Roman Station Church for Monday of the First Week of Lent

San Pietro in Vincoli

When you go to church, you may see relics of a certain saint anywhere within the sacred space. When altars are consecrated, relics are inserted below the mensa (Latin for table) of the altar. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, relics are to “prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it.” The First Reading from Leviticus today begins with what God said to Moses, “Speak to the whole assembly of the children of Israel and tell them: Be holy, for I the Lord, your God, am holy” (19:2). Peter did not choose to die in Rome, but rather he was led to Rome to die for his belief in Jesus Christ after the Emperor Nero blamed the Great Roman Fire of 64 A.D. on the Christians. Before that moment in time happened, there was also a time that Peter was imprisoned in Jerusalem, where he was freed by the angel of the Lord. This was to fulfill what was prophesized in Psalm 34:7, “The angel of the Lord will rescue those who fear him.” The chains that Peter was shackled to when he was imprisoned in Jerusalem and before his crucifixion upside down in Nero’s circus just outside the Vatican Basilica today) reminds us of the submission that Peter gave to the will of God. A great example can be seen when he was given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven when Jesus said to Peter, “On this rock, I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it,” (Matthew 16:18). Given the mandate Peter was entrusted by Jesus, he would take it to his own trials and tribulations, the time he had to deny Jesus before dying on the cross for our sins, his profession of his love for Jesus, his imprisonments, and even his eventual crucifixion. Peter did what Jesus called us to do in today’s Gospel reading, “Whatever you did for one of the least of my brethren, you did it for me” (Matthew 25:40).

For the Lenten Station Churches throughout this liturgical season, I thought it would be suitable to share some reflections from George Weigel’s 2013 book, Roman Pilgrimage: The Station Churches.

The Basilica of St. Peter in Chains perches on a spur of land at the base of the Esquiline Hill in what was, 1,600 years ago, the residential quarter of the rich and powerful of imperial Rome. This was also the site of the Prefectura Urbana, where many Christians were tried and condemned to death. The earliest notice of the church dates from 431, when it was dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul. The pairing recalls the tradition that the two died on the same day, June 29, according them the same birthday in heaven. Dedicated to the twin pillars of the Church of Rome, the church looked toward the Palatine Hill, where Romulus and Remus had long ago first founded the city. St. Peter was imprisoned twice: once in Jerusalem and then in the Mamertine Prison, a stone’s throw from this site. While Rome preserved the chains of his last detention, the other fetters long remained in the Holy Land. Then St. Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, gave them to the imperial family, and Empress Eudoxia presented the Jerusalem chains to Pope St. Leo I (440–461), who rebuilt the original church in honor of Peter’s shackles. A pious tradition holds that the two segments fused together when brought into contact with each other. Filings from the chains were Rome’s most popular take-home relic, and, as Rome’s Petrine pilgrimage itinerary evolved, St. Peter in Chains became the second most important pilgrimage site, after St. Peter’s Basilica. The relics, along with a piece of the chains of St. Paul, are now kept in a reliquary in the confessio built by Pope Pius IX. Medieval pilgrims visited a church laden with marble; Greek columns from the Portico of Octavia still line the nave. Many of those pilgrims prayed at an altar dedicated to St. Sebastian, built after a plague epidemic in 680. Its blue-ground mosaic can still be seen on the left side of the church: in this second oldest extant image of the martyr, Sebastian is not represented as a young athlete, but as Magister Militorum, “trainer of soldiers,” with white hair and tunic. During the Renaissance, two of the church’s cardinals-titular became popes. Under Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484), Cardinal Niccolò da Cusa restored the roof; a beam bearing his name and the date 1475 is visible along the wall. But we owe the basilica’s most famous work of art to Sixtus’s nephew, Pope Julius II (1503–1513), who hired Michelangelo in 1505 to build a colossal free-standing tomb for him in the new St. Peter’s Basilica. Pride and politics ended that project, and in 1545 a simple wall tomb was finally completed here, featuring Michelangelo’s monumental Moses. Carved in 1513, Moses embodies age with his long flowing beard and wisdom with his horns (from St. Jerome’s translation of the Hebrew word for “rays”), which recall his time in God’s presence. Although he sits as lawgiver on a throne, the poised foot, the sharp turns of the arms and head, and the piercing gaze into the distance proclaim an energetic readiness to rise and follow the Lord’s will, anywhere.