I've been back for six days but have been so busy getting my fields of alfalfa irrigated, I haven't had time to update this thread.
We arrived in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday morning (4/16) after getting about 2-2.5 hours of sleep (or son, naturally slept most of the nearly 5-hour flight from LAX to Dulles). We got to the hotel and left our bags and made visits to secular sights, namely the U.S. Supreme Court, National Archives, and U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing (saw lots of money!).
We got to bed about midnight, local time, and got up at 5am the following morning to make the trek to National's Park for Mass. The Metro system had a special Mass Pass for the day which worked the same as their regular daily passes except that they were valid starting at 5am (vs. 9:30am). My wife had ordered our passes online a month earlier and it worked out great since lines were long to go through the turnstiles but the Metro employees directed us with the Mass Passes to go around and just show our passes, saving us a good deal of time when getting in the line to board the trains and also when we got to the stop near the stadium. We got to the park around 8:30am, a little later than we had hoped, but it worked out okay. It probably took us a half hour to get through security and that wasn't much different than going to Disneyland. Though they looked at our ID and scanned our tickets, our tickets did not have our names on them and they weren't comparing our names to any list as far as we could tell. I think security for the NYC Mass was more intense (we had the opportunity to get tickets to that Mass as well but passed on that). We bought some t-shirts and a few small souveneirs before Mass since we had time and even then they were sold out of many things by the time I got to the front of the line.
The Mass was great. Their was much joy when Pope Benedict entered the stadium and went around in the Popemobile. I can't really think of words to describe the Mass celebration itself, but it was an uplifting experience to be among so many other faithful Catholic Christians. I focused closely on the Holy Father's homily and believe it and his other homilies and speaches are a good source of guidance for everyone, Catholic or not. They are all available at
http://www.ewtn.com/USPapalVisit08/words/index.asp. Later I learned that some of our political leaders who call themselves Catholic but do not abide by the teachings of the church received Eucharist even though the Holy Father has made it clear in the past that they should not do so. It's very arrogant or ignorant on their part, but I guess I will try to pray for their conversion of heart. Also, some people have made some critical comments about the Mass at Washington, D.C. that has been making the press. It seems that the music was more prominent on TV than for us there in person as I did not really find a problem with it even though I have a fairly conservative view on things. My wife did remember the Psalms sounding strange and I've gone back and watched the online video of it at
http://www.ewtn.com/USPapalVisit08/media/index.asp and I agree with her. Still, we had a jubilant experience, overall. We were on the third tier (which is up fairly high), but we had a great view and Pope Benedict entered and exited the stadium directly below us (maybe 150 feet, I would guess) I have some nice photographs which I will upload to one of my sites later.
Later that day we went to Arlington National Cemetary and then we went on an organized night tour of national monuments from about 7:00pm to 10:30pm. We were really exhaused by then!
We spent two more full days visiting the area and I don't remember the order of everything. We had a congressional staffer give us a tour of the Capitol and we visited two Smithsonian museums (I was disappointed that so many parts were closed for maintenance). We went to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, walking through some of the Catholic University of America campus on the way. I had read a fair amount about it beforehand but was still in awe when arriving, especially when seeing all of the wonderful mosaic artwork inside. I believe there are 61 chapels in the Basilica which I found hard to comprehend. I think it would be easy to spend an entire week at the Basilica itself. I think it's probably the most beautiful church building I've ever seen, even after traveling a fair amount around Italy, Portugal, and the Holy Land. By the way, I have a one hour slideshow of our pilgrimage to the Holy Land hosted online so let me know if you want to see that some time. We also visited the John Paul II Cultural Center. I found it sad that this little gem is so neglected. They rarely have 100 visitors in a day but they are hoping that Pope Benedict's visit to the center has helped make more people aware of it. We'd like to go back and visit the area some more and I told my son that I thought he should go to college at CUA (he's got 8 years to think about it). We went to the vigil Mass at the Basilica on Saturday evening and that was also very inspiring. People seemingly come from quite some distance to attend Mass there as it had very good attendance.
We wish he had time to see more things, but we exhausted ourselves, walking 5-10 miles a day. Both my wife and I had problems with our feet and I wished I had taken better walking shoes. To save space on packing I only brought one pair of shoes and that was a big mistake, especially since I learned that the shoes I brought were not up to the task. I do quite a bit of walking and hiking normally but this was very hard on us. Maybe that was our cross to carry on our pilgrimage.
Peace and God bless,
