Easter Mass at the Vatican

at 15:54

Ciao amici,

Yup -- you read it right, I went to Easter Mass at the Vatican. How could I not? Need more proof?

  1. I am in Rome
  2. The Pope is in Rome
  3. I need as many heaven-points as possible due to my excessive gross-out comments I make to everyone always.
A fellow student picked up the tickets from the Vatican a few days ago, and had an interesting story about it -- he actually got to go up the main stairs to the Pope's hallway, pass the Swiss guard (who saluted him!) and walk into the hallway and met someone who gave him the tickets. Wow- I always thought that you couldn't go into that hallway, but I guess not? Pretty amazing.

We arrived at the bridge which would take us to the Vatican at 8AM on Sunday morning. The sun was shining and the temperature was mild --what a tease. The entire group (of 8 total) finally caught up and we moved into the seating area and found a place to station ourselves. The setup was simple, but elaborate at the same time ... A while altar canopy (with lights and heaters, I am sure) was setup above the altar, all of which stood in front of St Peter's Basilica (you will (sorta) see this in my photos below). Down some nicely decorated steps and you arrive at the first section of seating. I was in the second set of seating. Behind my section was the general standing area--or rather, people who didn't get tickets in time. Part of the struggle is that, as an architectural decision, the square/plaza angles up toward the facade of the basilica, thus making it harder to see forward (think how in an auditorium or opera house the seats slow down toward the stage--the opposite here).

K. It's about ... 915AM, and guess what? It starts raining. It gets cold. Shit. The sea of people suddenly has a ceiling of multi-colored umbrellas. Quite an interesting site, though.

Mass begins. It is magical! I had a hard view the altar platform because of the umbrellas, and even harder to see the mega-tron/pope-vision televsion screens ahead of me too. I can stand on my tippy toes to get a better view, look hard left or right to see the screens to my side. The music is beautiful, the chanting is stunning, the organ is powerful (I suspect they played the organ from inside the basilica and piped it over the speakers outside? not sure). It just was amazing!

Can you see the pope??

One thing I think I have mentioned about church in Europe (at least in France and Italy) is that there is no order to getting communion- everyone simply runs up when the opportunity comes. This is very different from the ordered procession I am used to back in the States. Well, the Vatican was no exception. Everyone started plowing forward, moving chairs, and to make things worse-umbrellas seemed to be used as an offensive weapon when trying to move. Too bad we didn't even receive communion.

One of the Pope-vision screens I could see if I looked hard left.

Pictures and video time!


This first video is at the beginning of the mass, a section called... Pietro testimone della Risurrezione. I THINK a Deacon is chanting (when the choir isn't singing).



This video is at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer in the Preface Dialog. This is chanted in Latin by Pope Benedict himself!


I have a PDF of the program I got for the Mass - everything is included in it, including information about the achieropoieta (icon "not made by human hands") that was kept on the altar. If you want a copy of the PDF, email me.

 

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
 

Copyright 2006| Blogger Templates by GeckoandFly modified and converted to Blogger Beta by Blogcrowds.
No part of the content or the blog may be reproduced without prior written permission.