Carter Davidson

we don't have anything like this in philedelphia

We arrived in San Giovanni Rotondo as dusk was dawning. On the way up the steep and winding hill that led into the small town, a car insisted on speeding past our bus, nearly causing a collision that would have almost certainly killed everyone involved. Italians. We had spent the previous few days in Rome, and this town had virtually nothing in common with the capital city. While The Eternal City was metropolitan, important, and hazy, the small southern town that Padre Pio called home for much of his life was rural, charming, and breezy. The drive up reminded me of Pennsylvania’s farmland in some ways. A prettier picture, perhaps, but reminiscent nevertheless. Our hotel was luxurious, and seemed to be one of the nicer inns in a town dedicated to Padre Pio, gift shops, and hotels in that order. To this day, I find the European insistence on having two bad toilets in the bathroom, as opposed to the American standard of having a single good toilet, puzzling and plain weird. Seems a waste. As ever in Italy, the dinner was pleasant, and so was the wine. 

Likely due to the fact that I was over twice as young as any of my fellow pilgrims, they found it surprising when I mentioned how fond I am of the films of John Wayne during dinner. More so, they were particularly surprised when I broke into an off key rendition of  “My Rifle, My Pony, and Me” from Rio Bravo. (I may have undersold just how pleasant the wine was in the previous paragraph. In the movie the song was sung by Dean Martin, and to be fair, he was almost certainly drunker on set than I was on this pilgrimage to the tombs of various saints.)

The next day, after an impromptu confession in the far corner of the hotel lobby, I told Father Rick that I was discerning a Franciscan vocation, but did not want to make a “thing of it” with the group. It is strange, for two years prior to my pilgrimage I had no doubt that I was being called to the priesthood, but around that time I began to feel like I could do more good as a layman. I may never be as good as I want to be; in fact, I suspect that will likely be the case, but I know that I want to be good.

Later that night, a group of us went up to St. Pio’s Shrine to see the procession of the painting of Our Lady of Grace. It typically hangs above the altar of the church, but once a year it makes its way around the town, and this was the triumphant return of the painting to its home. This was clearly the weekend to be in San Giovanni Rotondo, and there we were, by divine intervention or dumb luck. The procession was led by the fourth police car that I have ever seen in Italy, and a group of EMTs. Our Lady’s painting was on a rigging raised above a slow moving vehicle that was trailed by hordes of both pilgrims and locals. What a scene. 

Of all of the wonderful things that I have seen in Italy, and Italy has been uniformly wonderful to me, this may well have been the most singularly Italian, and therefore the most singularly wonderful of them all. Thanks be to God that I was able to see this, and much more importantly, that this even exists. 

As Our Lady’s painting got closer to the church, the masses began singing “Ave Maria,” and we were no longer just people who stand with two feet on the ground. We were now floating. This was not real life—or it was the realest life, I have not yet decided. Aurora Borealis had personified and taken the form of a glowing mass of humanity that now surrounded us as we entered into an ethereal dream state. Like a nighttime carnival scene in a black and white movie, or listening to the Sermon on the Mount. Like the sound of the ball hitting your mitt when you’re having a catch with your dad, or a prodigal son coming home. Like a first summer love, or forgiving an adulterous woman, or an adulterous man. Like a light rain on a sunny day. Like a best friend, or a beloved disciple. Like the snow that covers the distant mountaintop. Like anything that is close enough to feel but too big to ever understand. Like anything beautiful. Like anything good. Like, oh, like I don’t even know what! Like God.  

There we were, the pilgrims, awestruck, all of our lives thoroughly affirmed. Eventually, after basking in the humbling beauty that is participating with a multitude of folks simultaneously feeling the Grace of God, which is of course the Grace of knowing that there is a God, and that He is good, I turned to a pilgrim, tears not far from my eyes, frog not far from my throat: “We don’t have anything like this in Philadelphia.”

“Well, we don’t have anything like this in Kansas either,” was his immediate response.

Thank God for people.

Carter Davidson was born in Pennsylvania in 1990. After spending much of his life simply floating around, he converted to Catholicism in his early thirties, for which he is eternally grateful. When he is not writing he enjoys reading, watching black and white movies, and travelling. He lives in Philadelphia.