Rome Report, Free Day 2

After 20 days on retreat...
Greetings from Rome! If you find an unusual amount of typing errors in this missive, it is not due to my poor orthographic skills, but to the European keyboard, which has an extra key on the right, as well as punctuation marks in unexpected locations…

We have a free day today, marking the completion of the second of three stages in our month-long retreat. The weather is quite warm (delightful for me, of course), today is sunny—though we had lots of rain during the second stage of the retreat—and the broadband is functioning (yes!). The Casa San Paolo where we are staying is on the grounds of the Daughters of St. Paul generalate. There is a tree-covered hill, a small orchard (kiwi, pomegranate, grapes…) lots of birds (and bugs) and at night, bats flitting out of the trees like little wifts of charred paper from a fire. (The image came to mind because the night I found myself watching the evening air show, a farmer a few miles away was burning his fields, and the whole area smelled of smoke.)

I haven’t been able to enjoy much gelato this trip, though now that I think of it, there is a pretty good “produzione proprio” place not too far from here… But the food here at Casa San Paolo has been quite good. Pasta or risotto every noon, of course, but the pasta does not come with the usual tomato sauce most Americans think is the necessary corollary to spaghetti. For the most part, the pasta is seasoned with olive oil, a light white sauce or white cheese, mushrooms, or (heaven help us) chili peppers so hot they would make Tabasco Sauce evaporate. And there has been a nice array of salad veggies, so dear to me. One thing that has me a bit confounded is the propensity here to serve cooked vegetables at room temperature… I get around it by putting it in my salad. They also use a LOT of eggs. And cheese. Today Sr. Margaret Joseph and I stopped at a local supermarket (yes, a real supermarket, even if for the most part smaller than its American counterpart). The cheese counter offered probably over 100 varieties of cheese. And that isn’t even counting the packaged cheeses in the refrigerator case with the other mass produced dairy items! Breakfast, I admit, is boring, boring, boring: caffe latte (yum) and bread with your choice of spreadable cheese, nutella, apricot preserves, anchovies, eggplant, olives…. on our last free day I got a jar of Dutch peanut butter (the label is Dutch on one side, German on the other) to go with the preserves (and occasionally with the nutella: YUM) as an occasional switch.

During these weeks I have been especially impressed with our FSP missionaries who are making the retreat here. There are missionaries from Romania, Germany and Taiwan. They are characterized by what I can only call ardor. They are intent on mission, and direct everything in a missionary key. All three are Italian. The sister from Taiwan has been there almost her whole religious life. She learned Chinese in just two years, and has really helped, you could say, establish and raise up our Chinese presence. She is really “Chinese with the Chinese,” as St. Paul might say.

Participants in the retreat are not only Daughters of St. Paul, but members of several of the Pauline institutes. In fact, this afternoon we will all board a tour bus for the shrine of the Queen of Apostles, because it is the feast of Bl. Timothy Giaccardo, Father Alberione’s vicar. Mass will be celebrated near his tomb, and we will also (finally) have a chance to visit the tomb of Bl. James Alberione (which was incomplete when we came for the beatification). I am looking forward to seeing people I knew from when I lived here four years ago.

Every day there are little experiences I would love to write about, but I am trying to focus a bit particularly on Jesus right now. These are just a few things I wanted so highlight.

Solemn high silence begins again tonight at 9. Please pray for us!