Sunday, February 3, 2013

The last few days have certainly been exciting!  It began on Thursday when I found out that I get to have not one, but two internships with the Vatican!  The first one is through an organization called Aleteia, which is an initiative of the Foundation for the Evangelization through Media.  Basically with them I will be helping to organize, conduct, and participate in their Year of Faith project called A Moment with Mary.  This is a program where a group of people gathers everyday at 4pm in St. Peter's Square to pray the Rosary live (it is also put in online archives to be accessed all over the world).  The director told me that it is about bringing people together through the power of the Rosary.  I participated in it last Thursday, and it was really a great experience, and one I am excited to be a part of (If anyone is interested in watching it live, looking through the archives, or learning more about it you can access it at rosary.aleteia.org). 

The second internship though, I think may be even more exciting.  It is with the Catholic News Agency and EWTN.  For this internship I get to transcribe interviews, participate in interviews, and potentially get press passes to Vatican and Papal events to interview and take pictures! 

Luckily though, I didn't have to wait long to go to a Papal event, because yesterday, the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord was a Papal Mass.  Unfortunately, none of us here had tickets, so we decided to brave the rain, go to St. Peter's and ask the groups of religious sisters for extra tickets (I should mention that this Mass is especially for consecrated religious since the Feast of the Presentation is also the World Day for Consecrated Life).  Not only did we all find tickets, but we got "special" tickets.  So when they finally let the throngs of people in for Mass the guards pulled us out of the line and took us right down the center aisle just a few rows from the front!  It was fantastic!  The Basilica was literally filled with priests, brothers, religious sisters, and deacons - I felt like our little group of students kind of stuck out, but it was so worth it!  We couldn't have been more than 50 yards from Pope Benedict as he rode his little chariot down the aisle - it was definitely a Mass I will never forget!  So to all of the sisters and priests at Silver Lake happy belated feast day!