(A word from Ann: While in Rome as a tourist, three places struck and drove home to me the reality of the history of the One True Church and of the City of Rome as an integral part of that reality, which we North Americans struggle to grasp:

1.) The church of San Paolo alla Regola – built over the house in which St. Paul lived and worked as a tent maker on the banks of the Tiber. It’s all real.

2.) The church of Domine Quo Vadis on the Appian Road, in which I stood and prayed in a cast of Our Lord’s miraculous footprints as He told Peter that He was going back to Rome to be crucified again. Indeed. Indeed…. It’s all so very real.

3.) The subject of Mr. Stein’s video today: the gazebo outside the church of St. John at the Latin Gate which houses the cauldron in which the Romans attempted to deep-fry St. John alive. But, as Our Lord promised, St. John came out of the boiling oil rejuvenated, lived many more years, wrote the Apocalypse, and died a natural death. It’s all so viscerally, inescapably real.

NEVER DOUBT OUR LORD’S PROMISES. ABOUT ANYTHING. EVER.

And the Lord said: Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat:

Ait autem Dominus : Simon, Simon, ecce Satanas expetivit vos ut cribraret sicut triticum :

But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not: and thou, being once converted, confirm thy brethren.

ego autem rogavi pro te ut non deficiat fides tua : et tu aliquando conversus, confirma fratres tuos.

It’s all real.)

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