Eternal City, Eternal Love

Catherine Wisniewski


“One learns slowly to recognize the very few things in which the eternal endures that one can love and something solitary in which one can quietly take part.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

Rome is like the earthly VIP lounge for the Catholic Church. Not only is Pope Benedict XVI hanging around Vatican City, the famed country-inside-a-country (“Get your passports ready, we’re leaving Italy!” we yelled the first time we entered the colonnade), but he is also hanging around with any number of cardinals (AKA really important bishops). Add to that the countless number of saints that are buried in the churches and catacombs that are found on nearly every corner, and it’s a wonder you don’t need a special guest pass to enter the city limits. But that’s the beauty of the Catholic Church: you don’t need a special guest pass to see the pope (okay, you do need a ticket but it’s easily obtained and entirely free) or to wander through churches, visiting the tombs of scholars, nurses, mothers, martyrs, religious and lay people. There is always someone new to meet, something new to learn, someplace new to discover. It’s like a big family reunion, only a little less awkward because the older relatives can’t grill you about your love life.

Rome isn’t the only place on the peninsula that is chock-full of holy people and holy places: towns all over Italy boast of hometown holy heroes. Siena, a small Tuscan town known for a wild summertime horse race called the Palio and a traditional dessert called Panforte, is also the birthplace of St. Catherine, a medieval mystic who is now the celebrated patron of Europe, Italy, Rome, and myself.

St. Catherine, as I continually learned throughout my time in Rome, was one heck of a woman. The youngest of 23 children, she had her first vision of Christ when she was only six years old. She spent the years between her 15th and 18th birthdays (what many other people consider their “glory days") in total silence and solitude, building her relationship with Christ. When she finally emerged from her bedroom, she began serving her community in the local hospital (which is now a museum) and her family in her home (which is now a sanctuary). Her charismatic personality eventually drew quite a crowd; she became known for her healing powers and peacemaking abilities. The King of England approached her, asking for her help in ending the Hundred Year’s War with France, but she had to decline due a previous engagement: she was attempting to convince Pope Gregory to return to Rome from Avignon, France, which he eventually did in 1377. Catherine died of exhaustion at the age of 33 in Rome, where she is buried in the church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. Well, almost all of her is buried there.

The Sienese, being the proud people that they are, insisted that their hometown girl return to her birthplace. Yet, the Romans had also come to love Catherine as one of their own (I mean, she did return the papacy to their city), and so a compromise was made: Catherine’s head and right forefinger would be severed from her body post-mortem and brought respectfully back to Siena.

Aside from the potential moral problems associated with this separation (I assure you it was relatively “normal” in 1380 to do such a thing), the separation also poses a logistical issue for a pilgrim like myself. Visiting the majority of her body in Rome was simple enough: I hopped on the 63 bus and rode it to Largo Argentina, where I exited via the middle doors and walked north one block. Getting to Siena was a little more difficult: it involved a train from Rome to Chiusi and then another train to Siena, followed by a bus from the train station to the center of the city. Yet all of that was as easy as panforte compared to coming home…

***

I held onto the straps of my backpack near my ribcage as I tore into the station. It’s 16.01 right now, I thought. If I count on the inevitable five-minute Italian delay, I should be okay. I didn’t wait my turn to look at the departure schedule for the track number: pushing through the crowd I scanned the huge yellow sheet posted on the wall and then immediately took off for platform one. I saw the train and breathed a sigh of relief. Then I saw that the doors were closed. I ran up to the track. I banged on the door. The train started to pull away. I shamelessly ran down the platform, waving my arms and screaming like a fool. The train picked up speed; I gave up hope and slowed down. I kicked the platform three-year-old-tantrum style. I turned on my heel and marched myself to the opposite end of the platform, my throat closing and nose stinging from the tears that were fast approaching that space under my eyes. I reviewed the events of the last thirty minutes: if only I hadn’t gotten fined on the bus. The ticket-checking man with terrible teeth and a funny accent made me both flustered and frustrated. Forty euro and several pages of pointless paperwork later, I ran into the station. If only I had swallowed my pride and asked for directions sooner, instead of standing at the bus stop for 10 minutes looking like an idiot tourist while everyone else in the town was at the soccer game. I could have gotten an earlier bus and avoided the fine. I could have gotten on the train. I could have avoided the embarrassment I felt as I leaned against a pillar in the tiny train station in Siena on a December afternoon, alone and angry that I had made such a series of rookie mistakes on the last weekend of my program and my first try, after four months, of traveling by myself.

Just weeks ago I was carrying myself with a little more pride than necessary after I successfully navigated a surprise metro strike by taking a tram and two busses when I would normally just take the aforementioned underground train. As a kid who grew up within walking distance of a suburban shopping center, who spent the better part of her high school career stuck in traffic on the Baltimore beltway, in the passenger’s seat of her mom’s minivan, and who affectionately labored over what to name her Honda Accord, I would not consider myself an expert in public transportation by any means. Indeed, before coming to Rome, I had ridden the Baltimore light rail one solitary time in my entire life. Last year.

I am now an accomplished bus-stalker, metro-pusher, stop-requester, and all around system-navigator. I have come to form a relationship with Rome’s public transportation system: it is a living, breathing entity with good days and bad days just like me. I wouldn’t exactly call us friends, but we are certainly well acquainted.
The 80 is like my father: dependable and usually right on time; the 490 is the easy way to get to school, but it is an elusive bus—it is a really exciting day when I catch that one; the 63 takes me to my favorite places in Rome, but it is always running late when I am.

Once you get off the 63 at Largo Argentina, if you cross the street and walk south one block (the opposite direction from St. Catherine’s church), you can catch the number eight tram. This is another line with which I am well-acquainted: every Friday evening at 17.30 I would trek halfway across the city to my community service placement in a soup kitchen run by the San’Egidio community in the apparently enchanting neighborhood of Trastevere. (I’ve never seen it in the daylight, so I can’t fully attest to that statement.) First the 63 bus (usually late), then the eight tram (usually on time because there are, for some reason, an obscene number of trams on this particular line), then a two block-walk around and behind the Ministry of Education building. Simple.

Yet on one particular evening, I was running late and so was the number eight. Alas, I seemed to have taken the whole “cultural assimilation” thing a little too far and have adopted a constant 10-minutes-behind-schedule mode of operation. Unfortunately, I seemed not to have adopted the carefree attitude about running late, only the running late part. I stood on the platform, tapping my foot at the same rapid pace that my heart was beating, focused on pulling the tram toward me with my mind, and so I was startled when a man sidled up to me and spoke Italian. I looked at him, completely confused and said, “Scusi?”
“The time? Do you have the time?” English. What a slap in the face. I can speak Italian! I wanted to insist. And “What time is it?” is a question I can understand and respond to! And I’m extremely aware of the time right now because I am so late! But I faltered: I didn’t respond to him in Italian, or even English, I just pulled out my cell phone and showed him the time.
“Are you a tourist?” he asked, after looking at the tiny screen on my Italian telefonino. Another slap in the face, and again I faltered. Not right now, I thought. Sometimes I feel like a tourist, but I’d like to think that I’m more than that. I gave him the same confused look. “A student?” He filled in the silence and the answer for me, and finally I found my voice. “Yes! That’s it. I’m a student,” I replied, not sounding intelligent at all.

For the first few weeks I was in Rome, I couldn’t stop repeating the same mantra in my head: I’m in Rome. I’m in Rome. I. Am. In. Rome. I thought that if I said it to myself enough times, it would finally sink it. In some ways, it never did. So in the final few weeks of the semester, I started repeating a different mantra: I am a student here. I thought about that role, that kind of person I wanted to be in this city when I was on the metro, when I was walking around on the streets, when I was waiting for the bus, and most of all, when I was at the soup kitchen.

***

Without fail, I always arrive at the soup kitchen emotionally exhausted. Whether it’s homesickness, or frustration with the bus system, or stress about travel plans, I usually come late to my shift and have to take a few calming breaths before I begin. Yet, unlike some service experiences I have had in the States, my time with the people at this soup kitchen refreshes me: it centers me and energizes me for the week ahead.

Gianluca takes care of me at service. He wears the same thing every week: a black turtleneck sweater, faded jeans, and bright red converse sneakers. He lets me practice my Italian with him when things slow down for a little while at the kitchen. He tells me I improve every week, and I ask him about his life. He speaks slowly and uses words that I know; I understand almost everything he says, which makes me feel more competent at this foreign language than I actually am. I get confused when I come home and I can’t speak with my host parents as well as I can talk to Gianluca.

"I’m an accountant," he told me when I asked him if he studies or if he works. Like with most Italians, I can’t tell how old he is or if he’s married or if he still lives with his parents. He has a beard but a young face, he’s thin, but his small frame works because he is only a few inches taller than I am. I work for a bad company, he says. I like the job but it would please me to work for a non-profit instead.

For now, he spends his free time volunteering for the San’Egidio community, a group that began when several high school friends got together in Rome in 1968 searching for a place to learn and live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Today, the community gathers for daily prayer in 70 countries and over 50,000 members participate in charity services throughout the world, Rome is still the center of the organization. At the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere (a five minute walk from the soup kitchen), its members gather every evening at 8:30 for a prayer service that is open to the public and attended by close to 200 people each night. The community also sponsors several charity-based organizations throughout the city, including a full-service restaurant staffed predominantly by people who have mental disabilities and therefore could not secure any another job, as well as the restaurant-style soup kitchen in which I work. Guests come to the kitchen on Wednesday and Friday nights for a hot meal: they are seated at a table and are served by volunteers like me who act as waiters and waitresses. The guests share food and fellowship with the other people seated at their table and those who continually move around the room, working to make sure they are comfortable while they eat.

Sometimes Gianluca will catch me staring into space, even from across the big, florescent-lighted room. He waves and makes sure I’m okay. I shake my head quickly as if clearing the haze I let descend around my ears and give him two thumbs up. It gets overwhelming, all that Italian being thrown around the room, and sometimes I need to retreat into my own English-thinking space. Other times I will find him looking hurriedly around the hall obviously worried that all the people at his table are not being fed according to their wishes. I flash him a cheesy grin, and he laughs at me, looking relieved for just a moment, before he has to go back to satisfying wishes for more pane (bread) or formaggio (cheese) and plates of the primo (first course) and secondo (second course).

I look forward to my conversations with him, practicing what I will say on the tram ride over the bridge and analyzing my grammar on the tram ride home. I like the days that he is assigned to be the greeter at the door best; on those days he stands still while I run around, and I always end up talking to him for a long time at some point in the evening. We’re a good team, Gianluca and I. Even though we never work at the same table, we support each other and keep each other going when things get busy. He is my friend in Italy. He has opened his heart to me and made me feel at home in a place that I will never be from. Because of him, because of his kind words, comforting smile and signature shoes, I know where I belong in the Eternal City: in the service of the people who belong to the Eternal God.

***

I’ve come to realize that whether we know it or not, each day we change the world, simply by living in it. Our actions, our interactions, the way we build and break relationships, the ways we add or take from the physical beauty of the world all contribute to history, even in the smallest of ways. In the last three months, I have changed Europe. I have participated in its life, and therefore have become part of its story. I have ridden its subways, walked it streets, and thrown things away in its trashcans. I have missed a train and spent extra hours in the Siena train station, sipping tea and watching television with the locals. I have made Gianluca smile an extra time with my cheesy grin.

It’s those cups of tea, those smiles, those quiet moments that I will remember long after the thrill of having lived in Europe has faded. These are the moments that kept me going during my time abroad because, as Rilke says, this is where the eternal endures. The small piece of love that is shared over a cup of tea in a train station or a smile in a soup kitchen is the same love that has accomplished everything from empowering a young woman in a small Tuscan town in the Middle Ages to maintaining my sanity on a lonely, rainy day in a foreign country. That love is eternal; it is bigger than me and bigger than Rome. Knowing how to seek it and appreciate its undying quality—-that is the most precious souvenir from my trip, the most valuable lesson from my semester.