January 17, 2001

Yesterday I arrived in Rome after an uneventful if tiring flight. It was chilly and overcast - the pilot had given the temperature at time of landing as 4 degrees C., or high 30's. The airport building was obviously new, and beautifully designed. I had taken all my luggage on board, and was whisked through customs with just a glance at my passport. I was amazed at the lack of formalities - no one asked why I was there, how long I would stay, or any such information; and we were given no forms on the plane to fill out.

At the main train station I waited for a cab in a line! Organization is finally coming to Italy. I never remember seeing a line in Italy; it was always a mad crush as everyone tried to get to the same place at once. With the gray sky and chilly temperatures I almost felt I was in England, where it is expected that one "mind the queue."

I started to remark on this to the man in front of me, but we were immediately interrupted by a call on his cell phone. These seem to be ubiquitous in Rome; last night at the restaurant people were carrying on conversations at their tables. It will be the death of the leisurely Italian meal!

What an insult to the body a transatlantic flight must be! My departure from New Orleans was at 6:30 AM, so the logic was inexorable: I had to be at the airport at 5:30, take a cab at 5:00, get up at 4:00... Then you sleep very little during the short night as you are hurtling at 600 mph from sunset to an early sunrise. Add to that ripping the body out of one time zone, and dropping it suddenly into another 6 hours and a quare of the way around the world away! I got to the Casa Santa Maria in the taxi, found my room, and did what all the experts on jet-lag counsel against - put on my pajamas and went to bed for 4 hours. When I got up I showered and shaved, and felt again at least half human.

I wandered over to St. Peter's for the 5:00 o'clock Mass. Every street, every corner holds some memory for me. I stopped in at the Church of the Twelve Apostles, where I was ordained, to say a short prayer. The Christmas crib is still up. The Mass at St. Peter's is in Latin, with the Ordinary in Gregorian Chant, and it is celebrated in the back of the church, under St. Peter's Chair, and Bernini's alabaster window. I like it because they are always very welcoming to concelebrants in the sacristy. I spoke to the celebrant, whom I recognized from previous occasions; he is apparently the pastor of St. Peter's. When I told him I was from New Orleans, he took the occasion to volunteer that Americans were terrible - even when they knew the language, they expected you to speak to them in English! I assumed I was an exception, since I had only used Italian. During the Mass I prayed aloud one of the concelebrant's prayers in Latin.

In front of St. Peter's the crib is also there, a large structure made of logs, and beside it a very tall tree - as I recall now, the one that Haider came from Austria to deliver, and caused quite a diplomatic fuss. A star stood out upon the top of the crib, and also at the top of the tree.


January 20, 2001
First Impressions of Norcia

Wednesday the 17th was the feast of St. Anthony, the founder of Eastern monasticism in the Third Century. It seemed fitting when I was preparing to leave Rome for the monastery in Norcia. But the day was actually set for Thursday. It all worked out very well: I had planned to go on Thursday, and, when I called Fr. Cassian, the Prior, he told me that he would be in Rome that day, and that we could take the train together; he would have the car waiting in Spoleto.

The train is a fast one, on the way to the Adriatic coast and Rimini; we got to Spoleto in an hour an a quarter. Fr. Cassian lamented it was already dark; I would not be able to see the mountain scenery we would drive through.

We entered by the main gate, which has the words Vetusta Nursia (old Norcia) inscribed on it in Latin; that seemed appropriate, in view of the extensive use of Latin we would be making in the liturgy. The town of about 1,500 inhabitants still has its original medieval walls, pierced by seven gates. From the main gate it was only a couple of blocks to the monastery of San Benedetto.

I had not known what to expect, and was ready for Spartan quarters, but was unprepared for what a beautiful room I was shown. The town of Norcia, still smarting from the fact that its diocese was suppressed, a decade or so ago, and combined with the Spoleto diocese, had been desperately wishing for the return of the Benedictine monks to the monastery at Benedict's birthplace, from which they had been absent for 200 years. In a singular act of faith and hope, the townspeople decided that no monks would come unless they had a place prepared for them to stay; so they completely redid the building attached to the basilica over Benedict's and Scholastica's (his twin sister's) birthplace. (I suppose the motto was, Build the monastery and they will come!)

The room must be almost 20' by 20', and the ceiling just as high. Next to it is a private bath, with brand new equipment, and all beautifully tiled. It has a low, sloping ceiling with a sky light; it must have been designed for a short person, because a 6-footer could hardly stand at the mirror; it is barely high enough for me, and I must bend down a bit to see in to comb my hair.

In the room is a large desk supported on a steel frame, with two drawers hanging on either side. On a smaller desk of blond wood I have my phone, my computer and my few books. There is also a bed, a small stand with drawer beside it in the same blond finish, and a large armoire (the Europeans are not much on closets) with hanging space, shelves, and additional drawer space. This is also in a blond wood; I understand these pieces of furniture came from the local seminary, which had been closed. Otherwise, it is rather severe: the tile floor is rather cold, and there was not a single rug when I came; nor is there a single picture on the walls. That may reflect a monastic restraint or, more likely, the fact that the community moved in only in December. But the bathroom was almost toasty warm; the room was a little cooler - the way I like it - but the heating system, also new, will be more than adequate.

The Church has also been redone in very recent years. The basic shape and ornamentation is baroque; the rounded apse is simply and tastefully done, floored with a gleaming white marble. A small wooden altar is soon to be replaced with something more substantial in bronze. Remembering the cold of many an unheated Roman church, I had planned to bring plenty of thermal underwear (because of the cold snap in New Orleans, there was none to be had!); but again the renovation had implanted pipes under the church floor, and it is quite comfortable, even without a jacket. Perhaps it is not in the monastic spirit to gloat over such creature comforts, but I, for one, am not complaining!

Underneath the church are roman ruins, beautifully excavated and displayed. There are the remains of the house where Benedict and Scholastica were born, and then, below, the remains of a first century house. Immediately I recognized the opus reticulatum, which literally means net-work, or brick work in the form of a net. It can be visualized as a honey-comb, but with diamonds replacing the hexagons. It was a particular style that was used only in the first century AD; so that whenever you see it, you can be almost certain of the date. As we pray some of the Hours in the crypt, and I look up and see the opus reticulatum, I realize I am within the walls of a first century Roman house!

During the weekdays the Mass and the Hours are all in Latin. On Sunday the Mass is filled with the townspeople; the chants are in Latin, but the rest is in Italian. My experience of hearing the Latin again is that of a person who has wandered long in foreign climes, and then has come back to hear his mother tongue. Our English translations of the liturgical texts are very poor; the Italians have done quite a bit better. The Roman Canon, in particular, has been butchered in English, and it is satisfying to hear all the stately and venerable phrases - prayed in much the same form since the fourth century - once again.

The Gregorian Chant is a special joy. We sing it every day, both at the Hours and the Mass. Fr. Cassian has a good voice and a wonderful sense of the music. Our choir is limited, but the small church reverberates with our singing. It all brings me back to my boyhood at St. Ben's, where I spent years learning this music.

The first day here it was foggy, but as the clouds eventually lifted and the sun came out the plain on which Norcia sits was revealed as almost completely surrounded by mountains. As I look east from my room toward the Adriatic, some of the higher ones are capped with snow. The day after I arrived I found a small road coming out of town - you only have to walk a couple of blocks in almost any direction to be in the country! From it I could see a road slashing all across the face of a nearby hill. On Saturday I returned to walk it. Gradually higher and higher it mounted, until I finally turned the corner and lost sight of Norcia; from here I could look down to see the valley through which ran the road toward Rome. The hills are very steep, and I was reminded of Subiaco, the Benedictine monastery south of Rome where Benedict had first lived as a hermit; the monastery is on the side of a steep valley where, far below, one hears the murmur of the Aniene.

I have also appreciated the clean mountain air. I love Rome, but on this visit I noticed even more than before how polluted the air is. It almost attacks you in the throat like eating an artichoke which is overripe, and whose stickers have hardened.

Another contrast with Rome: the townspeople here are extremely friendly! Rome has lived for centuries with thousands of clerics, and is, at best, blase about the whole thing; underneath one detects a latent, and sometimes even an overt hostility. Here it is altogether different. Everyone is extremely friendly and welcoming. People have already come to me and spontaneously offered how happy they are to have the monks here.

The community is small, numbering only three; two that I met last summer have departed. But it has a good spirit, and I pray it will flourish in time. I am grateful to be part, in a small way, of this improbable adventure of a group of American monks re- establishing a traditional Benedictinism in the place where the saint himself was born!


January 27, 2001
A Day in Rome

Last Wednesday I had an unexpected chance to go to Rome; Fr. Cassian the Prior told me only the evening before that Brother Clement would be going in, and driving the car as far as Spoleto. I could go along if I wanted.

I slept a little bit later than usual, missing Matins, the early morning office, so I could track down some phone numbers and other things I might need in Rome, and also finish up a letter I had started. Lauds ended about 6:30, and we left almost immediately afterwards. By now it was becoming light, and I could see the mountains we were driving through. Stop signs in Italy function more as suggestions than as commands, I noticed.

We parked near the train station and got in line to get the tickets. A man some distance ahead of us seemed to have some very involved business, and Clement became worried we might miss the train; but we still had 15 minutes, which I assured him was plenty of time. Sure enough, the man finally concluded, the line moved rapidly, and we even had enough time to get a cornetto (better known in New Orleans as a croissant),and a cappucino. We didn't buy return tickets, as we were not sure which train we would be on.

The fast train takes an hour and a quarter from Spoleto to Rome; we became deeply involved in conversation, and it seemed we were there in no time. Along the way Clement reminded me that the Pope had his audience on Wednesday; I wondered if I had time to take it in.

Outside the train station we split up; he was going to San Anselmo, the Benedictine world headquarters; I started walking toward the Casa Santa Maria, where the Audience Office for English-language pilgrims is also located. It took just about half an hour. Normally you make reservations beforehand, but I counted on getting a last-minute ticket. Sure enough, I was given one, and assured it was a front-row seat. Apparently the audience was at 10:15 rather than the 10:00 I had anticipated, which gave me a few more minutes. The priest in charge of the Office looked dubious, but I assured him I could walk to St. Peter's in 30 minutes.

Last summer the audience was in St. Peter's Square, with perhaps 50,000 pilgrims; but now the crowds of the Jubilee Year are Gone, and the audience is back in the modern hall designed by Nervi, holding some 10,000; it look about two-thirds full.

It wasn't quite the first row, but I was motioned to a seat in the first section; I had arrived just about 10:15, and most everyone was already seated. I spoke to the couple on my right, and found they were from London. They said they had once planned to go to New Orleans, but at the last minute the plane was canceled; they hoped some time to get back. Somehow that reminded me of a story about the Pope and New Orleans, which I proceeded to tell them.

It happened when I was scholar-in-residence in Rome in the early 90's. Background is that the Pope visited New Orleans in 1987, and everyone knows how good he is in languages. Also, when I was in Europe, and people asked where I was from, I had learned not to say "New Awluns," as a native might, but "New Or-leens," so I would get something other than a blank stare.

The deacon class at the North American College had just been ordained, and were going with their parents to see the Pope. As a quasi-member of the faculty I tagged along. Toward the end of the line I got up to greet the Pope. I told him my name, and he asked where I was from. Out of habit, I said, I am from New Or- leens." "Oh," he said, "New Awluns!"

As I finished the story, the woman on my left said, "Are you from New Orleans?" It turned out she and her two companions were also from the city, visiting and actually staying with Lindy Boggs, the United States Ambassador to the Vatican, also from New Orleans!

As we waited, the Pope entered from the left side of the stage. He greeted the crowd, some of whom yelled Viva il Papa! I chimed in with sto lat, a Polish blessing meaning "a hundred years!"

The audience followed the accustomed ritual. A priest greeted the Pope in Italian, and read a part of one of the Letters of John in that language. He then pointed out any special groups of Italians visiting that day. Usually the group, when named, would rise; one group of Sisters even sang a brief hymn for the Pope. The Pope gives a fairly lengthy reflection on the reading in Italian, then greets the individual groups already mentioned. The Italians know the drill well; they stand when mentioned, and wave handkerchiefs and scarves.

Then the same thing happens in French, German, English and Spanish. In the other languages, the Pope does not repeat the whole talk he had done in Italian, but summarizes a part of it, emphasizing a different aspect of the theme each time. Included within the English-speaking pilgrims were the Asians; a Japanese choir was present, and they rose to perform a piece of polyphony for the Pope.

The Pope's pronunciation is slurred, so that it was sometimes difficult to understand him, even in English; it seemed even worse than last summer. Yet his voice is still strong, and he manages all the languages; at the end of the Spanish section, he said some words in Portuguese; later there were greetings in a number of Slavic languages.

After this the Our Father was sung in Latin, and the Pope gave his blessing. At this point, the audience is officially over, and some begin to leave; but most remain, while the Pope greets numerous individuals and groups, first the bishops present - I recognized the tall Bishop Timlin of Scranton, having been told he would be there - then others; as usual, there was a large group of newlyweds, the brides in their white gowns; and also a large contingent of people in wheel chairs. When the line is exhausted, he begins to move back toward the left door; he moves slowly, but on his own power, without a cane; but he stops frequently as the greetings rise to a crescendo; viva il papa and sto lat are heard again; the Pope seems reluctant to end it, but eventually passes through the portal, and the crowd quickly begins to disperse. I gave my new-found friends directions to get to the Vatican Museum; in the meantime we admired the beautiful kimonos of a large grou! p of Japanese women who had been at the audience.

My next stop was at a nearby building to see a friend in one of the curial congregations. We had studied together as students many years ago in Rome. I got there just as the staff was gathering to say the noontime Angelus; soon after my friend came to one of the parlors. I didn't want to keep him too long, because I had just dropped in; but he was very gracious, and we chatted briefly about recent events in the Church, promising to get together for a more extended time soon.

My next stop was at the North American College on the Janiculum; one of the secretaries whom I knew well from my previous stays at the College had invited me to come sometime for lunch. I met another of the women I had worked with before; in a brief wait for the noon meal I wandered up to the library, and saw something of the New York Times' coverage of the inauguration. I had been almost completely cut off from news since arriving at the monastery.

I said "lunch," but this is actually the main meal of the day, with the typical Italian arrangement of two courses. The pasta course was a rigatoni, with bits of meat and cheese. It was so good I had some more. The second course was Saltimbocca, a Roman specialty meaning literally, "jump in your mouth." It is veal covered with a thin slice of prosciutto (ham), between which some sage is traditionally placed. It was also very good. A salad followed, and then there were brownies for dessert.

Since there was no chance of taking a siesta, I walked off the meal instead by going back to the Casa. One of the priests I was wanting to see happened to be just leaving, so we walked together to his bus stop. I went back then and failed to find another priest, but a third, when I called for some information about the library, insisted I come up. All too quickly I had to tear myself away to walk back to St. Peter's for the 5:00 PM Mass. This time the celebrant was a tall, distinguished-looking priest from northern Italy; afterwards we talked and he was most gracious and friendly.

There was another concelebrant, and I asked where he was from. It turned out to be Bologna. I asked him if he knew Romani Prodi. Romano is past Prime Minister of Italy, and now President of the European Union in Brussels; I had met him years ago on a trip to the Holy Land. I was assured that the priest knew Romano well, and that Romano still lived at the same wonderful address I had remembered rom visits long ago: Via di Gerusalleme, 7. He said Romano still came back there when he had time off from his duties is Brussels. I will have to write Romano.

Brother Clement had also attended the Mass, so we left together to catch the bus back to the station; we were planning on the 6:45 train. I assumed we had plenty of time because I could almost have walked the distance in the time we had; surely the bus would make it much more quickly. At the bus stop we found the same priest from Bologna waiting; we sat together and engaged him in conversation. I was not paying attention, but Clement suddenly pointed out to me that it was already 6:35, and we weren't even at the station yet. He continued to converse, but I began to be preoccupied with making the train. The bus was supposedly an express bus, but that didn't seem to make much difference; the traffic was moving interminably slowly.

When we finally arrived, it was 6:42: I told Clement we should go directly to the train, and hope to buy a ticket on board; and that we should run. I started to jog, but had to wait occasionally for him to catch up. We must have made quite a scene running through the train station, I with my clerical collar, he in his Benedictine habit. When I arrived at the side of the train, the doors were all closed; as he came up, the train began to slide out of the station.

We went back to buy tickets, waiting in a long line; there was no way we would have had time to buy tickets, even if we had been 5 or 10 minutes earlier. A young Italian asked if he could go ahead of us, because his train left in 5 minutes. We agreed, but the man in front of us balked; he was apparently also in a hurry. It was obvious the young man was not going to make it. I asked if he could just get on the train and buy a ticked from the conductor, but he said you would be subject to a large fine.

It turned out there was another train a half hour after the one we missed, though it was not as fast a train. We had just enough time to buy a ham and cheese sandwich and a drink before we boarded the train. I told the woman sitting kitty-corner from me that, eating ham, at least I didn't have to worry about catching the mad cow disease, which is much under discussion here in Europe.

In the morning I told Clement that we had re- written a portion of the Gospel of John. Once again, two disciples were running, but this time it was the older who outran the younger. But when he got there, the tomb was closed. When the other disciple came up, they could not believe that they had missed the train!


January 30, 2001

The weather has been very mild since my arrival, at times almost spring-like. Yesterday, however, it rained all day; it could have seemed cold and miserable, but I was nursing the hope that it was snowing on the mountains. Last week I stopped in a sports shop, and was told that the local ski area at Forca Canapini was closed, because there was no snow.

Yesterday evening Bro. Clement told me that one of the townspeople had finally told him the honest truth: that there would be no snow in Norcia this year. But this was no more accurate than most weather forecasts. This morning it was raining, so I took my umbrella to walk to the nearby house where we have breakfast, while our permanent kitchen is being installed. As I walked, the rain seemed to be falling in a funny way - was it sleet? When I got to the house, and put down my umbrella, I saw the answer there: it was a wet, mushy snow! By the time breakfast was over and I got back to my room, all the rooves were beautifully coated with it. As the day wore on, it turned back to rain; but I had solid reason to hope it was falling as snow in the higher elevations.

Thinking to strike while the iron was hot - or cold, in this case - I made inquiries this afternoon once more at the sports shop. I asked if the ski area would now be open; he said he didn't know. I said there must be snow in the mountains now; he said, Probably so. Then I asked if there was a telephone number where I could call to find out conditions. He said to go to the Police Station at City Hall.

Later I stopped in there about 4:30 PM, and said Buon giorno, "Good day." The policeman corrected me, "It's good evening," Buona sera. (There is an expression for "good afternoon" in Italian, but it's used infrequently.) I asked when you began to say Good evening. He said, anytime after 1:00 PM. That reminds me of New Orleans, where we are wont to speak of "this evening" after 2:00 PM. I used to have fun with that in the college seminary, when we had a prefect from up north. We were allowed to go out on Wednesday afternoons, with specific permission. I used to enjoy going to see him and saying, I'd like to have permission to go out this evening. What do you mean this evening, he would ask. I would say, Oh, excuse me, I meant this afternoon; you just don't understand our local dialect!

I asked the policeman whether the ski area would be open, and he said, Not yet, it just snowed; they would have to groom it. I'm speaking about tomorrow or the day after, I said. Come back tomorrow morning, he replied, and I'll make a phone call for you and find out.

Then I asked if there were any pubic means of transportation there. He said there was a bus to Castelluccio on Monday and Saturday that could drop you nearby. He suggested a taxi. I asked if it would be impossibly expensive. He said perhaps 40,000 Lire, or $20. I suppose I would have to pay that twice, as I could hardly hold the driver all day. I asked if there was a place in town to rent a car. He said, apologetically, that there wasn't anything; Norcia was a very small town. There once was such a business, but no longer.

Bro. Clement said he had spoken to a woman who said she might take her son on the weekend; perhaps I could go along. I will have to see if it would interfere with activities here on Saturday or Sunday. But I also hesitate to wait too long: anything can happen to snow in that long a time, including a warm rainstorm that could wash it all away.


February 1, 2001

This evening it will be two weeks since my arrival, so it is time to take initial stock of my life in the monastery.

Life is funny. A friend from Rome wrote that it wouldn't be her idea of how to spend a semester, but if it pleased me, she guessed it was all right. I wrote back to tell her that most people would probably think the same. I know that if even 95% of the priests of the Archdiocese were approached and told they were going to spend six months in a monastery in a small town in Italy, that they would be chanting Latin for hours every day, and that whenever they ventured out of the monastery, they would have to make themselves understood in Italian, they would think that a cruel and unusual punishment indeed, and wonder what heinous crime they had committed to deserve it. Chacun à son goût, say the French; "to each his own" is our limper equivalent. For me, it is like Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch. What is it I enjoy so much about it?

First is the Latin. That may seem a precious or even elitist enjoyment, and perhaps it is; I wouldn't want to impose it on anyone. But I studied it for six years in high school and junior college, kept it up in senior college, and then had four years of theology in Rome where our lectures, our textbooks, even our oral exams, were in Latin. In some ways I almost consider it my mother tongue.

This is particularly the case when I compare it with our English translations for the liturgy. They are done by a group named ICEL, for International Commission for English in the Liturgy; in their attempt to make the prayers readily intelligible, "down home" and "just folks," they unerringly headed for the banal, ruthlessly shearing off the poetry, the majesty, the mystery and the transcendence of the Latin. To pray again by proclaiming particularly the Roman Canon, which has been used in almost unaltered form since the 4th century and the time of St. Ambrose, with the sonority of its periods, the poetry of its repetition in parallel phrases, is a true spiritual joy. Here we can do it every day; at home you need permission to do it even once.

Second, even more attractive to me, is the Gregorian Chant. It connects with the first, because the Chant and the Latin go together like a horse and carriage; attempts to turn it into English have not been very successful, and some of the German renditions I heard last year at Gerleve were positively ugly.

To be immersed daily in this simple but wonderful music is again like returning home. In this case as well I have invested many years. I was in the schola for four years in the minor seminary, two years in the major seminary, and then another four years in Rome, where we had an Italian Benedictine with an exquisite sense of the music to guide us on the finer points. When I came back to Rome for two years scattered over the late 80's and early 90's, I discovered that there was a Gregorian Chant choir led, as it happened, by a pupil of the same Benedictine that taught me in the 60's; he is a layman, and again a wonderful musician; I joined them eagerly to participate in their rehearsals, their weekly Mases in Advent and Lent, and their concerts. The monks at Gerleve also sing quite a bit of Chant - Latin has not disappeared so thoroughly in Europe as it has in the U.S. It pains me that, at home, one is more likely to hear this austerely gorgeous music in an elevator than in a church!

Father Cassian and I had a chance to take a walk the other day, and he remarked, in regard to the Chant, that people have a need for beauty. I had not thought of it that way before, but have been struck since, again and again, with how right he is. To be immersed in the Chant day by day is to be surrounded by beauty. He sings it extremely well, and, I daresay, we sing it well together. Filling our small church with these well-known melodies is very satisfying indeed. I have particularly been struck, on returning to daily acquaintance with the Chant, by the hymns of the Office. Some of them are very simple, often monosyllabic - only one note per syllable - and perhaps only one or two changes of pitch in a line. Yet they have a wonderful variety. Sometimes the poetry is marvelous as well; one of the morning hymns goes on at great length, and with fanciful imagination, on all the noteworthy things that take place at the crowing of the cock. Such beauty is a rare luxury - there are, literally, only a few places in the world where this music, performed well, can be heard on a daily basis.

The third element, intensifying the other two is, frankly, nostalgia. I experience that whenever I hear or celebrate a Mass in Spanish; it immediately transports me back to Guatemala when I was only 19, visiting, as it happened, a Benedictine monastery founded from our own in Louisiana, and actually learning and using, and praying in a foreign language for the first time. But that sense of nostalgia is even stronger with Latin and Chant, because it brings me back to the time when, at the age of 13, I went to summer camp at St. Benedict Abbey in Louisiana, and we sang daily Kyrie XVI.

Fr. Cassian is younger than I; I was literally singing this music before he was born. As a monk, he never experienced it as a living tradition as I did; he encountered, after the Council, only some bits and pieces, perhaps a Gregorian melody set to an English text; he had discover it on his own.

Nostalgia is a powerful force. We may remember and enjoy, in a particular way, for example, the foods we had as a child. I remember that, in our family, we enjoyed baked beans and bacon with scalloped potatoes and ham. We would mix them all together on our plates, setting aside the bacon and ham to cut up and flavor each bite. Such foods can bring to the adult a strange comfort, a renewal of the security of childhood; and I still enjoy it when I can persuade my mother to make baked beans and scalloped potatoes, or bake a boiled- raisin cake. They may not, in retrospect, be very sophisticated foods; they may even be "poor people's food"; that makes no difference. To me, hearing and singing the Chant again gives such a feeling. I literally grew up, from the age of 14 to 20, in the shadow of the Benedictine monastery; we would sing the Mass everyday, and I often heard the monks singing the Hours. Every Sunday evening we would sing Vespers with them, so that I practically know them by heart. And just about every single tone and melody we sing here is exactly the same as I heard and learned then.

Nostalgia, however, is not to be smiled at as a simple return to childhood. Repetition is a genuine element of ritual. As human beings, we take in only superficial realities all at once. Even music grows on us as we hear it over and over; I rarely enjoy deeply a piece of music the first time I hear it. All this is particularly true when we deal with mystery. We must be exposed to it over and over again, so that we can gradually "live into" it. Ritual serves that purpose of continually proposing and repeating the same expression of the mystery; it gradually sinks into our souls. To repeat a ritual that one has known from boyhood is to experience a sense of continuity, of connectedness, of rootedness, that utterly disappears when a new biblical translation is used every five years, or a new liturgy concocted every few years. Well, perhaps I live in the past. So be it. But sometimes I think the past may also be the future, because constant novelty quickly palls, and I find that some young people, in particular, are looking for a deeper and more stable tradition.

A fourth element is the prayer atmosphere of the monastery. We literally spend hours of every day singing the Hours and the liturgy of the Mass. It is like being on a constant retreat. Praying the Psalms is a constant meditation; but it offers food for theological thought as well. But I find that atmosphere also provides the perfect background for serious writing. I remember living for a couple of years at our local abbey in Louisiana when I was working on my philosophy dissertation. I prayed with the monks, then spent the rest of my time in the library, reading, researching and writing. It seemed to me a perfectly balanced life, and though I was happy to get it finished, I sometimes thought I would enjoy doing it forever; so I am happy to renew that experience.

Another aspect is the peace and order of the monastery. Some would find the regularity stifling; I find it very enjoyable. I like doing things at the same time every day. It is a trait I no doubt inherited from my father; he enjoyed regularity. When we were kids, supper started precisely at 5:30 PM, and woe betide you if you weren't there on the second, because otherwise you would have to do the dishes. But he may have inherited it from his own father, if I can judge from a story an aunt, my father's sister, once told me. She said that in the morning, before breakfast, they all had to do chores, milking the cows, feeding the pigs, gathering the eggs, and so on. She said that her father had so analyzed all the chores and the children's capabilities, so that they would all finish the chores at the same moment; then they would troop into the house, and my grandfather would expect my grandmother to serve the breakfast as soon as he sat down!

But the routine is also accompanied by a peace and quiet. The same friend who wrote from Rome spoke of a place they like to go in the summer, a tiny island whose total population is 19, with 9 mules, which provide all the transportation. One hears only the sound of the sea, the wind, and the bell of the little church which, in that oasis of peace, constitutes more of a call to prayer than any theological reasoning or demonstration of faith ever devised. I think that evokes well what I am trying to describe. True, the monastery is right in the middle of the town; but it is a very small town, and the enclosure manages to screen out much of even that low level of activity. In other words, the monastery manages to impose, to the extent possible in the human life we live on the near side of the grave, an order on the cacophony of circumstance and the arbitrariness of chance and fate.

Finally, perhaps most prized, I find in the monastery a sense of leisure. In the area of Germany I lived last year a philosopher, by the name of Josef Pieper, somewhat earlier in the last century, wrote a book whose English title is Leisure, The Basis of Culture. (I discovered last year that the German title is Musse und Kult, or Leisure and Worship, which gives a somewhat different concatenation of ideas.) If he is right, then I would have to conclude that we have no culture, because leisure has almost disappeared from our lives. People are working 60 and 70 and 80 hour weeks; women try to hold down a full- time job, keep house (not very well!), and raise children (perhaps subject to the same qualification), all at the same time. It seems that something about the conditions of modern life make it almost impossible to imagine how to step out of the rat-race. I certainly have never managed it in New Orleans, where I try to juggle preparing classes and correcting papers, faculty involvement, projects for the Archbishop, activities with the universities, helping out in parishes on weekends, attending liturgies for special occasions, priest meetings, work on the Villa Committee, social obligations with family and friends; all that comes to a head at the end of the semester, when a mountain of papers must be graded, a deadline for handing in the grades looms, and I must simultaneously scramble to get out Christmas cards (usually not making it until after Christmas!) and buying Christmas gifts.

Even the monastery is not proof against it. At Gerleve I watched the monks running as crazy-busy as everyone; and Father Cassian, taken up with all the headaches of starting a new foundation, hardly has time to think.

I read some years ago an interesting account of some people who tried, over a period of time, to recreate a stone-age mode of existence. One of the fascinating discoveries was how much time they had on their hands! It took them a few hours in the morning to prepare their food for the day, make a small repair around the simple house, perhaps a little hunting and fishing, and they were finished for the day! The growth of civilization has increased opportunities, but also raised demands. I find it hard to imagine St. Benedict, or his economo, working on bills as they ate breakfast, as Fr. Cassian sometimes does. I love e- mail and the fax machine, and would hate to have to do without them; yet they too increase the pace. It used to take a week or even a month for a letter to get from the U.S. to Europe; you felt perfectly comfortable waiting a week or two to write back. Now the e-mail comes instantaneously, and the fax shows up overnight; and if the answer does not come in a day or two, people on the other end are wondering what is wrong. I am reminded of the kind of dance where the beat gets faster and faster, until everyone collapses on the floor.

Yet I find it hard to believe that God ever intended us to live that way, or that the human being was ever designed for such frenetic activity. But when I go away for my second semester to the monastery, I have the precious luxury of a leisure which has all but disappeared from our modern life. My calendar is so simple I can carry it in my head - a feat that, at home, I would attempt only at the risk of many missed appointments. It is not that I am not working. For example, I have already written the Introduction and Chapter 1 of the book I have chosen as my major project this semester, and gotten a start on Chapter 2. But my time is largely at my disposal; if I want to spend some time working in the garden, or take a walk in the nearby hills - or spend a few hours writing in my journal - I can. So, all through the busyness of the first semester, the prospect of leisure during the spring semester shines like a cheering beacon.

The Greeks called leisure skole, from which we get our "school." They believed that the highest vocation of a free man was to enjoy leisure; and they also held that the best use of that leisure was to engage in conversation on the highest topics. I cannot but agree with them; and hope that these reflections will form one side of such a conversation, even if only at long distance.


February 12, 2001

I have been so busy writing the book I am working on that I have had no time or energy to keep up with the journal; so I will try to gather a few topics together here.

Feast of St. Scholastica

Norcia is not only the birthplace of St. Benedict but, naturally, of his twin sister as well, Scholastica. Her feast feel on this past Saturday the 10th, and of course was a major observance here in the town. We began the special festivities at 3:30 PM with Solemn Vespers at the Benedictine Sisters' convent in the higher part of the town. They were led by the Prior, Fr. Cassian; in full vestments, I sang beside him, while the Sisters responded; the antiphons were in Latin, but the Psalms in Italian, which seems to fit the Chant better than English or German do.

After we formed the procession to walk to our basilica. It had rained off and on during the day, but now it was undeniably raining; not terribly hard, but a steady rain, and certainly more than a drizzle. Luckily, it was not that cold.

Leading the parade was a band of the townsmen with their instruments. The band leader look somewhat frustrated and dispirited as he tried to figure when to move out. They were followed by a bevy of altar boys and altar girls, and a little girl dressed up as a nun, carrying a dove. There were also four teenage girls dressed in peasant dresses. Another priest and I, carrying candles, flanked the Prior, who bore the relic of St. Scholastica; the case is a forearm and hand, perhaps a little larger than life-size, done in silver. After followed the Sisters and congregation. A prayer leader used a portable amplifying system to lead the Rosar, with hymns interspersed between the decades. It was sometimes cacophonous, as the band and the hymn vied for attention; but toward the end the band struck up a hymn everybody knew, and all sang along with the music.

We walked down the small streets of the town to arrive at the main thoroughfare, where people gathered or peered out of their shops to watch the parade. No doubt the route would have been extended had it been better weather. But I was under my umbrella, and enjoying the quaintness of the small-town scene in the place where Scholastica was born, and so, as I later heard, were most of the townsfolk.

There is, after all, a certain fitness about rain for the feast of Scholastica, because of the charming story which is told over and over in the prayers, readings and antiphons of the feast. It was near the end of her life when Benedict came down from the monastery to pay his sister a yearly visit. They spent the day in spiritual colloquy, and then shared a supper. She bowed her head and prayed; and suddenly, out of a clear sky, there broke out such a storm of pelting rain and flashing lightning that Benedict and his companions were unable to venture outside the house. Again the aged founder of Western monasticism was shocked, and charged, "Sister, what have you done? May God forgive you!" But she sweetly said, "I asked you to stay with me, and you said, No; but I asked my God, and he said, Yes." Then, although a saint, being still enough of a woman to rub it in a bit, she continued, "Go now, if you can; send me away, and return to your monastery!" But Benedict pro! ved unequal to taking on both his s ister and God, and was forced, willy-nilly, to spend the night in their sweet conversation. It was only a few days later that he saw her soul flying up to heaven in the form of a dove.

We entered the church and deposited the relic on a stand prepared for it beside the altar, placing the two candles beside it. Then we went to the sacristy where we took off the wet vestments. Then we went down to the crypt, where we donned a new set of vestments, sufficiently splendid to mark the occasion. The altar servers had also come downstairs, and one priest was trying to keep them in some kind of order, while they were running hither and thither to look at this or that. Other priest concelebrants came and put on their vestments; finally the bishop appeared in the crypt, and began to put on his vestments at the small altar.

When we arrived upstairs, the church was packed; every seat was filled, even though a number of chairs had been added; and many were standing. A choir which must have accompanied the bishop from Spoleto sang in polyphony as we entered; and I heard the organ for the first time, because we usually sing the Chant a capella.

The bishop seemed to be something of a character, ordering the altar boys around, telling them they should be here, if they were there, and vice versa. He preached a long homily, sometimes looking in this direction, sometimes in that, as if he were addressing only part of the congregation; it was hard to follow from where I was seated behind him, but a lot of it clearly had to do with Scholastica.

Toward the end of the Mass the bishop announced that he was going to enter into a tradition begun by his immediate predecessor; it was not yet a long- standing tradition, but perhaps one day would be. He came to the front of the sanctuary where there were large baskets containing small sprigs of flowers and small hard cakes in the Italian style, frosted with a white icing, in the shape of a dove, and enclosed in cellophane. He blessed all the baskets. Then it was announced that there was a special basket prepared for Castellucio,, a nearby town; would the representative from Castellucio come forward to receive it? No one appeared. Women scurried about, but to no avail; either no one from Castellucio was present, or they were too shy to step forward. The bishop looked a little impatient at the disorganization, but it all seemed to me in good Italian form!

After the Mass people remained in the church; I recognized some friends I had already made, and spoke to them; they said it had been a splendid ceremony, an inspiring experience. As we talked they lamented that they hadn't sung the hymn to St. Benedict which they had learned as children in school, and so remembered with a certain nostalgia. I asked if there was also a hymn to St. Scholastica; they said that indeed someone had composed one, but they were not as familiar with the words or the melody.

Meanwhile the bishop had commandeered the Prior for an impromptu meeting with the local mayor and his assistant, obviously taking advantage of his trip to Norcia. This seemed to go on and one, so the rest of us finally gave up waiting; one of the Brothers went out for some pizza, and we had a quiet supper together, commenting on the events of the day.

Skiing

As I mentioned, the week before last we finally had some cold weather. It began to rain, which I figured could be snow in the mountains. Then it began to snow, an even better sign!

I had learned there was a ski area near here named Forca Canapine. I called them, with a number secured from the local tourist bureau, and was told they would be open on the weekend, barring a warm rain that would melt the snow.

I had also made a contact. The chancery office here is largely closed down since the bishop moved to Spoleto, but there is still a woman who works in the archives. She introduced me to her husband, who she said was an avid skier. We made arrangements to meet about 11:00 on Saturday morning, shortly following the 10:00 o'clock Mass.

Sure enough, he was there loading his car when I came out; the original plan was for his wife to bring their son of a few months; but they had decided it was too cold, and that the husband and I would go alone. He had skis and poles for me, but not boots to fit, so we would have to rent them.

The ski area was only a little over 12 miles away, but we naturally wound higher and higher up into the mountains as we went, on roads that made long, straight slashes across the hillsides. At one point we had a good view of the whole of the valley of St. Scholastica, in which Norcia is located; then we crossed over into another valley, and lost sight of it.

Toward the end the roads were not well cleared, and there was quite a bit of snow and even ice on them, and the car began to slide in a slightly menacing way. But out intrepid driver plowed on, and we finally came to the ski lodge.

We found out, however, that the rentals were located on another side of the mountain. The wind was whipping at us fiercely as we got back in the car, and I said they had made a good decision: it wasn't a good day for the baby to be about.

We worked out way carefully back down the way we had come, and up another slope. There we found a place to rent the boots. I was very grateful to have someone who knew the area, and not to have to do all this on my own. I put on an extra sweater because of the chill of the wind, but decided by the end of the day it was overkill; by the time we got moving, I was overly warm.

The ski area is a very small one, though it was originally two areas, now combined in a single ticket. But compared to Aspen or Vail, the price was right: about $15 for the lift ticket! The lift, however, turned out to be the type where you put a disk between your legs, and it pulls you up; you have to keep your skis carefully in the path as it does so, and thus you don't get the rest afforded by a chair lift.

I usually like to start out on the easy slopes, and get used again to the skis and the snow conditions, and recover my feel for the sport. Then I tackle the intermediate slopes and, at the end of the day, or perhaps the second day, venture upon the expert trails. But my companion was having none of that; he wanted to show me the whole mountain immediately; besides, the place was too small to offer much choice of runs, and you almost had to take some expert ones to get from one part to another. I tagged along, hoping for the best.

The paths were imperfectly groomed, and on the sides were areas of snow which had not been touched; it was thick and deep, and hard to maintain any kind of control in. Almost immediately I fell; the skis came off, and I was sliding down the mountain without them! I climbed back up to retrieve them, but then faced the problem of getting them back on. The skis had a kind of step-in binding where you had to lift a latch, then press down with quite a bit of pressure to get them engaged. If there was any snow on the boot, or on the skis, it wouldn't engage. The slope was so steep that I had to wedge the ski into the snow at a particular angele before I could get any purchase on it. Then I would try to clean the boot and the ski of snow, and step into the binding; time after time it failed to catch. At one point I was ready to give up, and walk, ignominiously, down the mountain. Finally I got one ski on; then it was time to try to get the other. Again the same problem, ! and again I almost despaired; but, after what seemed to be 20 minutes or so, I got both of them on, and started out again.

On another expert slope the same thing happened, except that when I fell, I made a complete somersault. Somehow the skis didn't come off, however, so it was a matter of maneuvering them into position and backing out of the fresh snow until I could get sufficiently on the packed path to start again.

It must have been about that time when I began to wonder why a 60-year-old man, generally thought to be of sound mind, would put slippery slats on his feet and go to the top of a snowy mountain? At the moment, I had no answers!

Later we found an easy slope, little more than a beginner's run. My companion said he was going to the top of another peak, but I said I wanted to make some more rounds there. When he came back, he said that the wind at the top was almost like a cyclone, and that he had been all alone up there; I had no ambitions to try it myself.

We went back to the car, when he asked if I wanted to take a break, and had a light lunch. It was only dry rolls with ham, washed down with cold water, but I was hungry enough it seemed a feast. Unfortunately, we had no place to sit, so ate standing, like the Israelites preparing to leave Egypt.

In the afternoon I found a path that was about my level, challenging, but not too much so, and I made a number of rounds there. In fact, when my companion said he was tired and ready to stop, I elected to make one more round. In the meantime, it had begun lightly to snow. My goggles had gotten so wet from the falls in the morning that it proved difficult to get them dry; the choice was to ski without them, with the snow stinging my eyes; or put them on, and ski almost blind, more by feel than by sight. I would alternate, taking them off for the most difficult part of the run.

By the end I decided it had been a good day after all, and I remembered why I enjoyed skiing so much: the clear mountain air, the beauty of the scenery, the quiet, almost meditative trails that thread between tall trees, their branches piled high with snow. At its best, a good skier has a simultaneous sense of both speed and control.

As it turned out, that may have been both the beginning and the end of the ski season at Forca Canapine, because last week it warmed up again. My new-found ski buddy said he wold certainly call if he went again; I didn't hear from him, but, with the scheduled events last Saturday for the feast of St. Scholasstica, it wouldn't have been a good day anyway.

The Joys of Jet-Lag

By now my body has mostly adjusted to the new time- zone, but it must have taken a good two weeks, during which time I would be terribly sleepy after supper - sometimes at Compline I would almost fall asleep, and forget to sing the next verse of the Psalm - and then be wide awake at 2:00 in the morning.

But this time I discovered an upside to the jet-lag I had never noticed before. When I would wake up in the early morning, I would have some of my best inspirations. One evening I was out with a friend who told me all his woes. I woke up early the next morning with a few lines of a poem about it. I practically never write poetry, but these were too good to waste; so I got up and composed a poem in mock heroic style enumerating all his travails, but ending with the assurance that, in God's Providence, it would be all for the best! At his suggestion, I named it De Consolatione Theologiae, On the Consolation of Theology, which is a take-off on Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae.

Another night I came up with the inspiration for the title of this journal: 2001: A Grace Odyssey.

The other advantage was in adjusting to the early rising of the monastery schedule, where I get up at 4:00 for the 4:15 Matins. My poor body was so confused about what time was what that it seemed perfectly indifferent to early or late; in fact, I calculated, the earlier I got up, the closer my schedule would be to the one my body was familiar with back in New Orleans!

February 16, 2001
The Land of Truffles

At home, a "truffle" is a small chocolate candy. The word Italian is tartufo, and the main connection I make with that is an ice cream shop in the Piazza Navona, whose specialty is the tartufo, a chocolate ice cream encased in a chocolate crust. But I was vaguely aware that truffles were also some kind of a food, sought in France by pigs, and very valuable. My only experience with the food was once in a fancy restaurant in Rome, where we were asked if we wanted truffles on our pasta. We said Yes, and the waiter chipped small pieces onto our pasta plates. When we got the bill at the end of the meal, we discovered that the supplement for the truffles was more expensive than the pasta dish itself!

But when I arrived in Norcia, I was quickly made aware that I was dead center in truffle country! There is a shop on main street which advertizes truffle specialties. I stepped in one day, and the smell is pungent, almost overwhelming. Apparently the black truffle is particularly prized. The prices advertized were 250,000 Lire for 180 grams. The price is about $125, and, if I remember my conversions correctly, there are 454 grams in a pound. That works out to a little over $300 a pound!

I was also told that this season would not be a good one for truffles; the autumn had been too dry, and they like it more moist.

Someone had made a nice gift to the monastery of a certain amount of the delicacy, and one day one of the Brothers cooked it for me when he and I were alone. When I came into the kitchen, the smell was again overpowering, and I wasn't sure if I would like it. He told me he had tried it a couple of times, but had been having trouble finding the right recipe. He served a shell pasta, and the small amounts of the black sauce collected in each shell. It was quite tasty, though I'm not sure I liked it enough to pay those kind of prices for it. Perhaps it's something that grows on you; or maybe you have to grow up eating it.

The other evening we had it again, and one of the Brothers calculated that perhaps something like $100 worth of truffles had gone into the dish!

Supply and demand must e getting out of line; last night I was in a local restaurant, and there was a note to the clientele at the beginning of the menu saying that 20,000 Lire ($10) would be added to any of the truffle dishes; and the gourmet menu, offering all kinds of dishes with truffles, normally costing 60,000 Lire ($30) was being raised to 100,000 Lire ($50). I tried something else.

This morning I was in the laundry picking up some clothes, and was introduced to a man there who actually hunts the truffles. He said that pigs were once used, but now dogs are usual. When the truffle attains maturity, it puts out a certain scent which the dog smells. When he finds one, he puts his paw on the spot. The hunter then digs up the truffles. If they dog stays on the spot, that means the man has not yet found them all; but if the dog wanders off, it means there are no more to be dug out. This is the truffle season right now. The truffles do not all mature at the same time, so it is necessary to go out practically every day. They apparently look like little black potatoes, and grow in something of the same way.

The man also said that there is a certain species of fly that is attracted to the truffle. If you are walking along and you see these flies spring up from the ground, then you can be sure there are truffles there.

The truffles seem to be put in everything here: in the pasta, in sausage, in ham, combined with mushrooms to flavor dishes; there is a bitter after-dinner drink made from truffles, and it is even put into chocolate candies!

In a couple of weeks there will be a truffle festival; already the stalls are being put in front of the co-cathedral. Perhaps I will come back to the topic.



February 24, 2001

The morning of February 21 was one of those sparkling days in Rome; there was not a cloud to be seen, and the sky was that intense blue I associate with the Roman spring; it was cool, but not so much as to be uncomfortable; the sun was warm, but I had thought to bring my hat. I was sitting in St. Peter's Square, waiting for the Consistory that would name 44 new cardinals, the largest number ever named at once.

What a dramatic backdrop, I thought, the facade of St. Peter's made for this ceremony, especially as it was all cleaned up for the recent Jubilee Year; a velvet flag draped from the loggia where the new pope is announced, and a larger red curtain covered the main entrance to the basilica.

After the papal conclave, it struck me, the Consistory for the naming of cardinals was the second most important event in the passing on of authority in the Catholic Church. Most of these men would probably be electors in the next conclave, and quite possibly the new pope might even be among their number.

I was reminded again of the international nature of the Church. On my right was a couple from England, come because of the new cardinal of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-0'Connor, a suitably Irish name! On my left were a group of people from Mainz, who were there for Cardinal Lehmann. There was some drama here, because the new cardinals were first named in a list of 37, among which Lehmann was absent. He was included in a second list of 7 additional cardinals. His nomination was somewhat surprising, as he is the sometimes outspoken head of a national conference of bishops which is perhaps the most restive in the Church; over the last few years they had had particular tensions with Rome over the question of abortion counseling. I was told that the reason Lehmann was not named immediately was that there were still going on behind - the - scenes maneuvers to bring Bishop Kamphaus, the last holdout on the abortion counseling question, into some kind of line. I have no way of verifying that, but it seemed plausible. So we discussed the situation of the Church in Germany; or, perhaps better, I listened as they told me what was up. The Germans tend to have a very unified and confident view of what was going on in the Church, even though some in the rest of the world may see it differently!

Of the four German cardinals, I knew slightly Walter Kasper, whom I had met in Washington, D.C., and again in New Orleans; he had also written in a German periodical a review of a book I had edited. While in Germany I had also read an article by one of the other candidates, a theologian by the name of Leo Scheffczyk; in fact, at the monastery in Norcia we were reading at table a book of his translated into Italian. He is one of the few more conservative voices in German theology. The fourth German cardinal was Degenhardt, Archbishop of Paderborn, who was the first to accede to the Pope's cal on the abortion counseling problem. A German priest had pointed out to me the symmetry here: the more liberal Lehmann was balanced by Degenhardt (whom my German companions called the Gegenstimme, or the contrary voice), while the more liberal Kasper was balanced by Scheffczyk.

The American cardinals were three, and I had some connection with each of them. The only American theologian ever to be so honored was Avery Dulles. He had taught me at Fordham in the early 70's, and we had seen each other as colleagues and friends since then. Archbishop Egan of New York was a faculty member at the North American College even earlier, when I was a student there in the 1960's. Later on, when I was Scholar-in-Residence at the same place in the late 80's and early 90's, Archbishop McCarrick, now of Washington, then of Newark, used to visit occasionally, and I would have meals with him.

Just about on time, a cross-bearer led the procession from the main entrance of the basilica. All the soon-to-be cardinals followed, bareheaded, and finally the Pope appeared. He was moving slowly, as he has in these past years, but his voice is still strong; to me his words sounded perhaps slightly less slurred than they did last summer.

The ceremony was actually a Service of the Word rather than a Mass, and it was conducted mostly in Latin. The Pope began with an address to the candidates, telling them that their elevation to the cardinalate would bind them even more closely to the See of Peter. I suppose the words are traditional, and certainly the thought is; but, against the background of recent events in Germany, they seemed to be particularly pointed and pertinent.

The first reading was from the Letter of Peter (5:1-11) to his "fellow elder," telling them how they should be bishops; the Gospel was Mark 10:32-45, the story about the Zebedee brothers wanting to be first in the Kingdom.

In his homily the Pope addressed the candidates in Italian, after which Archbishop Re, an Italian, responded in the name of all the new cardinals. Then the Pope, back in Latin, asked the candidates to recite the Creed, which they did in Latin; after which they took an oath to be faithful to Christ and the Gospel, and obedient tot he Pope and his successors. The schola sang Tu Es Petrus, the famous text from Matthew 16 where Jesus promises to build his Church on Peter.

At this point each cardinal came up individually to receive the scarlet skull cap and biretta from the Pope. At this time he announced to each one as well his station church. Each cardinal is assigned the care of a church in Rome; the idea behind this is that he becomes symbolically part of the Roman clergy, and so has a right to elect the new bishop of Rome.

As each man went up, one was given a lesson in the geography of the Church. I knew some of the names slightly; others I did not know at all. Three were from the Eastern rites of the Church, one from Antioch, one from India, and one from Egypt; they wore their regular headgear rather than accepting the biretta. There was Archbishop Nguyen van Thuan, who had spent many years in a Communist prison in Vietnam, and who had spoken at Notre Dame Seminary. There was Crescenzio Sepe, who had organized the Jubilee Year. There was Desmond Connel of Dublin, of whom I had heard in Ireland, and Wilfrid Napier of Durban, whose name I had heard in South Africa. Many came from central and South America: Ecuador, Brasil (2), Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina; in fact, the South Americans now outnumber the Italians.

As each of the new cardinals would come up, the Pope would present him with the biretta, and he would put it on. The greeting of peace would follow; there seemed to be some difference of etiquette here, with some doing this on just one side, others approaching first one cheek and then the other. The exchange seemed particularly warm when Cardinal Lehmann came up. Cardinal Dulles was last; he couldn't get the skull cap on right, and dropped the biretta in the Pope's lap not once but twice; which showed that, unlike most of the others, he is not a bishop, and so not used to such headgear.

When each candidate would come up, those from his nation would cheer. The South Americans seemed the most boisterous. When Archbishop Re came up, there was a shout of Viva Re, which, since Re means "king" in Italian, meant "Long live the king!" When the Archbishop of Westminster came up, I joked to the couple next to me that the English were too staid to get properly into the shouting and cheering of the ceremony!

The universal prayer of the faithful followed; the response was in Latin, but the petitions were made in French, Portuguese, English, German, Ukranian and Spanish. The Our Father followed in Latin, after which the Pope gave a blessing, and a Marian antiphon was sung in Latin and Gregorian Chant.

As the crowd dispersed, I walked over to the nearby North American College on the Janiculum Hill. I saw many people I knew: some who worked at the College; some, now young priests, who were students when I was Scholar-in-Residence; faculty members; and many others I had met in one connection or another. One was a priest I had studied with at St. Ben's in the 50's, and not seen since; one was a priest from Lafayette, LA I had taught at Notre Dame man years before. I chatted briefly with Richard Neuhaus, editor of First Things, and saw George Weigel, author of the Pope's official biography, but didn't have a chance to say Hello. I also saw Fr. Peter Bernardi, a Jesuit from Loyola in New Orleans. Some months ago we had invited Fr. Dulles to speak at Loyola, before all this happened; unfortunately, Peter said, Fr. Dulles had now been forced to cancel.

The reception began in the garden courtyard, and there were receiving lines for Cardinals Dulles and McCarrick. Cardinal Egan was elsewhere, as he thought his group would be too large to combine with the other two. While waiting in line to see Dulles, I met Abbot Gabriel and Prior Xavier from the monastery at Still River, MA, where I had spent two spring semesters in the 90's. Avery Dulles, many years ago, had had something to d with the founding of their community.

When I got my chance to meet Avery, I congratulated him, and told him it was a great honor, not just for himself, but for American theologians. He asked if I was still working on Lonergan; I told him that, in fact, I was writing a commentary on Insight this semester; and I joked that I had to write on Lonergan, because it was the only thing I knew! We seemed to have run out of topics at that point, and I was acutely aware of the long line behind me, so I said, somewhat lamely, that I would see him around; I congratulated him again, and took my leave.

I also saw Cardinal McCarrick, who is very warm and friendly; when I reminded him that I had met him in this very place, he remembered me and greeted my warmly.

Then the action moved upstairs to the main floor, where the College was managing to serve a buffet dinner to all the guests. I saw Msgr. Calkins of New Orleans, now working in Rome, so sat with him and we caught up on some of the local and international Church gossip.

At the morning Mass some of the Germans I had spoken with said that they were meeting at the obelisk in front of St. Peter's for a reception with the German cardinals. I told them I might join them, as I wanted to see Walter Kasper. By now it was about time to meet them, so I wandered back to St. Peter's. I met up with them, and we started to wait at the Bronze Doors. After a while I began to realize that this was the reception for all the cardinals to be held in the Apostolic Palace from 4:30 to 6:30 PM. But the crowd got larger and larger; the time dragged past 4:30, and the guards seemed to be allowing in only a few at a time. I told my friends I wanted to go to the 5:00 PM Mass in St. Peter's, and that I might come back afterwards.

The Mass is one of my favorite in Rome, celebrated in Latin with Gregorian Chant, and always welcoming of concelebrants. I met one of the other priests before Mass, addressing him in Italian only to find out he was an American from New Jersey, there for Cardinal McCarrick. Giving out Communion was even more a realization of the variety of lands and languages and colorings the Church represents. After Mass I asked another priest in English where he was from, but he said he didn't know the language; he turned out to be from Turin, there for Cardinal Poletti.

By the time I got back to the Palace, the crowd had very much thinned, and many more people were going out than coming in. This was one of the few chances when you can wander the halls of the Palace without a ticket. I decided first to go to the German cardinals.

Cardinal Lehmann was mobbed with a whole knot of well-wishers. Cardinal Kasper also had a large group waiting to see him. He is in his late 60's, I believe, but I was struck by how young and vigorous, how friendly and out-going he seemed. I chatted with a Swiss-German seminarian studying in Rome as I waited. The whole crowd seemed to be German-speaking until Archbishop Bill Levada of San Francisco came up. We spoke a while as he waited to congratulate the Cardinal; we have met a number of times, and have as common friend Archbishop Favalora of Miami, who is his Roman classmate, and my former Rector at Notre Dame.

I gave Cardinal Kasper greetings from America and congratulated him. I didn't have the impression he really remembered me, but there were too many people waiting to take the time of explain. On the way out I saw that Cardinal Scheffczyk was practically alone, so I took the occasion to introduce myself. I told him I had never met him, but was familiar with some of his articles and books. We had a pleasant conversation about how my great-grandparents had come over from Germany and from Ireland.

I decided to see if I could say Hello also to Cardinal Cacciavillan, who was Apostolic Nuncio to the United States when I was working in Washington. One evening he invited us to his residence and we had supper with him; I sat beside him, and seemed to hit it off with him. As I tried to follow the signs to his location, I was led through practically the whole of the Palace. I was reminded how huge it is. I rushed past priceless art treasures, finding myself almost at the entrance to the Vatican Museum at one point. As I left one room to enter another, I ran into Cardinal Keeler of Baltimore, and said Hello. I had met him a few times at the College, but doubt he remembered me. (I apologize for the shameless name-dropping of this account!) Then the signs directed me back along the long halls; some of the cardinals were still there, some had left. Cacciavillan seemed to be in the very last room. He recognized my face, and we had a brief but friendly conversation.

I have probably gone into too many details of this day, but it seemed to me an historic occasion; it may well be the last opportunity that Pope John Paul has to name cardinals, though he bravely says he hopes to do it again!



February 26, 2001

This past weekend was the tartufo fair in Norcia. It is something of a cross between a farmer's market and a country fair. For weeks stalls and booths were being assembled around town, a process that accelerated as the weekend approached. The keynote seemed to be rustic: the butcher shop next door to us built on the front of the shop a tile roof supported by columns which were surrounded by freshly-cut logs. In other places fresh branches festooned an entrance.

As Saturday came, the stalls were filled the local products: sausages - some that looked to be a hundred pounds apiece - cheeses, and so on. But above all there were truffles - sometimes place out as such, small irregular black things with their typical smell, sometimes in jars, sometimes combined into products like pasta. In the main square there was a 10-foot high tartufo to denote the theme of the weekend.

Other stalls had different offerings: candy, small gifts, clothes, bathroom fixtures, you name it. Outside the gate there were tractors, farm implements, all kinds of heavy equipment.

Not all the produce was local - some stalls offered local specialities from other parts of Italy, including from as far away as Sicily. In a parking lot outside the walls were many caravans, or small mobile homes; perhaps these people travel around from fair to fair.

Beside the basilica there were young people dressed in medieval costumes, and illustrating many of the medieval crafts, like weaving. In the museum where remains of Roman times are visible, guards and personnel were dressed in Roman costumes.

In the square the town band was assembled, as well as anyone, it seemed, who had a uniform. An ambulance for first aid was parked there, perhaps partly for emergency use, and partly for show. Various kinds of police, carabinieri and forest rangers were also much in eivdence.

Behind the basilica was a stall selling CD's which, improbably, played over and over again Simon and Grafunkle's "Sounds of Silence." Music from various sources was so loud in the basilica at the time of Vespers that we sought refuge in the cloister.

Amid all the offered treats wandered happy tourists from far and near, buying sausage of cheese or a pork sandwich here or there, or trying some of the samples of meat and cheese being offered at some of the stalls. Some people could be seen walking from the country, while a whole field outside the walls was turned into a parking lot.

The monastery even got into the act; besides renting out some space to entrepreneurs, one of the Brothers set up a table in the back of the church to sell memorabilia. We joked that we would make a whip out of cords to drive him out of the temple!

Unfortunately, Sunday dawned with rain falling. During the morning it turned to snow, which seemed somewhat surprising, as it was only the second time it snowed since I arrived, and we had gotten used to almost spring temperatures. It was off and one, and did not seem completely to dampen spirits; but it couldn't have helped. In the afternoon I went out briefly, and it was still coming down, large mushy flakes, which most people were fending off with umbrellas. Once I woke up in the night, and it was still snowing; it continues into today, and once again Norcia has been transferred into a winter wonderland.



March 3, 2001

I have been wanting to explain our daily schedule. The first prayer of the day is Vigils or Matins at 4:15 AM. It seems every year I get up earlier and earlier. Two years ago at Gerleve I got up at 5:00 for the 5:15 Office, having just enough time to splash my face and comb my hair before going off to church. Last year I got up at 4:40, which allowed me time to shower and shave as well. This year I am getting up at 4:00, going back to just washing my face and combing my hair before the prayer.

That probably seems awfully early, but I am a morning person, and find it's merely a matter of habituation; if you go to bed early enough, you still get enough sleep. The only difficulty is when you try to combine this schedule with a normal one; if you have a meeting, for example, or a supper, which goes until 10 PM, then you are definitely burning the candle at both ends.

Unlike some monasteries, where rising is somewhat later on Sunday, here in Norcia the first prayer is always at the same time.

The ordinary daily Matins has two nocturnes, and lasts roughly an hour, sometimes slightly less. But on Sunday a third nocturne is added, when it will go to an hour and a half.

After that I usually shower and shave, and then have almost half an hour to take a meditative walk. I usually go out in the small monastery garden; it is quiet and dark, and you can see many of the stars on a clear night.

When I first arrived the garden had been terribly neglected. There was only a brief path you could really walk on. I got some garden shears and trimmed the hedges so you could walk between them. I also cut some tree limbs to clear the continuation of the path. One place had lost its paving stones, so that there was a distinct dip; I laid new stones, and now it's a very inviting place to walk and meditate.

Lauds follows at 6:00, a more elaborate Office than Matins, where everything is pretty much sung on the same tone. This occupies about half an hour.

Shortly after, at 6:45, breakfast is served. This is taken together, but in silence. The next Office, Prime, is at 7:30, and lasts about 15 minutes.

The period following offers almost two hours of free time, and I usually try to begin my writing. It is not as long a time as I normally like, but I can get a start, and try to pick up the thread later.

The next Office is Terce, at 9:40. That takes about 10 minutes, leaving another 10 minutes to prepare for Mass at 10:00. The Eucharist is the main celebration of the day, and done with the most elaborate Chants; it normally lasts about 45 minutes.

Another free period of almost two hours follows, and I would normally try to finish up the day's writing.

The Office of Sext is next at 12:45, which leads immediately to the midday meal at 1:00. This is done with reading at table. At present we are listening to the history of St. Meinrad's Abbey, which intersects at some points with the history of St. Ben's in Louisiana, which is of special interest to me. Following that is a quiet time, when most take a nap.

The next Office is None at 2:45, again lasting 10 minutes or so. There follows the longest free period of the day, about three hours. I will often take a walk outside in the country or on the hills at this time, sometimes for an hour, occasionally longer.

Vespers takes place at 6:00 and, like Lauds, is somewhat more elaborate. It takes about half an hour. That leaves about half an hour free before supper, which I often use to try to keep with my e-mail.

Supper is at 7:00, again with a reading, presently taken from the Italian translation of a book by Cardinal Scheffczyk. Usually we wash dishes together afterwards and talk, one of the few times during the day when recreation or extended conversation is allowed.

That leads to the Night Office, or Compline, which is done, rather dramatically, by candlelight. That takes almost a half hour, which means that, with a certain single-mindedness, one can be in bed by 8:30 or so, and get a good night's rest before the alarm rings again at 4:00, and the routine begins over again.

The principal difficulty I find with such a schedule is that it breaks the day up into short pieces, which doesn't lend itself to activities which require extended periods of time. So on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday I have been skipping lunch, which is my usual schedule at home anyway. I will also miss the Minor Hours before and after lunch, which gives me about a 7-hour period from the end of Mass until Vespers in which I can concentrate on my own work.

Since this past Wednesday, however, which was the beginning of Lent, the monastery has adopted a new schedule as an experiment in fasting: two meals a day, rather than three. The morning runs the same, including breakfast, except that there is no midday meal. None is at 2:45 in the afternoon, as usual, but this is followed by the one larger meal of the day. Vespers are moved an hour later, to 7:00 PM, so the time after the meal until then is free. Compline follows at the regular 8:00 PM.

We will have to see how this works out. So far, it has freed up time for the Brothers, who have to prepare only one meal in place of two. I am happy with it myself, as I feel the community has almost adopted my ordinary schedule of two meals a day.



March 8, 2001

Last week I kept a record of our meals, a subject on which I have been wanting to write. What most characterizes our diet, I should say from the start, is that we eat no meat. Apparently there is some controversy over whether St. Benedict allowed chicken or not, but the monastery here follows the stricter interpretation. It is a diet I'm sure my doctor would love! I have to say I've found it surprisingly good, but have not yet been converted to vegetarianism.

Breakfast varies little, so I will describe it once for all. We have coffer served the Italian style, in bowls. The usual recipe is an amount of the heavy black espresso coffee, combined with a larger amount of hot milk for a caffe latte. Since Lent began, however, se have had instant coffee instead. We also have orange juice every day, no doubt an American addition to the Italian diet.

The other staple of the breakfast is the bread. In Rome we used to call them panini, little breads, but here they are usually called rosette, meaning what it sounds like, rosettes. How shall I sing the praises of this bread? O Muse, inspire me with the words befitting this delicacy of the baker's art! Once, shortly after I was here, I joined one of the Brothers on an early morning trip to the bakery, and I assured the baker that this was food from paradise! But I find it difficult to describe, as we have nothing similar to it at home.

The rosetta is like a round roll, perhaps five inches or so in diameter. The top was scored with a form that makes a small center, and then petals radiating out and down from it, so that, from the top, it is like looking at the underside of a flower - no doubt the reason for the name.

What particularly distinguishes the bread is that it is almost hollow inside. One might think of the good, crisp French bread of New Orleans, but with most of the inner bread removed. I am not sure how they do this, but I have baked pita bread before, and I suspect the technique is similar. The pita bread starts off as a flat circle, much like a pancake. But then the top and the bottom crust harden, and begin to separate; the bread blows up like a balloon. When you take it out of the oven, it collapses again, but the two sides do not rejoin, which makes the "pocket bread" familiar to the Middle East.

This is different, however, in that it is much crustier and crunchier, and does not collapse on itself when it comes out of the oven. The amount of bread inside differs. Sometimes there is more; other times it is almost all crust.

What is best about this bread is that we go to pick it up every morning just before breakfast; and often it is still warm from the oven; a couple of times I have even seen it steam when you cut it open. The only comparison I can make is when I was a kid, and we would come back from Sunday Mass, and stop at the famous Verbena Bakery down the block from our home, and get for Sunday dinner a loaf of French bread still warm, within its wrapper, from the oven; or when I was slightly older, at the minor seminary, and Brother Paul would sometimes give us fresh-baked bread with honey.

Buying the bread daily is not just a chance habit. This bread has no preservatives. My experience in Rome was that it was wonderful in the morning; by evening it was no longer crisp, but tough to chew; by the next morning it would be rock-hard and inedible.

We eat the bread either by taking it apart petal by petal, or cutting it horizontally in half. Then the bottom half is quite crunchy, while the upper half is more delicate.

No doubt this is an American penchant, but most of us like to spread it with chunky peanut butter and jam. Contrary to Benedict's wish that everything be grown within the monastery, the peanut butter has to be imported in larger quantities whenever someone visits the States! But it does provide some additional protein in the absence of meat.

The Sunday before last the midday meal featured risotto. The Brother cook admitted to me, somewhat apologetically, that it was out of a box. It was tartufo-flavored, in honor of Norcia, but I think they just waved the tartufo over it; it certainly did not have any $100 worth of tartufo in it, as with the pasta dishes we made ourselves! There was grated Parmesan cheese to go with this.

There was a plain lettuce salad with it. The dressing is almost always do-it-yourself, with some very green olive oil and a dark vinegar, plus salt and pepper, and sometimes the Parmesan cheese. There was also bread, sliced from a loaf covered with sesame seeds or something similar, also good. One wonders how, with so many good breads in Europe, Americans managed to come up with something like Wonderbread?

In the evening we had potato soup, and a salad that was more varied: lettuce, tomatoes, finnochio or fennel, black olives and hard-boiled eggs. There was cheese, often a pecorino or sheep cheese of local provenance. This was followed by fruit: usually apples and oranges, sometimes mandarines, occasionally kumquats or bananas.

Because it was Sunday evening, we had recreation after washing the dishes. There was a chocolate pie someone had given us - this would be much more firm than ones at home - along with Scotch, grappa, Vin Santo, and something called Liquore di China as choices for after-dinner drinks. As I recall, that was also something of a working session - we were counting coins from various collections, because the Prior had to make a deposit to cover some bills!

Breakfast the next morning, besides the usual fare, also offered a small piece of the leftover chocolate pie.

As I missed the Monday midday meal, I can only report on supper. We had pizza, which is not quite like the pizza we have at home. You start with a pizza-bread you buy from the bakery; it comes quite flat, but rises somewhat in the baking process, so that it is perhaps almost half an inch thick by the time it is served. This was covered with a tomato sauce, cheese, tomatoes, bell peppers and black olives.

Bread was served as well with the salad, which was lettuce, tomatoes and tuna fish; this was followed by the fruit bowl.

On Tuesday morning we had some small lemon cookies in addition to the regular breakfast fare.

At lunch we had penne - a form of pasta - with a tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese. The salad was lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers, with bread, then cheese and fruit.

At supper there was an omelet with potatoes; Tabasco sauce was offered for those who desired, for a touch of Louisiana. This was accompanied by a medley of zucchini, onions and red bell peppers. The salad was lettuce, tomatoes and tuna fish. Because this was Mardi Gras, we had a fruit-filled cake, Asti spumante, and other after-dinner drinks.

The next day was Ash Wednesday, and we went to the one meal in place of two, as I reported in my last entry, so there will only be one meal to remark on for the rest of the week.

The mid-afternoon meal had spaghetti with a pesto sauce, and Parmesan cheese. There was also a souffle with potatoes and carrots inside, and a corn and peas medley. Bread accompanied a salad of lettuce and cherry tomatoes, followed by cheese and fruit. As is clear, the one meal is slightly more substantial.

I was out Thursday, so can't report on the meal. Sometime I will have to give a review of the local restaurants. That evening I took a fixed-price menu, which featured Nursine specialties. That ran heavily to sausage and meat; with an antipasto, a pasta course and a mixed grill, suffice it to say, there was enough meat to make p for the week preceding and the week following!

On Friday the main meal offered lentils - a local specialty - cooked in some kind of tomato or brown sauce. This was followed by rice with tomatoes and peas, and then still another dish called "Broccoli Crumble." This was crisp broccoli baked with onions in a cream sauce, covered with bread crumbs. The salad was red and green lettuce, with bread, followed by fruit.

On Saturday there was a dish of mushrooms baked with shallots, garlic and butter. This was followed by Penne alla Vodka - penne pasta with a sauce of cream, lemon, and a small amount of Vodka. Then there was calzone, kind of a fold-over pie filled with tomato sauce, scamorza cheese and anchovies. The salad was lettuce, cherry tomatoes and tuna, with bread, followed by fruit.

On Sunday we went back to our regular meal schedule. At noon we had polenta, an Italian specialty made out of corn meal, so a little bit like grits, cooked with mushrooms and cheese. There was red and green lettuce for salad, plus a vegetable whose name I don't know. It seemed most like celery, but was completely round, unlike celery, and hollow in the middle. This was followed by cheese, bread and fruit.

On Sunday evening we had more of the calzoni left over from Saturday, and a salad with lettuce, tuna, and the unknown vegetable mentioned above. As a departure from the ordinary, it already had a salad dressing made with lemon and garlic. There was no stinting on the garlic, and it had something of a bite! This was accompanied by bread, and followed by cheese and fruit. For the recreation period there were cookies.



March 9, 2001

Yesterday I made a trip to Assisi; I had not been there since before the earthquake in 1997. The Brothers, who were making a trip to Perugia, dropped me off at Santa Maria degli Angeli, which is on the plain below Assisi. I took a local bus up to the city itself.

The last time I had been there I had met a couple of American friars at the basilica, and they had showed me very kind hospitality, so I first went to the information office and inquired. There was only one American, a Father Daniel from Buffalo. They were unable to reach him, so I wandered through the lower and upper basilicas to try to get a sense of what had been destroyed, and what had been restored, since the quake. The Giotto frescoes on the lower level all seemed to be in good shape.

When I finally got to meet Fr. Daniel, I learned he had come shortly after the earthquake. He gave me a much better idea of what had been destroyed. Some of the frescoes had become detached from the wall, but not fallen; they were reattached with an epoxy. The main damage to the frescoes was on the upper level, where at the front of the church, and also at the back, large sections had fallen, and now appeared to be plain concrete.

He then took me inside the monastery. We passed the huge bell tower, which he said had been badly damaged, and there was concern it could fall the ceiling of the church. It had all been restored. We went into the quadrangle. He spoke of the huge cracks in the walls that had been repaired. Much of the living quarters had been uninhabitable; some still was. He spoke of how the friars had to move from one cramped space to another as the repairs were gradually done.

In the middle of the cloister garden was a well, and that led to an interesting story. It had once been hollowed out underneath to be a large cistern. On the lower level of the church crypt, behind the tomb of Francis, was a chapel and altar, behind which was a small sacristy. The idea came to make the sacristy larger by extending it underground into the cistern itself. That was done; but in the process of tunneling from the old sacristy to the cistern the workmen discovered an old fountain, which, it is suspected, goes back to the very first days of the community on that spot.

We walked into the large dining room, which had also been heavily damaged and unusable for a long time, and then out to the outside walkway which looks out over the valley and Santa Maria degli Angeli. He showed me how all the darkened stones had been cleaned back to their original pink, so that it was all even more attractive than it had been before; many earthquake protections had also been built in, to protect against the next shock.

He also pointed out the parking lot and the courtyard leading up to the basilica. It had been built up by simply carting earth into the space, which had shifted badly in the quake. This time they excavated the whole thing, and drove piles down to the level of the rock; they also used in the construction special concrete beams which have some "give" and so are less vulnerable to quakes. Then they refinished the surface of the courtyard in alternations of white and black stone.

Next he took me back into the basilica and through a side door, which led into another courtyard, and then a whole new temporary building where they were continuing the work on restoring the frescoes. This was fascinating to see. All over were boxes with small pieces of fresco. What they do is make first a large form which is perfectly contoured to the ceiling where it will go. Then they place on it and secure all the pieces of the fresco that they have. Then they will fill in the missing places with a neutral color, not so different as to clash with the fresco, but distinct enough so that it is clear what is restored, and what is original. Finally, the whole assembly will be lifted to the ceiling and glued with an epoxy, but in such a way that it can be removed again when that is necessary. I thanked Fr. Daniel very much for taking me on such a special tour.

I left him to concelebrate the 11:00 Mass scheduled in the chapel of St. Catherine, in the lower level of the basilica. The main celebrant turned out to be from Aversa, which he said was a large diocese near Naples. This past semester I had taught a course on the Eucharist, and learned of a theologian of the Eucharist I had never heard of before, whose name was Guitmond of Aversa. So I could say I had heard of the place. He filled me in with the details that Guitmond was the bishop of the diocese, that he was also a Benedictine, and that he was a Norman; the Normans were ruling in that part of Italy at the time.

To me there is always something special to celebrating Mass in that church, which carries so many memories of Francis and the Franciscans.

After I walked up to the place where I had stayed the last time I was in Assisi, a hostel run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement, or Graymoor Sisters. Since it is an American foundation, I asked if there were any American Sisters. There were none at the moment, but the Superior came down, who speaks very good English, and was very gracious. She said that they had been completely closed down for two years as well, due to the quake damage. She allowed me to tour the house, which brought back many memories. It seemed to be all restored, but very much as I remembered it.

By now it was too late to see the church of St. Clare, also heavily damaged and now largely restored, I was told, so I just wandered about the city. Almost everything is build with a lovely pink stone; it is particularly beautiful in the setting sun. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay that long; in fact, I had to leave a little early, because I had difficulty finding out where the bus stopped that would take me back to Norcia.

The bus went first to Foligno, then wandered back to Norcia through a forgotten part of Italy. There was dramatic mountain scenery, with small towns I had never heard of crowded onto hill tops, served by roads which were narrow and winding.



March 10, 2001

The evening before last I came back from Assisi too late to make any afternoon meal, so went out to a local restaurant. "Dal Francese," in fact, is almost on the property; we used to walk over it when we went to the old bishop's residence next door.

At 7:30 PM I was, as usual, the first one there, because the Italians tend to dine a little later. I was served a country bread, cut into slices, which is quite unsalted. After looking at the menu, I chose the house red wine, which was from Ascoli Piceno, toward the Adriatic coast from here; it was quite good.

For the first course I had tortellini, a stuffed pasta, cooked with sausage which, as I have said already, is a local specialty.

For the main course I ordered Bistecca Valdostana tartufata, a steak with truffles. The waiter asked if I wanted it cooked on a grill. I asked him for his suggestion, with which he seemed to have been pleased. He also told me I was ordering the truffles at just the right time; they were now at their peak, but in another week the season would be over.

What came out was a T-bone steak that almost covered a huge plate, though it was fairly thinly cut. This was served with a small amount of red and green lettuce, and thinly sliced raw carrots. As a side dish, I had small whole onions in what may have been a honey-based sauce.

The truffles were shredded in small black pieces over the steak. It is a peculiar taste I couldn't begin to describe. I didn't find it unpleasant, but must confess I don't quite understand all the hoopla either.

I then asked for a cheese course, a Gorgonzola, which is Italy's blue cheese.

Perhaps emboldened by my asking his advice on the steak, the waiter decided on the dessert, described as a "Cream with Chocolate." It was like a custard, but much runnier and more liquid, and the top was laced with a chocolate sauce. I told the waiter he had chosen well. Then he brought out a second dessert he said I had to try, a local speciality. As I heard the name, it was Musto guotto, which I take to be dialect for musto cotto, or cooked must. I gather it is made form the leavings after the wine-pressing, which is then cooked with sugar and walnuts. It was also quite good.

Then he brought out a fortified wine as an after- dinner drink. After that, finally, he brought out some Grappa, an Italian liqueur.

A foursome at another table then started talking to me. Due to another large party in the restaurant, I couldn't hear them very well, so went nearer the table, and they urged me to take a seat. More Grappa was brought out. One couple was from Ascoli Piceno. We talked for quite a while, but eventually I felt I needed to get away - as I said before, the late nights do not go well with an early-morning schedule! So I asked the waiter for the bill. He said it was 50,000 Lire - a price special for me. That works out about $25, so I thought that was quite a bargain. I bid my new-found friends good-night, promising to visit them sometime in Ascoli Piceno.



March 12, 2001

Yesterday I was in Rome to sing the Sunday Mass with a Gregorian Chant choir I knew well in the late 80's and early 90's. At the practice I was struck with what a universal language Latin and Gregorian Chant are. I met one young woman who was from Lithuania. She said she was studying Gregorian Chant at the School of Sacred Music, and had a number of counterparts from eastern Europe in both Rome and Paris. The next young woman I spoke to was from Korea. The third also looked oriental, and I asked her if she was from Korea as well. "No," she answered, "I'm from Kazakhstan!"



March 17, 2001

Though the snow is still visible on the distant mountains, no doubt fallen with the rain we had last week, spring is definitely coming to Norcia. Yesterday afternoon on my walk I noticed for the first time a fruit tree all covered in pale pink blossoms. Later I saw another where a woman was in the yard, and I asked about it. She said that it bore a fruit, something between a plum and a cherry, only after long years, and in small quantities; but that they were planted more for ornamentation. At that they serve very well; I told her it was bellissimo.



March 19, 2001

Yesterday the Prior was down in southern Italy to witness the lighting of the St. Benedict's flame. Today, presumably, runners are somewhere between there and here, carrying this torch, to reach here by tomorrow evening, when it will be formally received in St. Benedict's Piazza, outside the basilica as well as the City Hall.

This is a tradition that dates back some 20 years; every year the flame is brought from some city in Europe. This was not instituted by the monks - there were none here at the time - but by enterprising city officials, who wanted to honor the Patron of Europe and, no doubt, cast also a certain reflected light on Norcia, his birthplace.



March 23, 2001

Last Saturday was the feast of St. Patrick, but, unlike in Ireland and the United States, it passed here with hardly a ripple; no wearing of the green, no green beer; there is one pub in town which advertizes Irish beer, but I didn't think to drop in on that day.

Monday was St. Joseph's feast day; that has more of a resonance in Italy. In New Orleans we would have the St. Joseph's altars set up; but there is no such custom here; presumably it came to New Orleans from Sicily.

On Tuesday evening, which was the vigil of the feast of St. Benedict, we had the consecration of the new altar. This had been arranged for by Archbishop Fontana, and was delivered a couple of weeks ago. It is very baroque: a light brown marble table top in something of an oval shape, with a bronze support which includes the figures of the four evangelists in very dramatic poses. Even larger is the reader's stand, a huge angel holding a book, inside which the lectionary is placed. Flanking on the other side is a statue of St. Benedict with miter and crozier.

For this special occasion a Cardinal was coming to preside, Cardinal Sepe, who had just been created in the recent consistory. Before that he had been in charge of all the planning and arrangements for the Jubilee Year. Archbishop Fontana from Spoleto was also present in all his glory for this triumphant occasion.

All week there had been some uncertainty as to whether the Cardinal would come at 5:00 or 5:30 PM; in either case, I knew, Italian ceremonies rarely started on time; but I went down a few minutes before 5:00. The priests were vesting in the crypt. I recognized some old faces, and introduced myself to some new ones; everyone was very friendly.

When I went upstairs to see what was going on, I greeted a couple of people in the small Gregorian Chant choir that had been formed for the occasion. I spoke to Fr. Cassian, who was still uncertain whether we should stay in the church or go to the city gate to greet the Cardinal's arrival; eventually the decision was made to stay. I sat down with the Chant choir just outside the sanctuary.

As the ceremony began, I was struck by how every sector of the town was represented. The Cardinal, Archbishop and priests, of course, all wore their vestments; but the civil society was also present. In the front row sat the town mayor, with a broad sash running down across his chest; there were local officials of Umbria, and even the national Minister of the Treasury was present. On either side, just outside the sanctuary, stood two guards in fancy uniforms. Near me was a larger choir, a group from the town that usually sings secular songs and gives concerts, but comes in for special occasions like this. They sang an opening song in Italian as the prelates came up the aisle. The smaller choir led the Kyrie and the Gloria.

The Cardinal gave a beautiful homily on the altar. It is, he pointed out, a table; then he spoke about the role a table plays in a family; the father works during the day to be able to feed his family bread at the table in the evening; so the table is a sign of love. It was the same with the altar, he went on; there Christ feeds us with the Eucharistic Bread as a sign of his love.

In the consecration of the altar itself, it is first smeared liberally with oil; then it is incensed. At this point the Master of Ceremonies placed five metal wafers on the altar, place incense on each one, and lit it on fire. When it was over, he adroitly swept the metal wafers off the altar, and two women came out to spread the new altar cloths. Meanwhile Fr. Cassian and I had been pressed into service to chant the litany of the saints; afterwards we chanted the Stetit Angelus, the offertory from the Feast of the Archangels, with a text from the Book of Revelation which tells of an angel standing at the altar in the temple, with a golden thurible, to whom was given much incense.

When it was all over we processed out of the church; as I got near the door I was surprised to see rain, because the day had not been particularly threatening. After a hasty consultation, it was decided not to expose the fancy vestments to the rain, so the procession was diverted to the side stairs going down to the crypt.

We gathered around the celebrant when he came down; the Cardinal said he had to confess his jealousy, because we had so many beautiful things in Norcia.

After unvesting, I came back to the front door of the church, because the torch which had begun in southern Italy was supposed to be carried into the piazza. Unfortunately, all I could see was a sea of umbrellas; as usual, no one knew exactly what time the runner was supposed to show up. Finally an announcement came over the public address system saying the flame was near; a few minutes later I could make out some flame in front of the St. Benedict statue in the center of the piazza; it had apparently been lit from the torch, while the torch-bearer continued on to the steps of the city hall, which is adjacent to the basilica on the piazza.

Suddenly one of the Brothers told me we had been invited to the balcony of the city hall. We went over to huddle under umbrellas while the various state and church officials gave short addresses. The Minister of the Treasury began by saying that it might seem surprising that the Treasurer was representing the national government on such an occasion, but that in fact there were connections between Jesus and money. Unfortunately, I was not able to follow the rest of the discourse to see where this interesting beginning might lead.

The Mayor then officially handed over the St. Benedict relic to the Archbishop. The relic itself is a tooth of Benedict, displayed in a glass case decorated with gold, silver and gems. It is kept all year in safe keeping in a case in city hall, and for this special occasion delivered over to the Church authorities.

Afterwards Fr. Cassian and I examined the relic and admired the workmanship. The policemen said they would actually hold it overnight, and deliver it to the church in the morning.

By now fireworks were starting in the piazza and I went to a window to watch. A couple with a very young boy were there. It was fun to see the fireworks through the eyes of a child, except that he did not seem so impressed; his question to his mother was, Why is there so much smoke?

Later the Brothers and I gathered together to eat pizza, and discuss the day's events; Fr. Cassian still had an official reception to go to.

Wednesday, the feast of St. Benedict, featured another Church dignitary, this bishop who is the Pope's nuncio or ambassador to Italy. Archbishop Fontana brought him through the crypt where the priests were vesting - a larger number even than the day before - and the nuncio spoke to me a few words in English, saying he had been in New Orleans many years ago.

Before beginning the Mass, we processed out to the front of the church, and took our places on the steps looking out into the square. The two bishops took their seats to preside over the ceremony. What followed was a Corteo Storico, something like an historical pageant. It began when six young men, standing on the balcony of the city hall, gave a blast on the long trumpets they were holding. Then a announcer, whom I couldn't see, began quite a detailed historical explanation of the meaning of the celebration. On this day, he said, the representatives of all the guaite, or precincts of the city, would bring their offerings to the Church; moreover, representatives would also come from the castles and small settlements around to render their homage as well.

Then he said the representatives of the six guaite would approach the piazza from the six streets leading in to it; in each procession would be a drummer, followed by the flag bearer, flanked by two persons; then the constable; then a young girl bearing flowers. Sure enough, we could hear the drums beating, and six small processions materialized from each entrance into the piazza. All wore medieval costumes, the constable having the most elegant cape. The procession stopped at the edge of the piazza, but the drummers kept on going and joined at the center to make a small percussion band; already there was a band director, dressed all in brown, with an elaborate hood, and a red trim to his clothes.

Then the announcer explained the flags of each of the guaite. Each had two colors, and specific symbols, and each was also connected with a particular gate of the city.

Then there was a drum roll and a blare of trumpets, and a guard marched out of the castle opposite. There were eight of them, dressed in mail and leggings of blue, the first two bearing fearsome halberds, the others having long spears. They marched across the piazza and took their places lining the steps to the city hall.

Another drum roll and blare of trumpets, and the captain of the guard marched out, clad splendidly in red and black, with a golden helmet with long black and red feathers. As he crossed the piazza he put the helmet in the crook of his arm and joined the guard. I recognized him as one of the men I had sung with in the choir the evening before.

Then the announcer said that the marshalls and their consorts would descend the steps from the city hall, followed by the Grand Marshall of the celebration. He was a man who usually did a reading during the Sunday Mass. At this point he took over from the announcer, and directed the rest of the ceremony. He had in hand a scroll which was a long proclamation, filled with such phrases as, "we order and command that the aforesaid constables shall now present their gifts." It was written in a language that seemed half Italian and half Latin; if it was authentic, I thought, it must be older than Dante, because it had more Latin in it than his Italian does; but perhaps it is a more modern composition, deliberately "antiqued" a bit.

He began with the representatives of the contado, or the region outside the town. They had now gathered in front of the castle. As he called each locality, they would march to the center of the piazza, take their flag, and then come over to the basilica and present it to the presiding bishops. The nuncio would have been the main presider, but Archbishop Fontana obviously knew many of the people, and greeted them warmly.

At full strength, each group would have three people. The two on the sides were dressed in jerkins and leggings, and looked something like the jack of a pack of cards: the chest was divided down the middle in two colors, and then the two colors were reversed on the leggings. The man in the middle had in addition a beautiful cape in one of the two colors, and lined with the other.

What struck me was that this was an encounter between state and church that would be all but impossible to imagine in the United States.

Once the flag was presented, the bearers would kiss the bishop's ring, then process into the church; the flags were handed to attendants behind us who placed them in rings that are a permanent fixture on the front of the basilica. Gradually these rings were filled, until there were seven flags on each side of the main entrance.

Then the Grand Marshall again ordered and commanded the aforesaid representatives of the guaite, and each procession, one after the other, marched to the church steps. An attendant would hand a candle to the constable, who would present it to the nuncio, and then the flower girl would present her flowers. I noticed that the men, and even the girls, unused to the long robes, were often stepping on them as they tried to mount the high steps, but everyone managed to arrive at the platform without tripping. Then the whole group, flag and all, would march into the church. I joked to the priest next to me that it was one way to get the people into the church; Yes, he answered - once a year!

After this the guards, the marshalls, and all the other figures of the historical pageant entered the church; with all the town officials who were already there, it seemed the church was practically filled already, and I wondered where the regular people would go; but I guess they crowded in around the edges.

The priests entered last; but there were not enough places in the sanctuary to accommodate them all, so some of us had to go into the side transept. There not everything was perfectly organized, and some jostling and readjustment took place before the members of the historical pageant, seminarians and priests could all be suitably accommodated.

Today, I realized, the congregation was even more variegated than the day before, between the members of the pageant in medieval dress, the guards, the town officials with their sashes, and various other kinds of guards in fancy uniforms.

But the celebration was still not over. In the afternoon I saw cross-bows being set up, with targets on the front of the castle. I was told there would be a competition between the guaite with this medieval weapon.

In the evening was the final act, a solemn procession with the relic of St. Benedict. It was led by some of the young people in the medieval costumes, and then the town band. A cross-bearer came next, then four of us priests vested in alb and stole. Behind us were the monks, followed by the relic, carried by six men on a platform with long handles. The people followed, and at the end was a prayer leader with a megaphone who led the rosary and various hymns.

We left the front of the church after the sun had set, but still in a bright twilight. We circled around behind the church and began the incline up toward the northern gate of the town. Many houses had displayed the flags of their guaite, so you could tell as you passed from one precinct of the city to another. People with children would gather in the side streets to watch the procession go by. But it was not noisy like the parades I am' used to; the mood was festive but also hushed, and people would make the sign of the cross when the cross-bearer reached them.

When we reached the northern gate, we turned to follow inside the upper wall of the town. When we reached the western edge, the Benedictine Sisters were there at the front of their church; the bearers lowered the relic so they could venerate it. At that point the procession doubled back upon itself for a short space, so that you could see better what was before and behind.

As we began to descend along the western side of the town, it was now getting dark. Many windows had vigil lights in them. Sometimes the band would play, and we would sing along if we knew the tune; at other times we could hear the megaphone with the Hail Mary's; at still other times both were going on at once.

One of the priests just ahead was having a great time. As we were walking along, we saw on her stoop a woman I always see in church. She began to say something, but he thundered, with the sternest of faces, "Hoi, zitta!" - " Silence!" She complied immediately. Later he was emphasizing each third syllable of the Hail Mary, as though he was keeping up with the drum beat; then he would end the prayer with a huge harumph. Afterwards a priest accused me of breaking the solemnity of the occasion by smiling at him too much!

As the twilight deepened into night, a very strange impression came over me. As I reflected on how many centuries this procession might have gone on, it suddenly seemed to me that the young people in their medieval costumes and the priests in their traditional vestments, and the monks in their cowls and black robes were in these streets naturally and by right; it was the strange people dressed in 20th century clothes who were the intruders, foreigners who had somehow wandered in to peek at a distant age!

By now we had come to the main gate, down on the western side of the town; we turned onto the main street leading back to the piazza. As we reached it, the procession started to disperse, but we went back to the church steps, accompanied by the relic. Fr. Cassian gave a brief talk, referring, with consummate delicacy, as a newcomer to the city, to "your treasure, or, if you will permit, our treasure," the rich tradition of the city. Then he gave the solemn to the assembly in the piazza with the relic, and a policeman and policewoman carried it back into the city hall. The feast of St. Benedict was over for another year.

April 13, 2001
Good Friday

Last Saturday night I woke up to see the full Easter moon shining into my window. It sailed in the clear, but below it were bank upon bank of white cloud.

The clouds in fact presaged a week that was fairly rainy; sometimes fog covered the nearby hills. When it cleared, there was snow, not just on the distant mountains, but even a dusting on the surrounding hills; but it would melt almost as soon as the sun struck it.

Sunday was Palm Sunday; the co-cathedral parish, which is using the basilica during renovations, began its celebration at St. Augustine, a church further up the hill within the town, at 10:30 AM. We left here shortly before, but the church was already packed, so we gathered around the door. After a short ceremony inside the church, the procession began to form. The monks scurried around to find some palms to carry. The procession had many of the same elements as the one for the feast of St. Benedict: the cross-bearer, the many altar boys and girls in cassock and surplice, the portable speakers with the microphone, the singing of hymns and the praying of the Rosary. I was with the monks near the end of the procession; but the celebrant sent word to me that, since I was dressed in alb and stole, I should join him at the end of the procession.

From that vantage point I was able to observe an instance of the improvisation for which the Italians are so famous. At one point the celebrant decided it would be appropriate to sing the "Pueri Hebraeorum," a Gregorian Chant about the Hebrew children taking up the palm branches to greet Jesus. So he sent someone to get the microphone from the priest leading the hymns and prayers. Then, who would lead the singing? Obviously the monks would be the appropriate candidate. I saw someone go to confer with Fr. Cassian. I couldn't overhear the conversation, but I happen to know that Fr. Cassian hates this last-minute improvising; the conversation clearly ended without a positive response. Informed of this, the celebrant pressed the young deacon beside me into service, having the microphone brought to him. Fortunately, he knew the words, and I could sing along with him for support.

We followed a shorter route this time to the church; the monks and I walked into the church with the procession, but then withdrew into the sacristy, because we would have our own celebration at 12:00.

The first Mass, perhaps surprisingly, ended in good time, but people were still milling about. We put a sign outside the