A leap of Faith

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to go to Rome for Holy Week! My friend Susan and I were tagging along with our friend’s touring company, which was taking a parish from the mid-west to Rome. I was excited to be in Italy for the first time; it was like I was going back to the fatherland of life and faith. My father was born in Italy; and did I mention Rome? During Holy Week!

The first week of the trip was all things holy. We were at the Vatican for Palm Sunday (those palms were something!). We took tours of this church and that church, tours of cool Roman places, my friend’s children all got kissed by Pope Francis (Susan got it in slow motion video)! More touring; we crawled up the Holy Steps, and saw the Column of Flagellation, alleged to be the one on which Jesus was whipped. Next, the Triduum: we prayed the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum, and attended Mass on Easter Sunday at the Vatican... it was a crazy wild week. 

However, the most profound moment, one I still think about often, was praying the Our Father at the grave of Saint Peter. Sounds simple but let me walk you through it. I was on a tour of the catacombs under the Basilica of St. Peter, built on the shrine of St. Peter. Our tour guide was amazing; she has spoken on the History Channel about the Vatican. She gave amazing facts and background stories about how Rome was using the spot during Peter’s day, his short time in Rome, and about his death. She showed us the place they buried Peter’s remains, directly beneath the main altar above. However, she said that some bones were found near the gravestone of a man from that time. She believed that these were the bones of Peter, but said that it all comes back to faith. She laid down all the evidence, gave the history of the location, and shared her conclusion. But for anyone else to believe if this was true relied on more steps; a leap, really, of faith. She suggested we pray the prayer the only prayer that everyone in that catacomb and the man whose bones lay next to us would know, was the Our Father.

This week we go through all the steps of Jesus’s last days on earth before his death. It is all laid out for us in the Triduum Mass from Holy Thursday into Good Friday and ending with Easter. We hear that the story ends with Jesus dying and then rising from the dead to save us from our sins. But of course, it still relies on us taking one more leap; faith. I hope that this Holy Week and Easter season you will have opportunities to revisit the story and take a leap of faith.