Refuge in the City

During our afternoon tour of Pittsburgh, Percy and I stopped at St. Anthony's Chapel.  It houses the largest public collection of relics in the world.  With a claim like that, I thought the place would be a huge, cathedral-like church... not a tiny little chapel tucked up in a neighborhood at the top of a hill.  We missed the last tour, so had the chance to poke around ourselves.  On one hand, I do not recommend self-guided poking if you make it the St. Anthony's.  The collection of relics consists of tiny fragments of barely-labeled material sanctity, cataloged in a binder that cross-references in a confusing plethora of ways, but never quite tells you what you want to know.  Most of the time, I didn't know which holy person to associate with which speck of something-on-gold.

On the other hand, I would highly recommend at least some self-guided poking.  A tour would have clarified things, but it also would have disrupted the feeling of absolute awe in the chapel.  I knew there that I walked "surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses," saints whose stories I knew and saints whose names I'd never heard, saints who lived thousands of years ago and saints almost within today's memory.  In the midst of the busy city, we found a place suffused with peace and holiness.  It reminded me of the perpetual adoration chapel that an order of nuns runs in St. Louis, and I couldn't help thinking that the little chapel must do immeasurable good for the city.  I'm also hoping, based on some subsequent conversations I've had with God, that it might do some good for me soul too.

Later posts coming up include some thoughts on relics and more about fasting/sacrifice. I seem to be going pretty God-focused this Lent, which might not be a bad thing.