Even though it was nice outside, several times today I could hear thunder happening in the area. Perhaps it rained when I was inside, but when I went outside the weather was fine. The picture here is of the outside of the chapel with the large clock tower that dominates the area. From the top of it you can see St. Peter's Dome (No, I haven't climbed that ladder).
Now that I'm getting a bit of a sense of what's coming, I am both more relieved and more concerned. I'm relieved in the sense of knowing more of the details in trying to organize 150 Brothers from around the world to have meaningful liturgical experiences during a period of 35 days that will include 15 large group liturgies (in three languages), 22 smaller language group liturgies, and 13 prayer services of various kinds. This is not to mention the 15 or so prayers that begin one of the General Chapter sessions in the meeting hall. I don't need to say why I'm concerned.
Today was spent going to several meetings of Brothers involved in various aspects of our time together here in Rome. One of the meetings was to address concerns about the whole "tent" thing in the chapel. I think that Brothers here thought that we were going to set up a full tent inside of the chapel. As it turned out, what we are planning to do was okay. We were going to start today; now we'll start tomorrow. With more and more Brothers arriving, and the real stuff beginning on Sunday evening, we're cutting it kind of close. But, oh well.
The picture here is of Br. Jose Antonio Warletta, who does graphic design work for publications here, and Br. Antonio Botana, the Secretary for Association. They're reading the various postings in the "coffee room" of the Motherhouse.Time in the computer chair was spent making up sign-up sheets, descriptions of jobs, details for the liturgy committe, and the like. This afternoon, I was happy to learn that the large tube mailers from Napa had arrived with the small and large banners that we are planning to use. However, I also found out that the "Magnificat" May issues were here for the French and Spanish groups, but the English ones were still stuck in Napa. An "emergency" email to Napa will have them here early next week (not without a price, of course). Details, details.
Br. Dominic Berardelli arrived here from our District and we had a fine dinner together in the dining room. He filled us in on happenings in the District and showed us the "trading cards" of Brothers at Saint Mary's College that had been created as part of "De La Salle Week" there. They're great, and apparently the students really are trading them with one another.
Br. Dominic told us stories of when he was stationed here some years back, how he tried to get the Brothers to stop the clock tower from striking once every 10 minutes to announce the quarter hour, where it would go through a series of bells, and then going through the whole hour-bell-peal business at each hour, like Big Ben in London. It drove him crazy. He figured out once that, along with the electronic buzzer in the house that announced various activities, he was hearing over a thousand bell chimes a day. But the Brothers said that it had been that way for years and some guy from California wasn't going to make them reconsider. But one weekend, when he was charge of seeing that the rope that controlled the bells was set correctly, somehow the mechanism that started the whole thing going broke (he insists that he didn't do a thing) and there was merciful silence for a while. Some Brothers quietly thanked him, even while he denied causing the clamor to stop. Now, during daylight hours, we only get the single peal each quarter hour and the toll of the time at each hour.Tomorrow we really will start on the "tent" thing in the chapel. We promise.
