Station Mass

For Lent this year, I made a commitment to participate in the Station Mass pilgrimage as often as possible (exceptions being when I was not in Rome and the unanticipated snow day). This pilgrimage was started by St. Phillip Neri after the Reformation as a devotional to early church saints and martyrs. Each day people would go to a different church in Rome for Mass in the morning, eventually visiting about forty of Rome's many churches. The practice died off, but was revived in recent years by the North American College (the college that houses seminarians from North America and Australia). It is a sacrifice of sleep (I got up at about five in the morning everyday that I went to Mass), but it was a beautiful way to see some old churches and celebrate Mass in English.

Many of the churches are basilicas that were built over old house churches (places that Christians gathered before they could legally practice the faith in the Roman Empire). They also often had crypts where older churches, art, and tombs could be seen; many of these crypts are only open to the public on the day of the Station Mass.

One of the great joys of participating in the Station Masses (aside from receiving the body of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ) was hanging out with our chaplains afterwards. Many Masses were followed by breakfast with the priests and seminarians who served our program (more on them in another post).

It was also a lot of fun getting to know the other people who frequented the Masses. One of the girls in our group--who spoke German--ended up helping a lady from Germany film little videos that she would send back to her followers in that country after every Mass. There were also several priests and seminarians not from our group that we got to know fairly well.

If anyone reading this finds themselves in Rome during Lent, I would highly recommend making the sacrifice of a little sleep to go to the Station Mass for at least one of the days. It is a beautiful, interesting, and awesome experience.