Many Pope sightings
Hi everyone! What a week. It has been a challenging one emotionally and mentally (for reasons that will probably never get written about in this blog), but it has been a good one for Catholic 
pride and excitement. Wednesday the ESM group left our hotel at 7:30 am to walk to the Vatican to get a good seat for the Wednesday general audience, also known as the Wed. address. The Pope gives a short teaching repeated by him in many languages and an assistant reads out to the Pope the names of groups that are pilgriming in Rome at that time. The square is always full of people for the audience and it looks quite impressive when it is full.
Anyway, the Pope talked about Ps. 130 and about how the mercy and forgiveness of God is neverending. It can reach and heal even the
worst sin. Comforting to know. When it came time for him to speak in English, the assistant announced that the Emmanuel School of Mission was present, we cheered loudly, and the Pope waved at us. It was so exciting!
Then yesterday was the end of the Synod (gathering) of Bishops on the end of the year of the Eucharist. They have been meeting for 3 weeks and today was a huge Mass in the square to tie into the end of the synod, but mainly to canonize 5 new saints. The square had even more people than it did on Wed. and tons of flags from the countries where the saints were from. Half of Chile must have been present. I even saw a group of Americans sporting small flags, which is a first in the 26 days I've been here. I've been commenting that even though the rest of the world is not found of us Americans, I should be able to represent my nationality with pride. I'm Catholic and American, that's right. So I was glad to see the USA represented finally.
Anyway again, we left even earlier today (7 am) and the Latin Mass started at 9:30. It was beautiful. It's been raining most of this week and we had perfect weather today; the choir was complete with young boys singing the high parts (no priest jokes); the Pope presided over the Mass. It's been a week of Pope sightings.
That's all for now. From Nov. 5-13 we will be in Portugal on a mission so we are preparing for that. Keep that adventure in your prayers please. And if you could, pray for new beginnings, a fresh start to jump into this year and really focus on what I came here for, to get closer to God. And for healing. Not only for me, but for everyone here who may need it. This year may cut deep at times, but growth comes out of it. Peace all! You're in my prayers, especially the Newman Center and the success of its mission.
pride and excitement. Wednesday the ESM group left our hotel at 7:30 am to walk to the Vatican to get a good seat for the Wednesday general audience, also known as the Wed. address. The Pope gives a short teaching repeated by him in many languages and an assistant reads out to the Pope the names of groups that are pilgriming in Rome at that time. The square is always full of people for the audience and it looks quite impressive when it is full.Anyway, the Pope talked about Ps. 130 and about how the mercy and forgiveness of God is neverending. It can reach and heal even the
worst sin. Comforting to know. When it came time for him to speak in English, the assistant announced that the Emmanuel School of Mission was present, we cheered loudly, and the Pope waved at us. It was so exciting!Then yesterday was the end of the Synod (gathering) of Bishops on the end of the year of the Eucharist. They have been meeting for 3 weeks and today was a huge Mass in the square to tie into the end of the synod, but mainly to canonize 5 new saints. The square had even more people than it did on Wed. and tons of flags from the countries where the saints were from. Half of Chile must have been present. I even saw a group of Americans sporting small flags, which is a first in the 26 days I've been here. I've been commenting that even though the rest of the world is not found of us Americans, I should be able to represent my nationality with pride. I'm Catholic and American, that's right. So I was glad to see the USA represented finally.
Anyway again, we left even earlier today (7 am) and the Latin Mass started at 9:30. It was beautiful. It's been raining most of this week and we had perfect weather today; the choir was complete with young boys singing the high parts (no priest jokes); the Pope presided over the Mass. It's been a week of Pope sightings.
That's all for now. From Nov. 5-13 we will be in Portugal on a mission so we are preparing for that. Keep that adventure in your prayers please. And if you could, pray for new beginnings, a fresh start to jump into this year and really focus on what I came here for, to get closer to God. And for healing. Not only for me, but for everyone here who may need it. This year may cut deep at times, but growth comes out of it. Peace all! You're in my prayers, especially the Newman Center and the success of its mission.
posted by Heather Q. @ 4:10 AM
1 Comments:
At 6:59 PM,
Anonymous said…
pretty cool stuff heather,
oh, yeah i heard about all that stuff on the news. I was like dang the a ceremony for new saints and heather is there when it all happeneds. All that stuff about assisi was cool too.
man, is heather in or some type of drama, thats a new one. well, you probably aren't and its probly just the ones around you that drown you in all of it. in any case ill keep you in my prayers that your trip continue to be a fun and refresing one.
im still thinking you should get a xanga. its not as trendy as myspace and actually gives a you a feel about what kyrie folks are going through.
so rock on and half fun. while the rest of us struggle to make way here in riverside.
Newmanites unite.
take care, god bless
Ben
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