A Roman Pilgrim at the Station Churches - Part 8

On Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, our friend Agnese was unable to reach the station Mass at Saints Cosmas and Damian, the modern entrance of which is on the via dei Fori Imperiali. A foreign dignitary was visiting the Colosseum, and all of the streets leading to it, including Fori Imperiali, were inaccessible.

In the magnificent painting of the Crucifixion by Guido Reni (1575-1642), the body of Christ is pale and white against a much darker background. The effect is not evident here because of the lighting, but normally, one can see the body of Christ raised above the altar at a distance, even standing outside the church in the piazza, a reminder of the Elevation of the Host during the Mass.

Santa Maria is a tiny church with no cloister, and sits at a busy intersection. The streets nearby have very narrow sidewalks; a procession was therefore improvised from the sacristy...

...through the church and to the sanctuary, passing one of the most famous statues in the world, Gianlorenzo Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Theresa of Avila, along the way.

On Laetare Sunday, the station is kept at the church of the Holy Cross “in Jerusalem”; Agnese, however, went to the Mass at Trinità dei Pellegrini, celebrated by the Bishop Matteo Zuppi, the auxiliary of Rome responsible for the historical center of the city.

A view of one of the three courtyards leading up to the church, which was built as a fortress and a possible place of refuge after the many political disturbances which Rome saw in the later 11th century, and throughout the 12th.