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I write this by the scant illumination of a candle stub – the candle white, the flame french ultramarine blue at its base, merging at its center to cadmium orange where it most hot, and traipsing off to the palest yellow. These color patterns are duplicated in the blazing fire which warms this dark Palm Sunday night. I step outside so that I can provide a first hand report on the moon and the stars, Andrea Bocelli’s resonant tenor singing Italian love songs in the background, the music and the words enveloping me as in a lover’s embrace. I stood thus for some time, my heart pounding, my breathing ragged, my body trembling with the beauty and the passion of it all. Bocelli hits a perfectly pitched and exquisitely beautiful high note, holding it for an eternity, and my heart is orgasmatic.
I slept in, arose lazily and then headed into Pietralunga to church for Mass. Today is Palm Sunday and the traditions observed in Pietralunga literally date back thousands of years. On Palm Sunday, the entire congregation gathers in the ancient piazza adjacent to the 8th century Romanesque church, gathering around the now long unused municipal well. Three hundred or so people of all ages and (all save me) related to this community by generations of blood and marriage.
There is the diminutive, white haired Senor Pauselli and his equally diminutive wife. They are the fourth generation to own the local hardware store–Pauselli Ferramente. Their son, Filippo, a good looking thirty something who works with his father, is the fifth such generation, and his eleven year old son, Gregorio, will be the sixth. Filippo’s sisters, Annarita and Paula, are here with their families as are Rosario who cuts my hair, Fabrizio who sorts out my computer problems and many others whose faces, if not names, I have come to know. As only the Italians can do, their “buon giornos” fill the piazza with the excited sounds of people who understand simple pleasures.
The priest, Don (not Father) Salvatore approaches in the gorgeous red and gold vestments of holy week. The crowd quiets and branches of olive trees are passed around to each, the priest sprinkling the entire assembly with holy water thrown from a highly polished silver implement upon which the bright sun bounces. As one, all make the ancient sign of the cross, touching first their foreheads–”Nel nome del Padre”; next their heads, “del Figlio”; then their right and left shoulders, “e dello Spirito Santo”; finally fingers brought to lips, “amen”. This is not a Catholic church with a repressive theology, or one with a more than checkered past. This is a simple community united by tradition.
Singing “Santo Santo Santo Superiore”, old reedy voices mixing with the virile voices of young adults and the wispy high pitched voices of the young, we followed Don Salvatore into the church is what must surely be a confluence of pagan and Christian mythology. The wolf of winter has been beaten back. Life survives and is entering into the season where it renews itself. Alleluia, alleluia.
The church is simplicity itself in its pre Gothic use of high plaster arches holding aloft the roof. Not enough room for a third of the people assembled–I watch old men and women alike stand to give their seats to young parents holding small children–and these obviously fatigued young parents refusing, saying “niente”, it is nothing. I stand in the back beside a young father holding his Raphello angel daughter with whom I exchange smiles. At one point, I take over for the father and have the sheer pleasure of feeling his daughter’s head rest on my shoulder and her short, shallow child breath warm my neck. My arms tighten around her, I adopt the universal stance of mothers everywhere–tutto il mondo–and adjust her weight to my hip–and know that there must be a god and I must have done something incredibly good to be allowed to be at this place and time.
Mass progresses, the passion of Christ is read, the transfiguration of bread and wine into body and blood takes place. The church is filled with
believers, but that does not really matter. A passage has been shared, a ritual passed from the oldest (who may not see the next Palm Sunday) to the youngest. And they welcome this way too tall outsider into their midst–”le pace, senora, le pace”. Peace, m’am, peace.
Learn more about the traditions in Umbria at http://www.experiencemyitaly.com.
Constance Grayson
Experience My Italy, Inc.
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