SS Peter and Paul, App
28/June/2007 Filed in: Jottings
First Vespers of SS Peter and Paul. It's amazing how this feast turns one's thoughts to Rome and memories of the city: long hot afternoons spent in the coolness of Sta Sabina or among the narrow alleys in Trastevere; the busy hush of St Peter's; moist greenery in the Protestant Cemetery; rubbish blowing sadly through the Circus Maximus; dust in the cart ruts of the Forum. Always, the sense of being somehow at the heart of the Church, a feeling that "Roma, caput mundi" is as true today as it was two thousand years ago, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And sometimes, on a wintry evening, one can imagine the city as it was and hear the wolves howling in the darkened streets as they were heard a thousand years ago. What a shock to emerge from the daydream and plunge into the Roman rush-hour!