Jaki on today's feast of the Assumption of Mary

The words "pray for us sinners..." reveal their appropriateness in most unusual and unforeseen occasions. For the writer of this book one such occasion came as he was sitting in the front pew of the Chiesa de' Fratti in Venice gazing at Titian's "Assumption," a masterpiece also by its monumental size. He did as a teacher of his had done in the early thirties in traveling by train from Hungary to Berlin through Dresden. He stopped there, took a cab to the Zwinger, went straight to Raphael's Sistine Madonna, sat before it for two hours, and then rushed back to the train station to continue his journey. I had only half an hour to spend in that Chiesa and wanted to spend all that time in gazing at Titian's masterpiece.
[SLJ Twenty Mysteries]

A personal note from Dr. Thursday: If I am ever in Europe, I hope I will remember to do this. There are many things on my list - none of them the usual "tourist" things, but all of them thrilling in a Catholic or scientific or musical - that is to say, in a Human fashion... And I have so many friends on the eastern side of the Atlantic, too... Ah, well - someday, perhaps, God willing.