a sense of shame,” he said, and asked the Lord to “always grant us the grace of holy shame!”
Pope Francis presided over the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday at the Colosseum – an ancient practice which dates back to the pontificate of Benedict XIV, who died in 1758. After a pause, the tradition was revived by Bl. Pope Paul VI in 1964, and under St. John Paul II it became known globally through television.
Each year the pope personally chooses someone to write the meditations for the stations. This year he asked a group of Italian high school students to write the meditations, guided by religion teacher Andrea Monda.
The meditations reflected on different themes, such as compassion, Jesus’ humanity, man’s dignity, fear of suffering, modern sensitivity to anything considered offensive, the surprises God gives and the knowledge that as Christians, we are never alone.
While in the past, the pope himself used to carry the cross from station to station, it is now carried by individuals and families. This year cross-bearers included Archbishop Angelo Donatis, the Vicar of Rome, a family of five from Syria, Dominican religious sisters from Iraq and friars from the Holy Land, among others.
In his prayer at the end of the Via Crucis, Pope Francis said that as Christians contemplate Jesus’ bloody death, they look to him with a gaze full of repentance, “which before your eloquent silence, begs for your mercy.”
This repentance, he said, “springs from the certainty that only you can save us from evil, only you can heal us from our leprosy of hate, selfishness, pride, greed, revenge and idolatry.
“Only you can embrace us by restoring our dignity as your children and rejoicing for our return home, our return to life,” he said, adding that this repentance also comes from being aware of one’s smallness and vanity, and from allowing oneself to be moved by God’s “powerful invitation to convert.”
It is the repentance of David, “who from the abyss of his suffering finds in you his only strength,” and
the repentance of Peter, “who when his eyes met yours, wept bitterly for having denied you.”
“Lord Jesus, always grant us the grace of holy repentance,” he said, but noted that despite man’s sinfulness, in front of God’s majesty “the spark of hope is lit in the darkness of our despair, because we know that your only measure for loving us is to love us without measure.”
This hope, he said, is that God’s message will continue to inspire people today with the knowledge that good and forgiveness overcome evil and the desire for revenge, and that a “brotherly embrace” can dispel “hostility and fear of the other.”
It is also a hope that Christ’s sacrifice would continue to emanate the “fragrance of divine love” that touches the young people who consecrate their lives to God, and that missionaries would continue “to challenge the slumbering consciousness of humanity,” by risking their lives to serve the poor, invisible, exploited and forgotten.
Francis said this is also a hope that the Church, which is holy and yet made up of sinners, “may continue, still today, despite all attempts to discredit it, to be a light that illuminates, encourages, uplifts and bears witness to your unlimited love for humanity.”
He prayed that the Church would be “a model of selflessness, an ark of salvation, and a source of certainty and truth.”
“Lord Jesus, always grant us the grace of holy hope!” he said, and asked Jesus to help Christians “strip ourselves of the arrogance of the unrepentant thief to your left, of the short-sighted and the corrupt” and those who saw in Jesus “another chance to put one’s own fault on others, even God.”
Closing his prayer, Francis asked Jesus to help Christians identify instead “with the good thief who looks to you with eyes full of shame, repentance and hope.”
With these eyes, the good thief “saw divine victory in your apparent defeat and knelt before your mercy, honestly stealing his way into heaven.”
Rome, Italy, Mar 30, 2018 / 12:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For American seminarians at the Pontifical North American college in Rome, Holy Week liturgies take on new life and dimension, as the history of ancient traditions comes alive through the city’s remembrance of Christ’s Passion and death.
The seminarians alternate each year between having Holy Week liturgical celebrations “in house,” or having the week free to celebrate wherever they wish.
This year is an in-house year, meaning all liturgies related to Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday through the Easter Vigil Saturday night, are celebrated in the seminary chapel with seminarians, deacons and priests carrying out the key roles including serving, singing and chanting the Gospels.
Justin Boff, a seminarian from the Archdiocese of Baltimore in his third year of theology at the NAC, said the ambiance of the seminary during the in-house years takes on a notably calm dynamic, as the frenzied rush of coursework and exams gives way to a slower, more prayerful pace focused on the liturgy.
“We’re really blessed here to have so many resources to be able to pull from and to be able to put together really, really nice liturgies with all the smells and bells and those sorts of things,” he told CNA, adding that the NAC is “a privileged place” with few distractions from entering into the meaning of the week’s events.
As far as the run-down of the schedule for this week, after Palm Sunday Mass March 25, seminarians have largely been focused on prayer and preparing for the major liturgies.
To kick off the Triduum, seminarians on Wednesday went on the historic “church walk” started by Saint Philip Neri in the late 16th century. On Wednesday of every Holy Week, Neri would set out with his companions on foot to visit each of the four major basilicas in Rome, as well as the three minor basilicas, stopping at each for a time of prayer.
Seminarians at the NAC have kept the tradition as part of their wider observance of the ancient “Roman stational liturgy,” in which Mass is celebrated at 7 a.m. at a different Roman parish each of the 40 days during Lent, beginning Ash Wednesday and ending the Wednesday of Holy Week.
At the end of Lent, the final station Mass is typically celebrated at the papal basilica of St. Mary Major, and after this Mass seminarians and other pilgrims will set off on the seven-church walk, finishing in the evening.
For Holy Thursday at the NAC, there was the usual Mass of the Lord’s Supper, celebrated by Cardinal Edwin O’Brien. Afterward, seminarians were welcome to go out and join the hundreds of other people in Rome praying at different chapels of repose throughout the city.
After Mass is celebrated on Holy Thursday, the Eucharist is removed from the tabernacle of churches as a sign that Jesus has been taken away, and placed in a side chapel where faithful can stay to pray, sometimes all night depending on the parish.
In Rome, locals, priests, pilgrims from abroad, and members of the Curia all turn out in droves for the event, stopping to pray at different churches around the city as a way of accompanying Jesus the night before his crucifixion and death.
“It’s really an impressive sight,” Boff said, explaining that most seminarians go out for this event, and are able to take students and peers from their apostolates along with them.
“So it’s a lot of religion these weeks, but it’s a lot of fun. You really get to see the universal Church and the local Church here in Rome, which is just beautiful.”
On Good Friday, the Veneration of the Cross service at the NAC will be celebrated at 3 p.m. by the college rector, Fr. Peter Harman. The Easter vigil Saturday night this year will be celebrated by Cardinal James Harvey. Events for Holy Week and the Easter Triduum will close Sunday morning, with Mass and evening prayer later in the afternoon.
Apart from the main liturgies, there has been daily morning prayer and Mass, and lots of preparation and rehearsals for the major events. Boff, who is playing the organ during the celebrations, has had a particularly busy week practicing with the 40-member seminary choir.
“It’s really not that much playing in the end as far as the Triduum goes, because the organ is totally silent from the Gloria on Holy Thursday to the Gloria on the Easter Vigil,” he said. “So the organ goes into the tomb a bit with the Lord.”
But the music at the vigil has to be “very triumphant and joyful,” which takes a lot of preparation to make sure the music matches the magnitude of the celebration, he said.
Deacon Colin Jones, who is from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and is in his fourth year of theology at the NAC, said that for him, the station churches have played a major role in how he has lived Lent.
Though attending all the station Masses, some of which are an hour-long walk to get to, is not required, Jones said this year he tried to make it to as many as possible.
“It’s nice to be reminded about how many beautiful churches there are in the city and all the different parts of the city and a different, unique walk every morning,” he said, explaining that on any given day there are usually around 20-30 seminarians at the Masses in addition to the pilgrims and locals who come.
Jones said the long walk to get to some of the churches is “demanding,” but it allows time for prayer, and “it’s nice to have the morning for prayer and to have this pilgrimage…with our Lord through Lent.”
The churches and readings are generally the same for every year, and some were selected based on historical significance, so after awhile, he said, “the readings and the church become intertwined,” and it helps give context to the scripture passage being read.
Jones will also be chanting the part of Christ in the Gospel narrative of Jesus Passion on Good Friday, which is taken from the Gospel of John.
While the Palm Sunday Gospel reading was chanted by three priests, the Good Friday Gospel narrative will be chanted by three deacons, including Jones, who said the opportunity and the hours of practice are “a pretty big blessing, very powerful and very moving.”
Though it’s been hard to get the right pitch and tempo for the lines, Jones said being able to sing the lines of Jesus has helped him to go deeper into the events of Holy Week, specifically Jesus’ crucifixion and death.
“It just hits you in a different way and strikes more deeply,” he said. “Now we’ve sung through it a dozen times or so, so the words just get deeper every time, and you let them resonate a little bit more. And the more comfortable we become with it…we’re able to make it more of a prayer and those lines really hit you.”
Jones, who will be ordained a priest May 26, in just under a month, said he hopes that when he has a parish, he is able to impart to his parishioners the excitement and depth he’s gained about Holy Week from living and celebrating the liturgies in Rome.
And while it’s nice to have time to celebrate Holy Week elsewhere or participate in papal liturgies, Jones said he prefers the in-house years, because “you can enjoy more of a restful environment and enjoy hanging out with the guys.”
There are also more opportunities for prayer, he said, adding that “even the preparations are kind of exciting, there’s a certain excitement that’s in the house, so that’s definitely fun having all of that here this week.”
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