In Memoriam: Norcia's Co-Cathedral and Madonna Addolorata

The co-cathedral of Norcia (no longer with us)

A week ago, I spoke of the Basilica in Norcia and how much we will miss it. (If this is true even for laypeople who visit only now and again, how much more true must it be for the monks, who have spent countless hours chanting the praises of God and offering His holy sacrifice within its walls, under its capacious dome?)

But as NLM readers know, this was not the only casualty: all the churches of Norcia collapsed in the last earthquake. Of the many churches in town, two others were particularly dear to me and my family: the Co-Cathedral and the Chiesa della Madonna Addolorata. (Norcia used to be its own diocese, but when it was fused with Spoleto to become the Spoleto-Norcia diocese, each town retained a cathedral for the single bishop.)

Pictures have their own eloquence that words cannot match, now that these noble buildings lie in ruins. Suffice it to say that the co-cathedral was beloved to many because of its beautiful fresco of SS. Benedict and Scholastica in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, and its various side-altars that had more beauty than the main sanctuary.

The Cathedral tower, seen from the bell tower of the Basilica

Side altar

Choir loft

Side altar with image of SS. Benedict & Scholastica

A close-up

The same, past the iron grill

The altar of the Crocifisso

The church of Our Lady of Sorrows (Madonna Addolorata) was built in the 13th century and, as is typical throughout Europe, Baroquified at a later period. It later belonged to the Oratorians, who outfitted it for music with multiple balconies. In more recent centuries it has housed a miraculous icon of Our Lady that the Nursini carry around in procession each year on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. My son and I were present for that procession in September 2015. (I'm assuming that the people removed this image right away after the first earthquake in August, but I don't know.)

The facade of Madonna Addolorata

The inside

(This picture was not taken by us. The lighting is better than we had.)

The choir loft

The main altar with the venerated image

My children and some friends singing medieval music in the church last July

In Memoriam: The Basilica of Norcia

It may seem strange to speak this way, but when I saw the photos of the Norcia basilica in ruins, I felt such a sense of loss, grief, and pain that it was as if a friend or a relative had died. It hit me in the gut in the same way. And when I saw how other churches in the town had also crumbled, the effect was only compounded. How oddly reminiscent of that verse about our own mortal bodies: "You are dust, and unto dust you shall return." Churches are earthly images of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the Bride of Christ, and they bear upon their facades her face; it is her body their naves imitate, her heart their sanctuaries represent. When a church falls, the Church loses one of her embodiments.

These churches were places where I have prayed so many times, on so many visits to the monks and the monastery that is my spiritual home (to the extent that one can be said to have a home here in this vale of tears and land of exile). The basilica is where I fell in love with the traditional Divine Office, where I gloried in the splendor of the Mass of the Roman Rite, where I discerned a calling to become a Benedictine oblate, where I learned best what it means to have roots as a Catholic, worshiping in and above the crypt where, by tradition, Saints Benedict and Scholastica were born. Seeing the huge structure as a pile of rubble brought home to me, perhaps more than anything else has ever done, the transiency, fragility, and mutability of all our human works. The most solid structures we can build are still precarious houses of cards compared to the power of the unmoved Mover latent in the cosmos.

It does not occur to me to blame God. He is as He always is: whispering His Word into our ears, our hearts, our sacraments, our churches, infusing His Spirit into the feeble and fallible works of our hands and minds as we strive to serve Him in fear and trembling, in chaste and filial love. "For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with his sons" (Heb 12:6-7). It is a long journey from our fallen human condition to the day of our perfect configuration to the only-begotten Son of God, and there is no telling what kind of sufferings or privations will be visited upon us to make our imitatio Christi more real.

But there is a time for words and a time for silence. Now is more of a time for the latter. I will share some photographs that my son Julian and I took of this beloved place. (Any good photos are his work, while the blurry ones are mine.) The noble basilica depicted here now rests in pieces. I hope and pray that someday it will rise up in resurrection.

The roof, seen from the bell tower

In the bell tower

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