Chapels and Churches and Catacombs…oh my!

On Sunday we had an awesome chance to explore Rome with a previous VOICA volunteer, Dokmar, and her mom. The especially cool thing was that while Dokmar was in Rome, training for a mission to Albania, she had to work to help pay for the trip and she chose to work as a Rome tour guide! So she had a ton of inside knowledge and could get around with ease (which was nice after being lost the day before).

Dokmar took a picture of us starting out. These are all the steady volunteers we have right now, although others are due to show up soon. From left to right you have: Brendan, Rachel, Alex, a 19 year old from England, and Sali and Chris, 27 and 28, from Poland.

The first church we stopped at – the Basilica of Santi Giovanni Battista ed Evangelista (Saint John the Baptist).

Brendan praying by a statue of a cardinal in prayer.

Me staring up at a fifteen foot high statue of Simon Peter. The Basilica had statues of each of the twelve apostles. I wanted my picture by Peter because I think I’m a lot like him – messes up a lot of things, but is always trying and had guts and heart to stand up for Jesus.

My favorite story in the Bible is when the disciples are in a boat on the Lake of Galilee in a storm and Jesus comes walking out to them on the water. They think he’s a ghost, but Peter has the courage/recklessness to walk right out the boat and follow Jesus’ call to come to Him. He is rewarded by doing something that mere mortals can’t – for a few seconds he was able to walk on water until doubt got to him. I heard a song about this story and the chorus said, “If I keep my eyes on Jesus, I can walk on water; if I keep my eyes on Him, I can walk on water!”

On this trip Brendan and I probably won’t walk on water, but we probably will see God’s miracles in a more radical way as a consequence of taking this courageous/reckless step out of the boat to follow His call.

In another church we stopped at, they had a full size copy of the Shroud of Turin. I’d heard about this a few times, but didn’t know what it looked like. You can see Jesus’ imprint in between the two lines with the head on the right. All the red that made this imprint possible is from blood.

It took a few minutes for this to sink in, but what got me more was a nearby crucifix. It showed the many wounds of Jesus using the shroud as a “wound map”, displaying what He would have looked like at the end.

So much pain for love of us…we often struggle with a sense of self worth, but this picture lets me know that we each have innate worth. That even before we were born Someone was thinking about us and loved us enough to die for us. You may hear this sometimes, but I hope it actually sinks in soon, because knowing that you are loved unconditionally makes all the difference.

Gelato break! Our first ice cream in Rome!

Alex by a statue of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

In the catacombs under the Basilica of Santi Clemente. The catacombs were pretty cool, but we’re hoping to get a tour of some more exciting ones at some point. They were definitely dark and creepy, but other than that, the ones we went down in didn’t have much historical importance.

The day finished up with walking past the Coliseum again, and some quality Jesus time at Mass and vespers at Saint Peter’s Basilica. Life is so crazy that in just one week you can feel like going to Saint Peter’s Basilica for Sunday Mass is pretty “normal.” Crazy!

Hope all is well back home. We love you guys!