Lenten Station At St. Cecilia's

Non-Italic Text taken from The Saint Andrew Daily Missal for Wednesday of the Second Week in Lent
Italic Text taken from Wikipedia (the free encyclopaedia)
Pictures taken from Wikipedia (the free encyclopaedia)
Station at St. Cecilia's
Indulgence of 10 years and 10 Quarantines
Violet Vestments

 

The altar at Santa Cecilia, Rome

The Station is at the Sanctuary where the body of the illustrious Roman Virgin, Saint Cecilia, rests. It was there she lived and died a Martyr. In the 5th-Century, this Church was mentioned as one of the most celebrated parochial or titular Churches of Rome. It is situated in Trastevere. It was customary to read in this Church the Gospel in which Jesus tells to a woman it is necessary to drink His chalice, if one is to participate in His glory.

We read at the Epistle the Prayer of Mardochai, in favour of the Jewish people, whom the impious Aman had determined to destroy. He implored the Lord to turn their sadness into joy. The Christian people, in the same way, are mourning in their Lenten Penance and are looking forward to the holy Paschal joys. But, to deserve them, as the Gospel tells us, we must first drink the chalice of the One who came to shed His blood to redeem us and who will make us sharers in His resurrection, if we die to our sins.

Let us abstain from the food which sustains our bodies, and from the vices which poison our Souls (Collect).

Facade of Santa Cecilia, a 1725 project by Ferdinando Fuga, 

with the 12th century belltower

The first Church on this site was founded, probably in the 3rd-Century, by Pope Urban I; it was devoted to the Roman Martyr, Cecilia, (martyred, it is said, under Marcus Aurelius Severus Alexander) by the late 5th-Century, for in the Synod of 499 A. D. of Pope Symmachus, the Church is indicated with the Titulus Ceciliae. Tradition holds that the Church was built over the house of the saint. The baptistery associated with this Church, together with the remains of a Roman house of the early Empire, was found during some excavations under the Chapel of the Relics. On 22 November 545 A. D., Pope Vigilius was celebrating the saint in the Church, when the emissary of Empress Theodora, Antemi Scribone, captured him.

The Church has a façade built in 1725 by Ferdinando Fuga, which incloses a courtyard decorated with ancient mosaics, columns and a cantharus (water vessel). Its decoration includes the coat of arms and the dedication to the titular cardinal who paid for the facade, Francesco Cardinal Acquaviva d'Aragona.

Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, by Stefano Maderno, 

one of the most famous examples of Baroque sculpture

Pope Paschal I rebuilt the Church in 822 A. D., and moved here the relics of Saint Cecilia from the catacombs of St Calixtus. More restorations followed in the 18th-Century.

Among the most remarkable works is the graphic altar sculpture of Saint Cecilia (1600 A.D.) by the late-Renaissance sculptor, Stefano Maderno. This sculpture reportedly is modelled on the saint's body as seen in 1595, when her tomb was opened. The statue subtly depicts the saint's decapitation. In addition, it also it is meant to underscore the supposed incorruptibility of her cadaver (an attribute of some saints), which miraculously still had congealed blood after centuries. This statue could be conceived as proto-Baroque, since it depicts no idealized moment or person, but a theatric scene, a naturalistic representation of a dead or dying saint. It is striking, because it precedes by decades the similar high-Baroque sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini (for example, his Beata Ludovica Albertoni) and Melchiorre Caffà (Santa Rosa de Lima).

The crypt is also noteworthy, decorated with cosmatesque style, keeping the relics of Saint Cecilia and Saint Valerian.

The Cardinal priest of the Titulus Santa Caeciliae is Carlo Maria Martini. Among the previous titulars are Pope Stephen III, Adam Easton, Thomas Wolsey and Giuseppe Maria Doria Pamphili.