A Blessed Journey

The past month has been incredibly blessed! Aaron and I had the privilege to take a pilgrimage to Rome, Italy during the first week of Christmas break as a final wedding gift. Our biggest purpose for going was to receive the Sposi Novelli blessing, a special gift given to any newlywed couple who travels to Rome within two months of their wedding day. We received the blessing during Pope Francis' General Public Audience which takes place every Wednesday that the Pope is in Rome. There has been a long-standing tradition of newlywed couples attending this audience in their wedding attire and receiving this blessing at the end of the Audience during the general blessing. We built a week around the Wednesday audience, spending the rest of our time making visits to some of the holiest places in Rome, as well as a weekend trip to Assisi.

Waiting for the Audience to begin!

View of the Pope's platform, with hundreds in St. Peter's Square just below

Pope Francis giving his homily

The highlight of the pilgrimage was definitely on Wednesday at the General Audience. As newlyweds, we were given priority seating up close and personal to the Holy Father (about 30 feet away from where he sat), with about 20 other newlywed couples from around the world (only about five were from the US). At the end of the audience, Pope Francis went out into the main crowd in St. Peter's Square and visited with the pilgrims while Vatican officials ushered all of us newlywed couples onto the front steps of St. Peter's Basilica. We waited there for about 30 minutes in great excitement, disbelief, and joy, looking like a scene from a bridal magazine with all these different shapes, sizes and nationalities of bridal gowns. The Holy Father slowly began making his way towards the newlywed couples, only after greeting his way along the rows of people, never forgetting to stop and kiss any baby he saw. We were standing in about the middle of the row of newlywed couples, so we were excited and ready to meet Pope Francis by the time he reached us. We happily received about 20 seconds with him, shaking his hand, telling him where we were from, and giving him a document of over 200 prayer intentions we brought with us from our students, family, and friends. Before he left us, he put his arms around myself and Aaron and gave us a silent and beautiful blessing. "Please pray for me," he smiled in broken English, and walked gently to the next couple. As I wiped the tears from my eyes and took Aaron's hand, we knew that God had allowed us to be in the presence of one of the most humble, gentle, and strong men our generation has ever seen. And we knew that whatever we would face in our married lives, it wouldn't ever be alone. Our marriage truly has been blessed by the grace of God.

We do have pictures of us meeting the Pope and receiving the blessing from him. We hope to put those out in our February newsletter, so keep an eye out! Another incredible grace that has happened since we returned is that many of the prayer intentions we brought with us to pray for while in Rome and also gave a copy of to Pope Francis have started to be answered in miraculous ways. This can only be attributed to how much God loves each one of His children on earth and how He desires us to come to Him with all our burdens. Prayers can be answered anywhere and in any way, but they're so much more powerful when they're shared with others!

Oh, and afterwards, we were interviewed on national tv by Good Morning America about it. They were doing a special in Rome that week and wanted an American newlywed couple to interview, so in God's great sense of humor, we were picked to do the interview. It may have been more exciting on any other day other than one where we just met Pope Francis.... That kind of trumped everything else that day. But it was still pretty cool, and hopefully we were able to bring some joy and truth to America's morning television world. Here is the link if you'd like to see it:  http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/kansas-couple-meeting-pope-francis-21259352