An All Saints Triduum

A three day window into what Rome has to offer a missionary seeking the faces of Christ.

31 October. A few children and more than a few adults gather at St. Paul’s for candy, popcorn and a showing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The adults laugh at the antics of the Peanuts gang. The children are polite, but appear bored. We tell stories and enjoy each others’ company. The adults later bond over a more mature Hitchcock offering.

1 November. A proper Church of England evensong is performed movingly at All Saints Anglican Church by musicians from both our parishes (including two of my collegio flatmates).

3 November.  Mother Clelia Merloni is beatified at St. John Lateran, the cathedral church of the Diocese of Rome. Mother Clelia founded a religious order, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (whose US headquarters I learned is only a few miles from my home in Connecticut!) but her track toward sainthood is based on a more complicated story of challenges, trials and faithfulness – really the kind of sainthood to which we are all called as followers of Christ. The packed cathedral was charged with an energy of gentle love and peacefulness. While all of humanity seemed represented, there was an outsized number of joyful women. I was lifted up by the celebration, and left with the thought that this is an energy, a faith and an incarnation of Christ that can truly move mountains.