Italiano a Firenze

The Piazza in front of the Basilica della Sanctissima Annunziata (Basilica of the Most Holy Annunciation)

Dear Friends and Family,

A blessed Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary! It is a real joy to have this feast fall on a Sunday. As hopefully all of you experienced at Mass this morning, the feast begins with a solemn blessing of candles: in fact, five different blessings are given to the candles at that moment. Then each member of the congregation is invited to come forward and kneel at the altar rail, where they receive their blessed candle, which is then lit. We then process and sing songs in honour of what occurred on this day, and then re-enter the chapel. The procession with each of us carrying the lighted candle is meant to symbolize the Virgin Mary carrying the Light of the World as She came into the temple.

In my case, I chanted the liturgical antiphons as we processed around a courtyard just outside of the chapel and then re-entered for Mass. People remain with their candles lit until after the Gospel is read. They are then extinguished, to be relit at the Sanctus and held throughout the canon, up until the chanting of the Our Father. Even with the very simple means at our disposal here it was a beautiful moment and striking for me to see how much the lighted candles helped the children to focus. The beautiful wisdom of the Church's traditions...

This week was above all an intense week of study for me, leading up to an exam Friday. I did well on the exam and can now move onto the next level, but it was an intense week of memorizing verb conjugations and how different verb tenses fit together depending on the sentence. It is a real joy to see certain things beginning to make more sense. Now, when I hear an Italian speaking using the subjective or other verb tenses I am beginning to pick up on why this particular verb is used in such a context, etc.

The above photo is taken from where I had a coffee on Wednesday. After classes finished, I stopped into the cafe next door, which is run by this good couple.

Maurizio and Graziella of the "Fiore del Café"

It turns out that Maurizio is from Calabria, and from a village very close to where my ancestors grew up. It was neat talking with him, and their cappuccinos are quite good, which comes in handy when the nights are shorter! On this occasion, I had one cappuccino in the morning before classs and then another to begin the afternoon in order to be awake for that afternoon's pastoral visit to a home. I wasn't due for lunch at the house until 2PM, so I walked to this piazza:

And at the steps drinking my cappuccino. After then spending some time praying the divine office I walked to the part of the city where the home was located and spent a few hours getting to know the teenage children. I was quite pleased that I was able to do almost everything in Italian, except that I butchered the word for "midfielder" ("centrocampista" for those who are interested), and it took a little bit for the teenager who played that position to help me understand.

After the week of study I worked on yesterday's sermon for the First Saturday Mass, then today's sermon for the Presentation. This week's studies will shift in order to focus primarily on research and writing for my licentiate paper for Toulouse. You all are in my daily prayers here. I will post a few more photos below, but above all will send you prayers. Please do keep me in yours.

In Cordibus Iesu et Mariae,
Fr. Pillari

The entrance to the Scuola Leonardo da Vinci, where I am studying.

My professor from the past two weeks (will be someone different next time), in our classroom. The man on the left is a real estate agent in Austria who works with a lot of Italians and who spent a week with us working on his Italian.