Pilgrims of Hope: Seeing Assisi

This isn’t Florida.

Weather in Italy this week has hovered in the mid-40s. This morning, it was 37 when I got up. It didn’t get much warmer. I took a brief walk around the hotel before breakfast.

Our accommodations have been terrific — wonderful hospitality, comfortable rooms.

And, the food? Fantastic. I’m glad we’re doing a lot of walking.

Our group gathered for morning prayer at 8:45 and we were out the door at 9:15 for what promised to be a richly rewarding day, seeing and experiencing the wonders of Assisi. We weren’t disappointed.

Our hotel is just about five minutes from the town. After a quick ride, we disembarked in a bus parking lot and took an escalator up a hill to meet our guide. We walked a short distance to the Basilica of St. Clare, to see the iconic San Damiano cross and pray before the remains of Clare herself.

Nearly all the churches in Assisi prohibit taking photographs. But here’s a snapshot of Clare from an Assisi website. A mask has been crafted to cover her face — which is different from what I remember when we saw her in 2000, and hundreds of years of exposure had begun to take a toll.

As we were getting ready to leave, a high school choir began to sing in another part of the church — and I thought, “Where have I heard that before?” and I suddenly realized what it was and felt tears welling up. It was “Adoremus te Christi,” from Dubois’s “Seven Last Words,” a favorite of my late pastor, Msgr. Joseph Funaro. We used to hear it every year during the Good Friday liturgy at my parish in Queens. A few moments later, the choir streamed out into the square in front of the church. The hills of Assisi were alive with the sound of music.

A short walk from Clare’s basilica is the Church of St. Mary Major, where the “first millennial saint” Carlo Acutis rests, like Clare, carefully preserved for the world to see. Assisi is bracing for his canonization, set for late April this year.

The experience of seeing young Carlo is something I’ll never forget: a saint in blue jeans and sneakers, a rosary in his fingers. He looked like he would wake up any minute. The steady stream of visitors who filed past him while we were there spoke silently to something I think a lot of people are feeling: we need a saint like this, who looks like us.

Carlo Acutis, pray for us.

From there, we headed further down the cobbled streets, to the end of town and the historic Basilica of St. Francis.

Shortly after we arrived and started getting ready for Mass, Father Ferdi discovered that the priest setting up for our liturgy was a Franciscan from his homeland, Indonesia.

We celebrated Mass in a chapel of the basilica, near the cloister. Deacons Mike Friske and Mike Weaver assisted, and Clara Chu was our lector.

After Mass, it was time once again to eat.

We boarded the bus and headed to a nearby restaurant, where we were treated to pasta and — I kid you not — boar. It was delicious.

The afternoon then took us to yet another basilica, St. Mary of the Angels, which is probably best known for being the home of St. Francis’s beloved Portiuncula.

A little bit about the Portiuncula:

After a pilgrimage to Rome, where he begged at the church doors for the poor, Francis said he had had a mystical vision of Jesus Christ in the wayside chapel of San Damiano, about two miles outside of Assisi, in which the Icon of Christ Crucified came alive and said to him three times, “Francis, Francis, go and repair My house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins”. Francis took this literally to mean the ruined church in which he was presently praying, and so sold his horse and some cloth from his father’s store, to assist the priest there for this purpose. His father Pietro, highly indignant, sought restitution. After a final interview in the presence of the bishop, Francis renounced his father and his patrimony, laying aside even the garments he had received from him. For the next couple of months he lived as a beggar in the region of Assisi. Returning to the town for two years this time, he restored several ruined churches, among them the Portiuncula, little chapel of St Mary of the Angels, just outside the town.

Francis built a small hut and lived near the chapel. Out of that he developed a small band of followers, who grew and became his order, the Franciscans. And the rest is history.

The chapel is a tiny, modest church — in stark contrast to the stunning basilica built around it after Francis’s death. A photo from a few years ago shows the contrast.

Photo: by Alekjds / Wikipedia / Creative Commons

After time for prayer and reflection in this sacred space, it was time to head back to the bus. We concluded the day with a couple hours of browsing the small gift shops of Assisi.

To no one’s surprise, Carlo Acutis was everywhere.