From this point on pictures are scarce since we were all so exhausted after spending the night on the bus. It also was raining much of the day on Monday. We pulled into Nevers, pretty much right in the center of France, at 7:00 in the morning to spend half an hour or so in prayer before the body of St. Bernadette. Then it was back onto the bus to head for Paray-le-Monial and the Visitation chapel wherein our Lord appeared to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and revealed to her His Sacred Heart.
The chapel itself was very plain, with a modern day mosaic in the apse depicting the apparition of our Lord to St. Margaret Mary. Her body was also visible in a side chapel there. We had reserved the time slot from 10:00-10:45 for Mass to be said in the chapel by our priests, but since we didn't arrive until 10:30 we had to settle for participating in the Mass scheduled for another group at 10:45, complete with guitar and a very bouncy music leader. Let's just say it was quite a contrast to the Mass we were blessed to hear the previous day in Lourdes.
The basilica in Paray-le-Monial looked quite nice, but we didn't have time to go inside. I think the architectural style is Romanesque, but I could be mistaken about that.
By the time Mass was finished it was noon and we still had hardly eaten a bite all day. We set off through town looking for food only to discover the strange French custom of closing all the shops on Monday, I suppose in order to recover from the weekend. After a fair bit of looking we did manage to find a coney-island style restaurant that was open. We devoured our coffee and food and made it back onto the bus by 1:00 ready for another drive, this time to Saint-Jodard, about 80 kms North-West of Lyon, where there is a novitiate house for the Community of St. John. We have some connections to this community, since one of the students at the ITI, who was traveling with us, is a member of the community, as is one of our professors. The community is of quite recent origin (1975). We arrived sometime in the mid-afternoon, had some dinner and went to bed early. Some of the students, Katie included, went for a long walk to the Lorraine River where we are told there is a great little fortress.
2 comments:
romanesque was a good guess. glad to see you have some knowledge of architecture to go along with all that churchin' business.
can't wait to get to france but until then the pictures will suffice.
tell maria i love her.
Hey, good for me. I guessed because the tower looks somewhat sililar to one of the two Chartres towers, which I randomly remembered was one Romanesque and one Gothic.
You should probably explain all the distinctions and characteristics more to me someday.
Speaking of getting to France, tickets round trip are only $100 from Dublin, which is only $500 round trip from Chicago in, say, late December/early January...
I'm just saying...
Post a Comment