Second Sunday of Advent

Numerous allusions appear in the Liturgy of this day to Jerusalem and her people. Let us be filled with sentiments of hope and of joy, for the coming of Jesus is near. Let us prepare the way in our hearts for the Messias, our Lord and Redeemer Jesus Christ.

St. Ambrose, Bishop, Confessor, Doctor of the Church
This Bishop of Milan was one of the four great doctors of the Western Church. As an orator he opposed the heretics, as a writer he enshrined Latin literature with his sacred hymns. He died in 397.

Our little pilgrimage to Milan for the feast of St. Ambrose was quite an up and down experience. We left Saturday morning for Vienna, only to discover upon our arrival there that one of our party had forgotten his passport. We continued on to the airport hoping that he'd be able to board the plane anyways, but no such luck. It was quite disappointing to all of us to leave him behind. The remaining two of us landed uneventfully and proceeded into the city to be greeted by this truly magnificent sight: the Duomo of Milan.

The Duomo is the second largest cathedral in Europe. Beautiful. After wandering through a crowded market in the castle quarter, we headed off to find our hostel. Upon arriving however, we discovered that they had overbooked and were sending us off to stay at another place. Ah, well. We found the place eventually. Sunday morning we awoke early and headed back into the city to visit the Basilica of St. Ambrose (below), wherein his body lies. Ambrose himself had the bodies of the second century martyrs Ss. Gervase and Protase (feast: June 19) placed under the altar of this church, where they still lie with Ambrose now between them. Ambrose himself was vested in white pontificals, with a mitre on his head, while the martyrs were robed in red dalmatics with golden crowns upon their heads and the palm branches of martyrdom in their hands.

After hearning Mass in the traditional Ambrosian rite at the little Church of San Rocco al Gentilino, we had some time before the crypt of St. Charles Borromeo would be opened at the Duomo, and so we went back to the castle of the Sforza family to see it in the daylight, and to walk through its courtyards.

The crypt of St. Charles, as I mentioned, was supposed to open at 1:30, which would give us just time enough to venerate the great cardinal and bishop of Milan before running off to catch a bus to the airport at 2:00. However, stand there as we might, the door to the crypt was not opened for us and we had to leave without seeing St. Charles. Ah, well.

Our adventures were still not over. We landed in Vienna around 6:20 and headed into the city to meet some ITI folks who were there to celebrate the intsallation as Lector and Acolyte of a seminarian-professors of ours. We knew they were near the Votivkirche, but nothing else. And my fellow traveler's cell phone, upon which we were relying heavily, completely failed us. No service in Vienna. We spent the next few hours looking for our ride home. We pumped about 7 euro into a pay phone and only managed to get a message through to the Kartause that if they were able to communicate with our friends to tell them to pick us up at the Votivkirche. Having arrived in the city center around 7:30 we finally found our ride back to Gaming between 9:30 and 10:00. We are back, though, safe and sound, and happy to have paid our respects to the great bishop of Milan.