Saturday Sojourn: Tre Fontane

The Abbey to the left and Our Lady of Martyrs to the right. Between them is the path to St. Paul at the Three Fountains.

Thanks to all of you that have commented lately, either to say hello or to pass along Easter wishes. I'm glad you're enjoying the blog, and I hope you can keep reading! Sorry for the dearth of posts lately. It's been a busy week since returning from Poland, getting back into the swing of classes, formation meetings, visits with pilgrims, apostolate work, and all the other things that are part of the exciting life of a NAC seminarian.

On Saturday, I was able to travel with some of the other Little Rock guys to Tre Fontane, the site where, according to tradition, St. Paul was martyred about 65 AD. The final years of St. Paul's life are a little sketchy, but most sources agree he was arrested some time after his third missionary journey (to Ephesus, Macedonia, and Corinth), probably somewhere in Turkey. He was taken to Caesarea and imprisoned for several years there before appealing to be judged by the emperor Nero, a right he had as a Roman citizen. However, since Nero was the first emperor to actively persecute Christians and since he needed a group to blame for the fire that devastated Rome in 64 AD, and the fates of Paul and St. Peter (also imprisoned at the time in Rome) were effectively sealed. They were executed on or about the same day -- Peter, a non-Roman, by crucifixion in the Circus of Nero (part of which is now St. Peter's Basilica and Square) and Paul, as a Roman citizen, by the more humane method of beheading outside the city walls.

"The place of St. Paul, apostle and martyr, where three fountains marvelously sprang forth"

That site, located along the ancient Via Laurentina about three miles south of Rome's center, is today a quiet and prayerful place set amidst gardens and tall stone pines. The complex consists of three churches, each within a few yards of each other. The Abbey of the Three Fountains, officially the Abbey of Saints Vincent and Anastasius, is the newest of the three, dating from about the 7th century and built to house the monks who were to care for the two older churches. Our Lady of Martyrs was built atop the relics of St. Zeno of Rome and his 10,000+ legionaries who were executed on the order of Diocletian around the year 300. In the crypt of the church is an ancient Roman prison, the same one which is said to have held St. Paul in the years leading up to his death.

The third and most important church is St. Paul at the Three Fountains, the site of Paul's beheading. According to ancient legend, after the saint was decapitated, three fountains miraculously sprang up at the spots at which his head bounced three times. (There's some evidence that the springs pre-date Paul though, as the area might have been known as Aquae Salviae, "Sage Waters," even before St. Paul's death). Today, three small shrines are built along one side of the church wall, above each of the three fountains. It's a popular tourist and pilgrimage destination, especially now as the Church is preparing to wrap up the Year of St. Paul this summer.


For me, it was also a powerful reminder of both the costs and the rewards of being faithful to the Christian message. Paul has always been meaningful for me -- my middle name, the name of an uncle I never knew, the name of one of the three or four greatest saints of the Church and maybe its greatest example of conversion. As I matured to adulthood, St. Paul has been an inspiration and a model of the Christian ideal, a man who had such a powerful encounter with Christ that he radically changed his life. He became one of those believers whom he had previously been persecuting -- indeed, not just a believer, but the "Apostles to the Gentiles," revolutionizing the mission of the Church and spreading the Gospel across the Mediterranean. Looking into the cramped, dirt-floor cell where he had been imprisoned, with its tiny window looking out on the garden, I could almost hear Paul as he wrote to Timothy: "I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (2 Tm 4:6-7). At the end of his great career, his work accomplished, he waited quietly for death and, through death, his reward in Christ. Though Paul is a famous example, we as Christians are called to respond with similar fidelity, teaching and proclaiming the truth of Jesus even unto death, indeed, embracing the Cross of Christ, for only through it do we participate in his Easter Resurrection.

That's your Rome wisdom for the day. Prayers for all of you as this Easter season continues! And check back soon to hear a bit about my recent travels to Poland and France earlier this month.