13 Tour of Underground at St. Peters

Friday breakfast at the hotel was a buffet feast. We had slept late, so we were still in the restaurant when they began to close down. There was enough time, however to make a couple of meat and cheese sandwiches from the breakfast bar, to take with us on our second day tour of Rome. I had wanted to tour the necropolis located below St. Peters, but had not arranged to do so in advance. So after arrival at the Vatican City bus stop, I proceeded to ask a Policeman where I could go for tickets to the “catacombs” below St. Peters. I believe he was skeptical, since the line just to enter the main floor of St. Peters stretched all the way across the huge Plaza in front of the Cathedral. But he finally said we could go over to the Papal Apartment area and ask someone there. The first attendant did not know what I was asking, so I stopped in at the Vatican Post Ofice. There a woman gave me a map of the grounds, and said I should go back around to the other side (of the huge cathedral), go inside a back entrance and ask the attendant there if we might join an existing tour group. We followed her suggestion, explained my mission to the security guard, got security screened like at the airport, then approached the Papal Guards, with their colorful uniforms, and asked again. They allowed “only one person” to go ask about tickets, so Cynthia waited while I went in to a small office near the back of St. Peters, at the ground level, and again explained my mission, adding that I was a theology professor from the US, and only had this day for the tour. He explained that there is usually a week advance notice required, and that all the tours are full. The he looked at me over his glasses, and said, “Come back at 3 pm for the English-speaking tour, and I can “Help you out.” So we went for lunch in a café near the rear of the Cathedral grounds, and waited the one hour. When we returned at 3 pm, we joined a group of about a dozen of mostly Americans, and proceeded to be led by a Tour Guide, a seminarian from England, down into the deepest levels underneath the main altar of St. Peters. Today’s cathedral is a replacement for the Constantinian Church built around 350 AD. It’s location was selected because of at least two reasons: (1) Christianity was still not well accepted, or respected by most pagan citizens of Rome, and the location was away from the main city. Following many executions, the hill area had become a City of Death, or graveyard, for many of the lower classes of Roman citizens. It also (2) just happened to be where Constantine agreed to build a huge place of worship for the Christians, especially after he had converted to Christianity, and had learned that Peter had been executed (likely in this area) in the much publicized persecution of Christians following the Great Fire of Rome, and that many of the executions had taken place in the area that is now the Vatican City. What better location, Constantine decided, for his massive church to be built. In the excavations necessary to build his huge church, his engineers discovered evidence of a tomb that had been treated with a greater degree of veneration than most. Without reciting the details that our tourguide provided, he told us of the research, analysis, and scientific work that has led to the belief that it was, in fact the tomb of Peter the Apostle of Jesus Christ. It has been determined that the bone fragments found were from a male who died before the end of the first century. Of the several fragments located, one has been determined to be from the jawbone of that male. The centerpiece of the Constantinian Church was thus associated with the burial place of Peter. The subsequent, current cathedral that was begun in the 1500’s, has maintained the tradition, and the belief that it’s altar sits directly above the burial place of the one now regarded as St. Peter. Two very moving developments finished out the tour. In the darkened, small area located several feet below the High Altar of St. Peters, the young seminarian read the passage in Matthew, where Jesus asked who the people were saying he was. Then following Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Jesus said that flesh and blood had not revealed it to Peter, but God Himself. Then Jesus said, “Upon this Confession, upon this Rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” After reverently reading the passage, there was a moment of silence. He knelt, and I and surely several others prayed at that moment. And there was a moment of genuine worship for me – not of Peter himself, nor any relics, or bones associated with his earthly body, but of the same Lord Peter confessed to be the Son of God; the same God who would inspire people in every age to worship him and to serve the needs of others in his name. After that moving moment down below the altar of St. Peters, we exited up a set of steps into the main floor of the cathedral. Just as the 5 o’clock Mass was beginning. We were invited into the most forward area to join worshippers seated just in front of the striking altarpiece on the western wall of the Apse. A smaller, priest’s altar was utilized by the Celebrant and several other priests who assisted with the service and with the serving of communion for those who chose to come to the communion rail at that point in the service. Only the Priest drank from the Cup, in addition to partaking of the wafer, or bread. But then he invited those present to come receive the wafer as a reminder that the Body of Christ was broken for us. We chose to walk to the rail, and it was a very special moment of communion worship for me. Even though I understood not a word of the homily, or sermon, since it was in Italian, and even though the person who served me the wafer of bread is from a different arm of the Body of Christ, and even though I sat surrounded by opulence and beauty on a scale perhaps not equaled anywhere else in the world – there was a keen sense for me of engaging in a universal practice of expressing my worship of the same God whom people all over the world gather for worship, in different languages, in differing levels of opulence or simplicity. But God is still God of us all. And I am amazed at the lengths artisans have gone to, in order to express their worship in artwork, and sculpture, and even in simple piety. I stand amazed in His presence – and did just that today. On the way back to catch the hotel shuttle bus, we left the tour bus and walked to Trevi Fountain. It was a beautiful sight at night-time, and just as crowded as it was in the daytime when we visited before. It too is an outstanding example of the sculpture and fountain artwork executed in the Middle Ages, but still attracting visitors from all over the world these hundreds of years later. We then stopped at a sidewalk café for dinner before returning to the hotel. As we made our way back to the hotel shuttle bus to go back to our airport hotel, it was already full. Since the next one would not arrive till 11 pm, five of us decided to share a taxi and go ahead back to the hotel. It was not a large taxi, but 5 of us managed to fit in, so we must have looked like a bulging small car as we made our way back to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport in the port city of Fiumicino. Now it is time to re-pack for our trip to the ship tomorrow. More later.