Feast Day: July 21st
Our saint this week takes us back to the earliest days of the Church in Rome. When St. Peter arrived in the capital of the empire, one of his first converts was a man named Pudens. He was the son of a Roman senator and is actually mentioned in St. Paul’s second letter to Timothy. As Paul concludes the letter, Pudens is mentioned as one of a few leaders in the Church in Rome who send their greetings.. Pudens was martyred himself, and had two sons (Novatus and Timotheus) and two daughters (Praxedes and Pudentiana).
Praxedes, with her sister, used the wealth inherited from her family’s upper-class standing to house (and hide) Christians during the persecutions that swept through Rome against the fledgling community, as well as themselves provided for those in prison and buried the martyrs. They were both martyred as young women and buried in the Catecomb of Priscilla, though their relics would eventually be returned to a Church named after St. Praxedes (called “Santa Prassede” in Italian) and built on top of the location of their home in Rome.
And I would like to actually take part of this article to explore that Church BECAUSE. These saintly sisters, but apparently especially Praxedes, were very quickly venerated in the Church of Rome. Already under Pope Evaristus, the 4th successor of St. Peter (he was the one who established the first 7 parishes in Rome, each with their own priest), we have him dedicating a Church “Titulus S. Praxedis”, that is, under the title, or the “titular” Church of St. Praxedes. It may have been on this site, perhaps still mainly the Pudens household, but at least we know that by the time Christianity was no longer against the law (4th century A.D.) a more formal Church was built on the location of their home and dedicated to St. Praxedes.
Fast forward to the 800s and Pope Paschal I is leading the Church through an artistic and theological revival (now called the “Carolingian Renaissance”, this is during the time of the Emperor Charlamagne), and included the building and restoring of numerous Roman Basilicas and the restoration of the bones of the martyrs to prominence in the city (rather than remaining in the catacombs outside). And this Church, much of it intact from the 8th century, gives us a glimpse back in time to the Church over a thousand years ago.
As you walk into the Church, you see a typical example (if especially splendid and marvelously preserved) of Roman Churches from that time. The Church is rectangular (“basilica”), with side aisles pushing out wider than the main roof, coffered, and towering above you. Granite columns (repurposed from other more ancient buildings that had crumbled) support large walls covered in frescoes (those much later, from the 1500s) that pull your eyes forward. Under your feet is a cosmaotesque floor, with colored stones and gold inscribing spirals and other geometric shapes between larger pieces of marble. (I should say, this is another way they recycled in the olden days: taking pieces of long-broken buildings and using them to create these splendid floors to give glory to God.)
But, as I said, all this draws your eyes forward. There, arching over the main altar, is a triumphal arch – this one unlike the ones of ancient emperors, with Christ enthroned in the center. Our Lord, carefully depicted by the mosaics, steps down from heaven, robed like the emperor, and holds a scroll in one hand, his other arm raised in blessing. St. Peter and St. Paul flank him, presenting Ss. Prassede and Pudenziana to God (this actually is similar to the mosaics found in San Clemente, a few hundred years prior). Other mosaics fill the corners and smaller arches. A side chapel has angels reaching up towards Jesus, Who fills the center of the vault of the ceiling and looks down on all of us below. But I want to draw our attention off to another saint off to the side of St. Praxedes. Well, not yet a saint, there a Holy Father is depicted, his head surrounded by a square (rather than circular) halo, holding in his hands a model of a church. Actually, it’s a model of this church. It is Pope Paschal, before he ever became a saint, standing there with these great saints and offering this little church he built to Jesus.
– Fr. Dominic since he was little has had a disposition to hurry from thing to thing, but these saints – Peter and Paul, Pudenziana and Praxede, and Pope Paschal – show us instead a willingness to preserver in offering very little things to God each day and letting Him build it into something great. For Peter it was often his foibles, for Paul his anxiety about his little Christian communities, for Pudenziana and Praxede the carefully collected blood and bones of the martyrs, for Paschal at first a few stones, then a few walls, and by the end a grand basilica. Like the floor, and those pictures that fill the walls, each of them could only bring little gifts to God each day, but by consistently doing that every day by the end of their lives they all had a spectacular mosaic of a Christian life well-lived to show for their perseverance.