Feast of St. Rose

Today there are several things to talk about.


First, the Italian word of the day is: "Boh!" Almost identical to the Anglo-Saxon shrug of the shoulders or "I dunno", it runs the risk of becoming my favourite Italian word.


This morning I went to St. Mary Major for the start of the novena for the feast of our Lady's Nativity. I said a rosary before the Salus Populi Romani.


In school I had to write out a joke in Italian, because I am constantly finishing my assignments before everybody else, and the teacher doesn't want me to twiddle my thumbs. Not being a funny person, I had to rely, instead, on a joke that Noel told me once before. If you are curious ask him to tell you the Angelus joke. To my relief, almost everybody laughed, which means that Catholicism is not yet dead everywhere and some people out there still know this great prayer. The teacher also said I might be moved to the advanced class. We'll see what happens.

After school I went to and prayed at the altar of St. Rose of Lima in Santa Maria sopra Minerva, because August 30 is the Feast of St. Rose both in the old calendar and, more importantly, in Lima and Latin America. I was saying the office, trying to mind my business, but an old fool who thought that the south aisle was his office decided to make a very noise call over his cell. A bleary eyed Dominican sitting by the bookstall neither said nor did a thing.

Now, don't kid yourselves. The only reason why I restrained myself from verbally trussing, skewering and slowly roasting the man for so long is not that I have recently received some special grace, but that my command of the Italian language is not yet sufficient for me to say all that I would have said in English in Toronto.

But when the man's odious gurgles had reached a crescendo, my eyes fell upon the following verse in my breviary: "Tabescere me fecit zelus meus, quia obliti sunt verba tua inimici mei," and leaving aside all shame over my defective command of Italian I looked straight at the man and hissed "Basta!" and I know not what else, and then gave the placidly-bovine Dominican staring into outer space a piece of my mind also.

I finished my office as well as I could, and still in quite the mood, no doubt adding years to my purgatory by the second, I went to look for a MacDonald's so I could do there the only thing that the place is good for....(I have been warned by a friend that his mother might read this so I trust the reference was sufficiently oblique.)

Then Mass at San Gregorio, which was offered for my mother. Here is further proof that our Lord indeed is merciful and treats us not according to our deserts: after Mass I was asked if I wanted to learn how to serve in the old rite, and I hope my smile was sufficiently demonstrative of my joy and gratitude welling up inside.