Many Fish

Piercing logic indicates that's what Polycarp means in Latin--or Greek--‘poly’, many, like in ‘polymer’ or ‘polymabobber’, and then ‘carp’, fish, as in ‘fish’, or ‘carpe diem’. Actually Saint Polycarp is not who today’s station church is named for, but who’s feast day it is, February 23^rd. Bishop of Smyrna (Izmir, Turkey, one of the seven churches of Revelation [1:11, 2:8-11]) he was a disciple of a disciple, Saint John, who had hung out with Jesus. Polycarp came to Rome with Saint Ignatius of Antioch (from Antioch) to confer with Pope Anicetus on when to celebrate Easter—critical when you don’t want your chocolate Easter bunnies to go stale . . . or have somebody bite the ears off them before it's even allowed.

Sadly, there actually were no chocolate Easter bunnies back then, and nobody even gave up chocolate for Lent, because chocolate hadn't been discovered yet . . .

St. Polycarp did write a letter to the Philippians though, since that seems to have been the thing to do back then. For us who are in the middle of Lent, his words on endurance are timely:

"I exhort you all therefore to be obedient unto the word of righteousness and to practice all endurance, which also ye saw with your own eyes in the blessed Ignatius and Zosimus and Rufus, yea and in others also who came from among yourselves, as well as in Paul himself and the rest of the Apostles; being persuaded that all these ran not in vain but in faith and righteousness, and that they are in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered. For they loved not the present world, but Him that died for our sakes and was raised by God for us" (9:1-2, ital. orig.--which I think is short for 'Italian Origami').

This 'due place' of the martyrs is seen in the two (double bonus day) guys our station church today was named for: Marcellinus and Peter, who are remembered in the first Eucharistic Prayer of the Sacramentary. Marcellinus was a priest during the time of the Emperor Diocletian, and Peter, his good bud, was an exorcist. One of the bigger headaches for Diocletian was that these guys weren't just private believers, but high profile, bringing crowds into the Faith . . . and as we know, when Christians don't keep quiet, well, headaches.

This is behind the main altar:
















Analyzing this picture shows why Roman martyrs, like St. Cecilia, had problems. Look at the trajectory of the sword to the right: we're looking at point of impact mid-to-lower back, at best the shoulder blades, and nowhere near the neck, which is what you're going for in a beheading.





Notice as well the two angels at the top lining up the crowns for the two martyrs, as well as big palm branches ('Let's give these guys a hand as they come in . . . no, wait, just a palm').

The view of St. Mary Major's on our way to a post-Mass cappuccino.




We stopped in at a bakery, and it seems the Romans also are starting to look toward Lent's fasts ending:




















This several-foot-tall Easter egg conglomerate includes the image of a chalice to the lower right. A closer look also shows many dolphins in the sculpture: is there a porpoise to that?