Race to the finish

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5:00 AM.  My alarm clock goes off.  "Ten more minutes," my body says. After a battle of Will vs. Body, I roll out of bed.  Thus begins my first Station Church pilgrimage.  After 5 weeks, my body aches all the more each morning.  Yet a boost of encouragement stimulates my drowsy limbs and drooping eyelids as I find myself accompanied by a small army of pilgrims.

As my companions and I arrive at the station church, I find myself stunned by a reality I've always known yet have never seen this up-close.  Since I was a child I heard many stories about how the apostles first spread the Gospel by preaching and starting small communities and of how many of the first Christians were martyrs for their recently received faith.  And now, I find myself visiting churches that are built on the actual locations where they were martyred, filled with art that tell the stories of their martyrdom.

Depiction of St. Lawrence's martyrdom (sentenced to death by the Roman , AD 258)

Not only has the faith of the Christians in Rome and the stories of heroic saints been beautifully preserved in the art and architecture of the churches, but the actual remains of many Roman saints have been reserved to be venerated in their tombs.

Tombs of Ss. Cecilia, Valerian, Tibertius,
and Popes Ss. Urban  I and Lucius I

Church where the tombs of
the apostles Ss. Philip and James  are venerated

And if the stories-in-art in the churches and the stone of the tombs were not enough to make me feel like I was entering into the lives of ancient Christians, as I walk to and from the various station churches, I encounter the remains of the ancient Roman empire which persecuted our fathers in the faith.

The Roman Forum

The Roman Forum

So what does all this matter to a Catholic back home in Phoenix?  Well, God willing, we won't have to suffer execution for the Faith.  But certainly we have received our Faith in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church thanks to the hundreds of saints who joyfully and bravely witnessed to it in time of persecutions.

So as Lent comes to an end, let us persevere in faith, let us "run so as to win" (1 Cor. 9: 24).