Political Tidbits
In the apostle’s footsteps in Rome
By Belinda Olivares-Cunanan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:39:00 11/20/2008
Filed Under: Religion & Belief, Places
ROME — Earlier this month, my husband and I fulfilled a dream we’ve had since the Church proclaimed Anno Paolino, or Pauline Year, to commemorate the 2,000th birth anniversary of the great Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul. Flying to Rome via Thai Airways, we spent a memorable eight days as Pauline pilgrims, walking or climbing up and down buses marked “Christian Rome” and tracing his footsteps all over the Eternal City. It was not difficult to do, as St. Paul’s marks are still very much around after 20 centuries of Christianity.
Right in St. Peter’s Basilica, the gigantic marble statues of the two princes of the Church dominate the huge square: the benign Peter on one side holding the keys of the kingdom, and Paul across, wearing his customary scowl and holding up a sword. Statues and paintings of St. Paul invariably depict him with the sword, possibly because it was by the sword that he attained martyrdom in the year 67.
But it could also symbolize, as our Rome-based family friend, Fr. Jose Quilongquilong, S.J. of Cebu City, now a ranking official of the Jesuit Curia, noted, the penetration of the Gospel in the hearts of men everywhere that Paul did so effectively in his 30 years’ apostolate among the Gentiles.
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Peter and Paul are nearly always depicted together and in fact the Church has dedicated June 29 as their joint feast. Tradition says these two greatest apostles died on the same day. It was along the Via Appia in the outskirts of Rome around 61 A.D. that Paul first came as a prisoner to Rome, but he survived imprisonment and was able to journey to other lands in his mission for Christ. Around 64 A.D., however, toward the end of his reign, Nero ordered the mass persecution of Christians. It is said that one day Peter was fleeing on this same road when he met the resurrected Christ going the other way. He asked Christ, “Domine, quo vadis (Where are you going, Lord?).” Jesus said he was going to Rome to be crucified again. Peter realized that he should be the one to undergo crucifixion and turned back toward the city.
Both apostles were captured in Nero’s wave of persecution and thrown into a cave-like dungeon carved out of solid rock, near what is now the Roman Forum, where political prisoners were kept. It later came to be called Mamertine Prison, after the Roman god of war Mamers. The apostles were kept there in chains for about three years, but because they were able to convert their guards, they used the time to preach the word of God and baptize Christians with water that miraculously sprang from the floor.
We visited the dark dingy prison with its low ceiling and imagined how it must have been freezing in the winter. A bas relief on a wall depicts Paul baptizing a long line of people, while Peter gestures with his arms outstretched. Today one can still see the hole in the ground where the spring arose, and we were overwhelmed by the presence of the two great apostles. As St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, so eloquently put it, “I venerate with all my strength the Rome of Peter and Paul, bathed in the blood of martyrs, the center from which so many have set out to propagate throughout the world the saving word of Christ.”
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When a great fire gutted much of Rome, Nero blamed it on the two apostles and they were taken from their cells directly to their martyrdom. Peter was crucified upside down near Nero’s Circus, not far away from the present Vatican Square, feeling himself unworthy to die the way his Lord did. Paul was beheaded in what’s now a beautiful wooded place called Tre Fontane Abbey, outside the Aurelian Walls on the Via Ostiense. The story goes that when his head was chopped off, it bounced three times and in each place a spring burst forth, creating three fountains. There are now three churches in the compound. In the small church dedicated to St. Paul, one can see the small dungeon where he was kept just before his beheading, and the short granite column on which he lay his head before it was severed.
Afterwards the disciples collected the remains of Peter and Paul, and tradition says these were interred first in the Catacomb of St. Sebastian in Via Appia. The catacombs were kilometric labyrinths carved by the early Christians deep inside the belly of the earth in the outskirts of Rome, which served as sacred burial grounds for legions of martyrs. One cannot visit these catacombs without feeling a deep sense of unity with the Church Suffering and the Church Triumphant.
Only later were the two apostles transferred to their final resting places: Peter in the crypt beneath the great dome of Michaelangelo in the immense basilica bearing his name, and Paul in the similarly huge Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Via Ostiense, one of the four great “patriarchal” basilicas in Rome. A sarcophagus with the inscription “Paolo Apostolomart” and containing his relics lies beneath the main altar, while above hangs the brass chains of his captivity.
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In this bazaar season, friends from the Inner Wheel Club of Manila led by its president Daisy Payumo promise that their bazaar starting tomorrow Nov. 21 up to Sunday, Nov. 23, from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Rockwell Tent will be the mother of all bazaars. “The Best Gifts for X’mas,” co-chaired by Tess Alba and Yoly Ayson, will feature various items such as apparel, jewelry, home arts and crafts, toys, foodstuff, and wines. Admission is free, but raffle tickets at P50 will entitle lucky holders to fabulous prices. Proceeds from the bazaar will help fund IWCM’s various projects such as a feeding program for children of an indigent Tondo community, medical-dental missions, scholarships for needy but deserving high school students, care of Pavilion 8 of the National Mental Hospital, etc. Shop till you drop and help a good cause.
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