Good Friday: Way of the Cross at Colosseum

April 10
For Good Friday Service, I went to the little church that is between S.Francesco a Ripa and S.Cecilia. It’s Santa Maria…something. After church I went back to the apartment and Kristin and I got ready to go to the way of the cross. We headed down to go to the Colosseum. We took the tram and got on a bus and then saw the masses headed to the Colosseum. We made our way down the street and tried to meet up with this guy I met in Greece. We couldn’t seem to find him so we walked across the street towards the Colosseum and realized we couldn’t see anything over there so we decided to try to find another way. We walked around to the other side and found a spot on the hill past the Arch of Constantine. I eventually found Tom and we stood and watched the ceremony and eventually found a seat. It was a really interesting experience. I guess they do a procession of the cross out of the Colosseum onto the road then up the hill to where the pope is sitting. They announced all the stations in different languages then read it in Italian. Then they did the Lord’s Prayer in Italian and some other adoration song in Latin. It was really cool to hear the music. I think it was live but it was so far away I could see if there were performers or not… I really enjoyed it, everyone in the crowd with candles, it was just cool to see that much faith in one place. After the service we made our way slowly through the masses back to the end of the tram line and back to our apartment. We were going to have a movie night but decided to postpone in favor of turning in early.