Four more years! Four More years!...

I arrived in Rome, Italy yesterday with 45 or so other guys, all Americans but for 4 Australian seminarians. Apparently Foster's beer is not that popular down under as they make us believe, as a few of them told me. The college is beautiful and large. A college is basically a residence over here. Universities are where men and women study. So you live at a college and study at a university. It is a different distinction between colleges and universities than we have in the states. So I live at the Pontifical North American College and I will take classes at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas or the Angelicum as it is more commonly called.

We were given a tour yesterday of our college, but it will take some time to become familiar with the whole college. My room faces the east and is very hot in the morning as the sun rises. I have a great view of our new field turf soccer field. It is smaller than regulation size, but I am still looking forward to shake the rust off of my soccer game from high school. My room also faces Bambino Gesù, a pediatric hospital which is just outside the walls of the college. I'm told they like to watch the games that we play on the field.

There is much more I can say, but I just wanted to mention our excursion today. We ventured out into Rome where we rode some buses and did some walking all the way to San Lorenzo Fuori le Mura, St. Lawrence Outside the Walls. St. Lawrence is the patron saint of comedians because of his great sense of humor. According to tradition there are two instances that show this sense of humor. First, during the persecutions under Valerian in 258 A.D. the prefect of Rome demanded the deacon Lawrence to bring the Church's treasures so he could confiscate them for Christianity was still illegal at the time. St. Lawrence showed up with the poor, the infirmed, and the lame. The prefect asked Lawrence what this was all about. St. Lawrence responded, "These are the treasures of the Church." Second, apparently the prefect didn't find it funny, because he had St. Lawrence put on a gridiron and burned to death. During his martyrdom, St. Lawrence yelled, "This side is done, turn me over and have a bite."

There is a basilica built with its alter directly over the tomb of St. Lawrence along with St. Steven, the Church's first martyr whose remains they moved from jerusalem to Rome, and St. Justin Martyr.

In the same basilica, Blessed Pope Pius IX is buried. He is important because he is the founder of our college. He founded a number of other national seminaries here in Rome. He wanted countries to send their seminarians to Rome to ensure that they were being taught orthodox theology and were being formed correctly.

Can you guess why the main chapel at the PNAC is the Immaculate Conception Chapel?

Hint: It has to do with this painting