Peterskirche

You get to learn the dates of many feasts of the Catholic Church when you visit places in Europe. For example, our first day looking around Vienna happened to coincide with the 40th day after Easter, the day of the Ascension. Many of the shops were closed, though the churches were open, but there's only a select few of us that think that churches are interesting enough to make up an entire day's occupation. We're the same group of people who will go google the stories of the saints when we learn to whom each altar in the church is dedicated.

Ooo ooo, I know this one! St. John of Nepomuk! I don't even have to look up how to spell Nepomuk anymore!

But a whole day of trying to find something to do in a city in another country where they don't speak English, where you can't figure out why nothing is open and where you are having extraordinary difficulty deciding what to do for lunch and/or dinner (you're not quite sure what time it is either) on top of travelling to so many different places can do something crazy to a person. You can become quite unreasonably angry with your friend and leave her on the metro back to the hostel while you hop the next train back into the city to sulk.

It was in this rather disquieted state of mind that I magically found my way to St. Peter's Church or Peterskirche in German. I had walked by this church before the last time I was in Vienna, I was sure, and even though I had determined earlier that day that I was going to focus on Stephansdom while I was in Vienna, the bells were ringing the evening mass as I walked by and I figured it couldn't hurt me to go to church. I would just sit down somewhere and write mean things otherwise.

Peterskirche is not a big church. It's baroque and it's impressive with its decoration, but it had already quite filled up by the time I walked in. I had to sit in a chair beside the raised pews with no kneeling rail. This mean that during mass, when I generally play a game of monkey-see, monkey-do with the knowledgable people around me, I couldn't imitate their kneeling. It was still good though, to listen to the congregation chant their way through mass and to contemplate things as I looked around the room, wondering what in the world the sermon could be about.

The confessional booths were open and I had never seen one of these things in action before. The ones in Peterskirche were also new to me because they had these little side nooks that you kneeled at and then whispered yours sins to the priest. Man, I want more privacy than that. If I have to say everything I've done wrong since my last confession, I don't want any chance of that mess getting around (that's what she said... and now I would have even longer of a list). But the booths are distant enough from the main nave, I guess, taking up some wall space in some of the side altars, so I just watched as a mini-priest in the making, a proud middle school boy, made his way over to the booth early on in the service to get those sins off his chest before taking communion. A little line formed, mostly men, though the boy's mother also went over to the booth (is it allowed to go both ways? I feel like moms should be able to get some information from the priest. They're all in cahoots anyway). It's a character study, watching their faces change as they approach confession and after they leave it. And hey, body language was the only thing that was making sense to me at the time.

After mass, the church cleared out but I couldn't bring myself to leave. I mean, I didn't particularly want to look around, because I was still mad and sad and stuff, but the people who stayed to pray had me glued to my seat. OK, this is kinda a lie and this is where I make my decision. Sometimes you just get tired of secularizing everything.

I believe in God. I believe God does mighty and wonderful things in the world today, sometimes through the Church and sometimes not. I believe God hears me when I pray and I believe that He doesn't judge me on the way that my prayers get to Him, so even though I feel a little insolent doing it in one of these fancy churches with enough decorations on the ceiling to scare anyone away from staring intensely at it, I will stare intensely at the ceiling because that's the easiest way for me to focus my attention on the task at hand, and I have found that I can pray for the hour and a half between mass and the evening organ concert and barely notice my butt going numb from the tiny wooden pew that I absconded post-mass.

Because sometimes, God needs to hear it. God needs to hear my confusions and my frustrations as much as He needs to hear my joys and my praises. God needs to hear my confessions and my failings as much as He needs to remind me of my blessings and my suceedings. God needs to hear when I am worried about the Church and He needs to hear what I have to say in praise of the Church. And I couldn't think of a better place to do this than the one I currently inhabited. It also doesn't hurt to send up a prayer or two for people you may or may not have left on metro trains, even though we're both capable adults and the metro stop is stupid close to the hostel. You know, just in case.

Then I let myself get distracted by the room. I'm getting to like the stories churches tell. I like recognizing the altars (St. John of Nepomuk, St. Barbara, St. Michael, St. Anthony).

I like looking at the different ways people choose to portray Biblical figures.

OK, so I don't really know who this is, but isn't that the coolest effect ever?!

 Of course, there's always people in the room. It's impossible not to be slightly miffed by the tourists that forget that you're in a church, that click two photos of the interior and talk too loudly to the people around them before moving on, but this can be countered if, say, a caring husband leaves his pregnant wife waiting patiently at the pews while he goes to fetch a priest to talk about a christening ceremony for the little not-yet-born human that will soon occupy all of their time. Then you can watch as one of the other priests, quicker at changing, comes over to talk to the pregnant wife like they're old family friends and watch the way she reacts, all comfort and smiles and quietly told stories, respectful but happy in the space she's in. You can sit back as the husband comes back, priest in tow, completely focused on getting back to his wife, smiling at her as he approaches. This little scene can give you a good bit of encouragement for the Church, if a place like this, so full of shiny things that they're willing to give you a printed guide at the door to help you sort it out, can still be bothered to do the simple care of a congregation. It can make you smile as you go back to your prayers.

I thumbed through the pamphlet on the objects in the room as I waited the extra half hour for the organ concert to start. The free concert, by the way, was something kinda crazy beautiful. They had singers as well, and they did Ave Maria, which I had done with my youth choir back home and dearly loved and my heart soared for a song I understood. All in all, it was beautiful. But before I got distracted by that, I was distracted by the top paragraph on the back of the pamphlet. "Before leaving, do look again at the painting aboce the main altar.

This work of art (by M. Altomonte) portrays the healing of the lame man by St. Peter and St. John at the Beautiful Gate in Jerusalem. Before you leave the church you might pray for the unity of all Christians. St. Peter's has worked for this goal since 400 AD."

See, the Ascention is when Christ left us all to deal with each other, you know, Love one another as I have loved you, etc. 400 years later, this church began its work trying to make that kind of unity true. It's all good, though. I can't think of a better place to celebrate the beginning of the churches' time together.