Cathedral of St. Paul, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

I received a rare Sunday off because the church where I'm employed was having Youth Sunday, complete with "praise music" with lyrics projected on the wall.  Seizing the opportunity to get the heck out of Dodge, we traveled to my husband's hometown.  My plan was to go to a Mass with fantastic music, something that rarely happens.  My husband's home church is very beautiful and has a holy priest with wonderful homilies, but the music there sounds like something that'd be sung by Joe Biden at an LCWR convention in Vegas honoring the most reverend Joan "Joanie-Babes" Chittister on the occasion of her ordination.

I thought perhaps we should just do penance and go to Mass there anyway to make some family members happy, but I was reminded of this post at The Chant Café and decided to stick with the original plan and attend the choir Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Pittsburgh, where we'd be guaranteed beautiful music. The kids and I left with plenty of time to take pictures before Mass began.  We assumed the church, which is adjacent to the University of Pittsburgh campus, was beautiful inside because we'd passed the stunning outside several times before while visiting museums in the area.

1962 Von Beckerath Organ

Note the beautiful woodwork and the stations above.

Very charming (and very narrow) stairway in the rear of church, leading to the choir loft and to the basement.  

View from the rear of the cathedral

Baptistry 

Detail of baptistry, featuring St. Joan of Arc

Windows above baptistry

Holy Family garden outside the cathedral.  If the pictures seem out of order, it's because we walked outside to get jackets from car, then returned to cathedral. :)

Pond with the hugest koi I've ever seen.

Cathedral doors. Note that the priest is wearing red for Pentecost Sunday.

Delicious gothic architecture

Very similar to a picture above, but sunshine is coming in these windows.

Gorgeous altars and a nice simple crucifix.

I thought it was interesting that modern doorways were installed inside the original doorways.  Curious.  A security measure, maybe?

Nice cathedra there on the left, eh?

What a fantastic altar. So beautiful. Too bad those chairs are in the way.

Our Lady! And Baby Jesus!

Another altar, this one on the left side of the church.  The altar with red on the far left houses the tabernacle.

Check out that communion rail.  Fantastic!

Tabernacle.  Sorry about the lighting.

I assume this is a baldacchino, but have never seen one used over a side tabernacle before.

Very sweet St. Michael statue. NOT girlie.

Copious candles

Mass was beautiful and reverent. The choir, though not professional, was a joy to listen to, and the organist was fantastic as one would expect at a cathedral.  We were treated to Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony from Thomas Tallis, and "modern" music from Maurice Durufle. Also included were hymns such as Hail Thee Festival Day, and O Breathe on Me O Breath of God.

The priest announced at the end of Mass that the next two Sundays would have Adoration immediately following the noon Mass; we were all calculating inwardly how long it would take us to drive up there.

Unfortunately (maybe) for me, attending this Mass drove home the point that I'm wasting time at my current position.  The resume is updated and ready to go out.  Now it's time to contact some Catholic churches.

Road Trip: Washington D.C. & the Basilica

Older Daughter was presenting at a conference in D.C., which meant Road Trip! for the other children and me since Husband was out of town. I approached this trip with dread, since the advice I'd heard about driving in the city (including from daughter's conference materials) went something like this:

***DON'T DRIVE IN DC!!!!!  IF YOU LOVE YOUR LIFE AND VALUE YOUR CAR, FIND ANOTHER WAY TO GET AROUND!!!!!***

That's good advice for people who have a choice, but some of us must drive in the city with a minivan that is reaaallly looooong. We dropped off Daughter at her upper-crust hotel and eventually made it to the *right* hotel, the one at which I'd actually made reservations for the rest of us (don't ask.)

Thank God for GPS.

I don't know how a tourist could possibly navigate that city without GPS, which made traveling around *relatively* painless. It probably would have been even more painless had we gotten a hotel along the metro line and had taken the train everywhere instead of having to drive to and park at Union Station twice so that we could take tours, only to be effectively abandoned by one of them, entailing a walk (albeit pleasant) from the Capitol back to Union Station, which is the location in which I've learned that Younger Daughter is really claustrophobic because she really hated it there and there were so many people, and because the bottom floor is a bunch of food-court-style places underground where people prepare food where there are no windows to look out not that I felt like it was a prison or anything or at least one huge t*e%r(r#o@r target.

Union Station 

Plus it's expensive to park there.

The only building we got to see fairly close up was the Capitol.  The building is immense and beautiful.  And locked up.  The steps were blocked off, and there were security people even under the large growth of bushes on the sides of the building. If I'd realized that the rest of our bus tour wasn't going to happen, we'd have stayed there and visited the museum.  As it was, we visited the gardens both around the building and in the park between the Capitol and Union Station.

Want to see the White House?  There are no tours because Sequestration and this is as close as you're going to get.  Sorry, suckers.

The area in front of the White House is the lawn where the Easter Egg Roll is held.  Or is that the Spring Holiday Egg Toss?  I know of a few things I'd like to see roll on that lawn. Mainly heads.

This is the view with the Capitol behind the camera: Washington Monument and National Mall and reflecting pool.

Panorama of the immense Capitol

Panorama of the side and rear of the Capitol.

Three days after dropping off Daughter, we picked her up, gave her a mini driving tour of the main sites (since she was busy with the *very successful* conference, she'd seen none of the city), then headed to the 9:00 a.m. Mass at the Basilica of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. 

The thought that kept occurring to me during our visit was, "Why didn't we come here first?" The place is stunning, and we could've spent the whole day there. I want to go back. 

View from the parking lot.

Front of the Basilica

One of the many chapels in the lower church dedicated to the different titles of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  I think this is Our Mother of Divine Providence.  The walls of the lower church (outside the chapels) were filled with memorials to individuals.

A view from inside the chapel mentioned above.

Pope Benedict sat in this chair when he visited the Basilica in 2008.  I miss him.

The museum in the lower church had many such items in it from various popes.

The chapel of Our Lady of Lebanon, patroness of the Maronite rite.

Explanatory plaque in the rear of the chapel.

St. Maron

Crypt church

Pipe organ in Crypt church

Chapel on the Gospel side of the crypt church

Crypt church altar

Mosaic of St. Cecilia

Chapels behind main altar of upper church

Chapels beside main altar of upper church

Closer-up picture of above chapels

Eucharistic chapel on Gospel side of upper church

One of the domes

Miraculous Medal chapel

Dome of Miraculous Medal chapel

One of many apparitions with which I'm unfamiliar - Our Lady of Brezje

Just because we wanted to stay there all day didn't mean we could, so we were off for a quick visit to Arlington National Cemetery to see the Tomb of the Unknowns.  Oldest Daughter urged me not to, since I was tired and we had to drive home, but she'd wanted to see this place for many years, so allons -y!

Solemn and beautiful

Tomb of the Unknowns

We were fortunate to see the Changing of the Guard, an unexpectedly moving experience.

Seven or so hours later, we arrived back safely at home.  God is good.

And I have next weekend off from The Job.  Where should we go?