Altar Call

No, this is not the Leaning Tower of Santa Pudenziana, but it is the famed 'leaning- the- camera- way- back- to- try- and- fit- the- whole- church- in' shot.

Mountain Butorac, who also publishes at Catholic
Exchange, comments on his blog (which has been following the station churches Stateside) that in a sense this church, prior to John Lateran, could be considered the first cathedral of Rome, since tradition indicates that when Saint Peter first showed up in town, he stayed at Senator Pudens house, where today's church is situated. Pudens' daughter, Pudenziana, takes the name of today's church (wait, it's the other way around), being martyred with her sister Praxedes.



A portion of the altar Saint Peter used in this first of house churches is kept in the church (the rest, of course, now being at the Basilica of John Lateran).
























Altar of the Altar (altered and updated by Cardinal Wiseman).




Santa Pudenziana and her sister were known for rescuing the bodies of the martyrs--fitting well into today's Gospel on forgiveness (Matt 18:21-35), as our homilist noted. You and I don't have to daily forgive the regime that is slaughtering our friends--yet even as Pudenziana and Praxedes carefully preserved the relics of the some 3,000 martyrs in today's church, they prayed for those who were executing them, hoping they'd all end up in eternity together.
















Here Santa Pudenziana is heading skyward--and you can see the profusion of relics cascading over the high altar, as they're brought out in each church on their station day.




A little higher up in the back you can see the outstanding mosaic which is older than . . . well, other newer things. Dating from the 4th century, it shows the four evangelists hovering over Jesus and the Apostles, with the heavenly Jerusalem looking a lot like contemporary Rome. The buildings may represent churches built by Constantine in Jerusalem, with the Crux Gemmata reflecting the cross he put up at Calvary.