ROME: Scavi Tour

Okay…now to explain the Scavi Tour! Wow. Where do I start?

Here we are waiting to go inside for the tour. We are standing in the area that is called the Piazza dei Protomartiri Romani (Square of the First Roman Martyrs) which is part of what used to be Nero's circus and is where tradition says that St. Peter was crucified.

Here we are about to enter the tour.


Here is an excerpt from George Weigel's book "Letters to a Young Catholic" that describes the Scavi tour in a very real way.

"As we enter through the Archway of the Bells, we come to the scavi office, the entrance to the excavations beneath the basilica. Scavi tours are not large affairs, and as we go down the stairways and enter the excavations themselves, you can see why. The passageways are narrow and slightly musty, even dampish. As we make our way through the dark corridors that were once streets and alleys in the Vatican Hill necropolis, our guide points out the elaborate pagan funerary monuments as well as Christian tombs. There, after about a twenty-minute walk, is what can be made out of the Tropaion. And after that, reinterred in the graffiti-marked wall I mentioned before, are what the guide tells us are the mortal remains of Peter the apostle. Leaving through the gilded baroque splendor of the Clementine Chapel, you can't help but think that what we've just seen and touched and smelled is about as close to the apostolic roots of the Catholic Church as it's possible to get." (p.24)

Let me explain some of the history we learned during the tour. In 1939 Pope Pius XI died and his tomb wouldn't fit with the other tombs underneath St. Peter's Basilica so they decided to lower the floor. When they did this, they hit the top of a mausoleum and the successor Pope Pius XII decided to explore further. This is the story of how they discovered the Scavi underneath St. Peter's.

The mausoleums used to be in the open air in ancient roman times when they were used for pagan burials. We got to see and touch a part of the original brick and tile from the ground. Christians later reused the pagan tombs for their own dead (and they know they did this by Christian symbols they found on the tombs.)

Constantine wanted to build on top of the tombs of the ancient Romans so he filled them with dirt and used them as support. There were three types of bricks, from the ancient Romans, from when Constantine filled in the tombs with earth and bricks to make a foundation to build the new St. Peter's, and bricks from the modern day when they started the excavations.

However, it is believed that Constantine knew that Christians had been buried there, as well as the belief that the tomb of St. Peter was at the center of this, because there was one mausoleum that Constantine saved and didn’t fill it with dirt because he knew it was special. (The story goes that a worker fell into a hole and instead of being pulled up right away, the people above dropped down a candle and paper and he was told to draw what he saw. He drew a picture of a fisherman, shepherd, man in chariot, and other figures that are representations of Christ, which is how they knew that it was a Christian tomb.

If I remember correctly, that was the Valeri family tomb from 323 AD. They also found an inscription saying “Peter, pray Christ Jesus for the Holy Christian men buried near your body.” This is significant because it shows that the very early Christians were praying for the dead, asking the saints to intercede for them, and that Peter’s body was buried nearby.

Peter was crucified upside down (because he said he wasn't worthy to be crucified like Jesus.) When Peter was cut off from the feet, Christians came and took his body and buried him in the hill. They put bricks around his tomb and later Constantine built a wall or box around it, and since then a few popes built altars on top of that.

As we went into each room during the tour, our guide told us more of the story. As we were nearing the end of the tour, we were lead into a small chapel. While we were there our tour guide told us that two men and a woman’s bones were found in a tomb that they believed was St. Peter's. What happened was that some early Christians had taken Peter's body out of the tomb to protect it and put his body in a secret place (meanwhile putting the other bones in the tomb.)


This is the chapel that we were in where the tomb of St. Peter was located behind the altar. What was pretty cool was that you could look all the up way and see the dome above St. Peter's Basilica. There was a room off to the side where later Peter’s bones were found with a stone reading “Peter is [within]".

However, we didn't find out the last piece of the story (about Peter's bones) until we were standing in the room, looking at something behind a gate (which we found out were the remains of Peter's bones inside a little box.) It was a very powerful moment to actually be standing there, under St. Peter's Basilica, next to the bones of Peter. Wow...

So there is a brief description of one of the most amazing things of our trip! What a blessing it was to be able to go on the Scavi tour. Not everyone who visits Rome gets to do that, since the spots are limited. If you have time, check out this website which gives you a virtual tour of the Scavi and more of the history behind it!

http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/necropoli/scavi_english.html

ROME: Monday

Our first day in Rome was packed full of so many blessings! We had breakfast at the hotel. Very simple and similar to what we had at the place in Assisi. Here is a picture of our hotel room (of course there is Tyler trying to find sports on the TV.)

Here's the view from outside our window (we enjoyed sleeping with the window open every night but used ear plugs because of the noise.)

We then went on a 30 minute walk through the center of Rome. We passed the Vatican! It was so amazing to actually be there.

Side note: traffic was crazy. There weren't a ton of cars, gas is sold by the liter and would be about 8 dollars a gallon so people don’t drive a lot, but the streets were so narrow and since everyone walks everywhere, when cars did come down streets (which are usually one way) it was a tight squeeze to get out of their way. But I was impressed at how patient they were! They must be used to all the tourists. Here is the Tiber River we crossed every day.


We went to San Augustino for Mass. The walk was wonderful. Lots of little shops and restaurants.

The Church of San Augustino was one of my favorites!

Mass was very nice, as usual, but then we had about 20 minutes to pray in the church. We were told there was a miraculous statue of the Virgin of Childbirth and Tyler and I prayed morning prayer there.

I was filled with joy and started to cry because we know God has His perfect timing and we are grateful for when God blesses us with children. It was very special to pray there. (There have been lots of stories of people who couldn’t conceive, or had hard pregnancies, and prayed to the Virgin of Childbirth and their prayers were answered and there were pictures and cards next to the statue.)

Then we went to the tomb of St. Monica and had a few minutes to pray there. How special!! Thanks to her intercession and all the prayers of Tyler’s mother, Tyler is back in the Church!

Then we walked around to different sites. We saw the Pantheon.

What an amazing building it was. There used to be marble on the outside but that was stripped off and was used inside the Vatican. How crazy that it used to be a pagan temple and now is a Catholic church, like a few other places here. It was very interesting to walk inside and look up and see the dome (with an actual opening, so when it rains it rains inside) and to walk around to the different altars.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of inside the Pantheon.

Next we went to St. Francis Xavier Church. This is famous for the false dome painted on the ceiling (the ceiling is flat but looks rounded and the way it was painted makes it look like there is a dome, but there isn't! Pretty cool.) Three saints were buried there, saints Robert Bellarmine, Aloysius Gonzaga, and John Berchmans.

We walked a ton but it was fun to see a lot of Rome. We then grabbed a quick sandwich (fresh bread, mozzarella, tomatoes, ham and lettuce) and then went to the edge of St. Peter’s Square for the Scavi Tour. (More on that to come!)

We had a little down time and then went met for dinner. We ate as a group at a restaurant just a few doors down from our hotel. We had pasta in red sauce with mushrooms, roast beef and peas. Then Tyler and I went out for gelato and ate it in front of St. Peter’s Square. We saw the windows where the Pope lives and the lights were on! Here is a picture during the day and his windows are the second and third from the right on the top floor.

A friend told me one of her favorite parts of her visit to Rome was sitting in St. Peter's Square at night eating gelato. I was really excited to do this and Tyler and I enjoyed our first night visit to St. Peter's (we went there a few times at night during our trip.)

Here are some beautiful photos Tyler's dad took.

FOCUS Team Dinner

Every Monday night we enjoy food and fellowship with our team. We take turns cooking and last Monday night was our turn. Tyler found a delicious Green Chili Enchilada recipe in our latest edition of Southern Living and put his cooking skills to good use. It turned out really well and we've been enjoying leftovers all week!

Here is the pear tart we had for desert. We went to the downtown Farmers Market last Saturday and got pears that I used to make jelly. We had a few left over so I googled recipes with pears and found a very simple pear crisp. Basically you mix the pears with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lemon juice. It was similar to an apple tart and was a fun fall dessert.

We always have the dinners at our team director's house because they have a little one who needs to go to bed at night. She always provides excellent entertainment and her sister is due in a few weeks so we're so excited to have another little one around!

Jason (team director) and his daughter Olivia are on the floor. Fr. Boone, who works closely with the FOCUS team and Campus Ministry at Loras, joined us for the night. Stacey is sitting next to Tyler (and our other teammate Kourtney and Jason's wife Kjersti aren't in the picture). We're really thankful for our team and always look forward to Monday night dinners.

ROME: Siena

On Sunday morning we said goodbye to Assisi and drove to Siena, which was about a two hour drive. Tyler slept the whole way (thanks to his football frenzy the night before) and I dozed a little. Siena was a very different town compared to Assisi. It was beautiful in its own way.

We started off going to the Basilica where St. Catherine of Siena went when she was alive. To read about St. Catherine's life, check out http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/catsiena.htm


St. Catherine was an advisor to Pope Urban in Rome and died there. People from Siena wanted a relic so they went to Rome and actually cut off her head and her finger and brought them back to Siena. Through God's grace, St. Catherine's body is incorrupt so we got to see her head and finger (the rest of her body is buried in a church in Rome).

Then we walked to St. Catherine’s house. Here is a picture on the way to St. Catherine's house.

I really enjoyed seeing her house. Catherine's father was in the textile business and was very wealthy and they owned a large property.

The property had been renovated but parts were preserved, such as the original well that was located in the courtyard.


There were two beautiful chapels built in the house, as well as the room that St. Catherine lived for quite a few years of her life. There was a beautiful painting of a vision that St. Catherine had of Mary appearing to her and giving her baby Jesus to hold. Another painting was when Jesus appeared to her and offered her the crown of glory and of suffering, and she chose the crown of suffering.

We then walked through the center of town and saw the area where every year they have a large horse race.

We had lunch at an outdoor Italian restaurant. This was another of Tyler’s favorite adventures of our trip! It was literally two hours of sitting, drinking wine, eating wonderful food, and enjoying everyone’s company. “I could do this all day long” were Tyler’s words.

It almost felt like we did because we ate so much food! (We decided the Italians get away with eating so much food because they walk everywhere and there are so many hills in the city.) First they served bread with olive oil and Parmesan cheese. I was surprised but this was the only place on our trip that served olive oil with the bread.

Our waiter said not to eat too much bread because he was bringing us “a lot of food.” Then we were served the first course which was two spinach filled ravioli with rosemary. The second course was spaghetti...only not just any spaghetti, it was amazing. Of course the noodles were home made, but they were large noodles, about half the size of my pinky finger, and the red sauce had a bit of a kick to it. I don’t think I will be able to go back to eating “American” spaghetti.
Here are the Rossers at the table enjoying the food!

The wine kept coming, and the third course was a serving of pheasant and duck with oven fries. Very interesting and delicious, although I was so full I couldn’t eat much of it. And then he brought out a dessert wine, a little fruit dessert, and then a shot of espresso. It was quite the experience!

We then walked up hill to Mass at the Church of San Francesco, which was the site of a Eucharistic Miracle. Here is the website that describes the miracle: http://www.therealpresence.org/eucharst/mir/siena.html

This was a beautiful experience. Every time we go into a Catholic church, and every time we go to Mass, we encounter Jesus Christ. But to be present in an old church and to kneel before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, knowing that the hosts were hundreds of years old and were miraculously preserved, was very powerful. Here is a picture from the above website.

The consecrated hosts were placed in a ciborium that was up above the altar and we had the privilege of being able to walk up the steps, kneel before Jesus in the ciborium, and have a private moment of prayer.I talked to people afterwards that said they also had a similar experience of a powerful prayer time there.

After Mass we walked back to the bus (we did a lot of walking that day...and every day come to think about it!) and went to our final destination: Rome! Our hotel was a few steps away from the Vatican (can you believe it?!) The two seminarians that were ordained to the deaconate helped plan our pilgrimage (they met us in Assisi and traveled to Siena with us) and since they have been studying in Rome for three years they knew all the places to go and things to see.

It was great to travel with a group and have the schedule all planned out. I'm excited to continue to share our adventures with you and there are lots of pictures and stories about our time in Rome!

ROME: Assisi

We absolutely loved Assisi. The city was soaked with holiness! In the city there are about 30 different orders of religious, which mean there are more than 30 chapels with the Blessed Sacrament, so Jesus is literally in several places on every street. There was such a feeling of holiness, warmth, calm, and beauty there.

We started the day in Assisi bright and early! We enjoyed a delicious breakfast of muesli cereal and yogurt, croissants and buns, and some sort of prosciutto and cheese. Of course we had our coffee and tried the mango juice.

Then we made our way down to the other end of Assisi and saw a breathtaking view of the Basilica of St. Francis.


The history behind this Basilica is unbelievable. It was started two years after St. Francis died (since he was made a saint immediately) and was completed in 25 years (which is record time even for our standards today if we tried to build a church like that). The Basilica was started in 1228. There is a Lower and an Upper church and underneath the Lower Basilica there is the crypt of St. Francis where he is buried. I got this picture off the Internet since cameras weren't allowed in the Basilica.

It is a beautiful chapel and his tomb is surrounded by stone. Around the sides of the chapel are the tombs of his closest companions. It was a very prayerful and holy place. In the Lower Basilica there are a few side chapels and the main apse, which is where St. Francis was originally buried and about 75 years ago they transferred him to the crypt so pilgrims could have a place to pray and venerate him.

We started with Mass in one of the side chapels and then gathered outside where a tour guide took us through the Basilica and told us about the history and the art. Here we are about to go into the Lower Basilica for the tour. Here's the group before we went on the tour.


It was very informative and really helpful to have a personal tour guide or else we never would have learned so much. Things that stood out to me were how they built the lower basilica to have a prayerful quiet place and the upper basilica for celebrations. The Basilica is built into a wall of rock so is supported by many arches and beams. This was one of my favorite Basilicas because the art was amazing. There are lots of frescoes that tell the story of St. Francis’s life and other beautiful stories. Here is a picture of the Upper Basilica (also from the Internet)


St. Clare worked closely with St. Francis and was much younger than he was, so she was still alive when the Basilica of St. Francis was finished. A fun story we learned about her was she was too sick to go to the inauguration Mass of the Basilica of St. Francis on Christmas Eve so she stayed in her room. However, she saw a heavenly vision of the Mass as it was happening and described to the sisters at her convent what she was seeing. Afterwards the sisters who had gone to the Mass came back and started to tell her all about it, but she stopped them and told them she had already seen it. She is therefore known as the Patron Saint of Television because she saw the first “live broadcast.”

Our tour guide then lead us from the Basilica of St. Francis, which is on one end of town, all the way through the town to the city gate, which in St. Francis’s time used to be the start of the town. Amazing that St. Francis and St. Clare walked through the same gate we did.


Then we went to the Basilica of St. Clare, which is on the opposite side of the town.

In this Basilica we were able to see the crucifix that as tradition says talked to St. Francis when he was praying in front of it. This is a picture of a replica of the crucifix that was in our hotel.

The story goes that Francis' father was in the textile business and was very wealthy so Francis was thought to follow in his father's steps. He was living a worldly life but then had a huge conversion and he was praying in front of the crucifix and heard Jesus tell him to rebuild His Church. So Francis went out and physically rebuilt a few churches in the area. Finally he realized Jesus was telling him to rebuild the people which makes up His Church. So he gave away everything he had and started to commit his life to Christ.

We really enjoyed walking through the streets of Assisi.

We went to the house that St. Francis grew up in and saw the door leading into what used to be his house, as well as what used to be his father’s textile shop and his grandparent’s house. There is now a church built there.

Here's the chapel that is where his house used to be.


Here are some links if you want to read more about St. Francis and St. Clare
http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/francis.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04004a.htm


We were able to have a little bit of rest before we went on a cappuccino date. We went to a café where we sat outside and watched all the pilgrims walk around. There were so many groups and we liked to guess which ones were “Americano” while we enjoyed our cappuccino.


Our cappuccino date was right next to what used to be the main part of the town. The street we walked on was recently (in the last 1000 years) built because even before Francis and Clare's time, when Assisi was a Roman city, the ground was about 10 feet lower. There was a very old building, more than 2000 years old, that used to be a pagan temple (and is now a Catholic church! That is one of the awesome things we encountered on our trip. Lots of places used to be pagan temples and are now Catholic churches.) It was later used as a jail before being made into a church. We all took turns touching the original columns and are pretty sure that is one of the oldest things we have ever touched. If we had more time, we would have been able to go under the street and walk on the original road built in Roman times.

Then we walked down to where the bus was parked, near the entrance to the city, and met the group to go to the Basilica of Mary Queen of the Angels, which was down in the farmland area of Assisi.

This is the Basilica they built around where St. Francis died.

There was a large area in front of the Basilica and some kids were kicking a soccer ball around. My husband was drawn to them and went over and tried to talk to them and play. It was a cute moment but the kids didn’t understand him and then had to go, so no soccer.

Before we went back to our hotel for dinner, we stopped at a pottery store where we got a tour of their factory and then got to taste sausage, cheese, strawberry wine, chocolates, olive oils and sauces. Needless to say, this was one of Tyler’s favorite parts of the trip!


Another highlight for my husband happened that evening. Before we left for the trip he prepared himself to be away from college football. Since it was Saturday, all day he kept thinking about the games he would miss. We didn’t know if we would have Internet, but Tyler found a way to get on and found games online.

Because of the time difference, he started watching football at 10 pm and the game he really wanted to watch, Notre Dame vs. Purdue, started at 2am. What a devoted fan he was! There was a family on our trip who were also huge Notre Dame fans so he went and watched the game with them, letting me get some sleep.

We have to come back because we saved some things to do next time: visit ancient ruins underneath town square, go to Church of San Damiano (the first church St. Francis rebuilt and was later used by St. Clare and her sisters) the Cathedral where both saints were baptized, as well as go to the castle above the city. One of Tyler’s dreams is to go on a culinary tour in Assisi and our perfect vacation would be to come here, go to Mass, and spend the rest of the day eating at different restaurants and praying at all the chapels! I do hope we can come back someday!