Our Little Trip to St. Louis, MO

We went on a little trip to St. Louis, MO recently and I wanted to share some pictures.

Our son, Angelo, who is our youngest, is soon entering the FSSP seminary in Lincoln, NE. Angelo is so much a part of what goes on here and we will miss him…a lot! So a few of us decided to take a little trip to Missouri to see the Basilica and just have a great time together…pulling us away from the daily duties of life to enjoy one another’s company…which is exactly what we did!

Our AirBnB

We got a nice AirBnB that had  some perks. One of them was the little Arcade downstairs. We don’t play video games around here but there is one game I am familiar with….Galaga.

When my husband and I first got married, we helped his family with the busy watermelon and cantaloupe season. We looked after the family’s thriving Truck Farm Stand in Bolivar, MO. At lunch time, we would go get pizza at Mazzio’s Pizza and they had a Galaga game. My husband and I had a great time challenging each other on it!

So… when we discovered Galaga on the Arcade machine at this AirBnB…well, Angelo and I had a stiff competition going on! He won the competition but I put up a good fight!

They also had a poker table there with the poker chips so the kids tried their hands at that! No alcohol, no money, just some clean fun!

Institute of Christ the King, St. Francis de Sales Oratory

Saturday was the feast of the Assumption and we went to Mass at the Institute of Christ the King. We were blown away by the beauty of this Gothic Church! It is called the St. Francis de Sales Oratory. How I love St. Francis de Sales!

Not only was the Church and the liturgy so very beautiful and striking…but also the fact they didn’t have air conditioning will be something memorable in our minds. The days were 100 degrees at that point so it was very warm! And the Church was packed with families, elderly, young people! It was heartwarming. These people care about the TLM and are willing to sacrifice for it!

Also, the amount of time the priest was willing to stay in the confessional as each penitent made their way through the long and continuing line was impressive. It was extra warm in that little box! 

(They are in the process of getting AC.)

The Cathedral Basilica

We also went to visit the beautiful Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Lindell Boulevard. 

Here are some especially interesting facts that I looked up:

• Its mosaics contain approximately 41.5 million individual pieces of glass, called tesserae.
• The artists used more than 7,000 different colors of glass.
• The mosaics cover approximately 83,000 square feet—almost two acres. It is considered one of the largest collections of mosaics in the world.
• Work on the mosaics began in 1912, but the final sections were not completed until 1988. Altogether, the decoration took about 76 years.
• Some artists devoted much of their working lives to the cathedral. The father-and-son craftsmen Paul and Arno Heuduck were especially important in producing and installing the mosaics.
• Different portions tell different stories. The mosaics in the entrance portray the life of St. Louis IX, King of France, the patron saint of both the cathedral and the city.
• Other mosaics portray scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the lives of saints, and important events in the history of Catholicism in St. Louis.

These are public domain pictures:

The Hill

We were out scouting for a place to eat on Saturday evening. We decided on an Italian restaurant. It was a busy place and the streets were full of parked cars so we had to park a few blocks away. We noticed as we were walking, red green and white stripes on things…crosswalks were that color, fire hydrants…and then we would see signs or banners with the same three colors and the words “The Hill”. There was an obvious Italian feel to the houses, etc. Our kids have been to Italy and they recognized the similarities right away. 

A few facts about “The Hill’:

• The neighborhood received its name because it lies on relatively high ground near what was once called St. Louis Hill.
• Large numbers of Italian immigrants settled there between the 1880s and the 1920s. Many came from northern Italy, especially Lombardy, rather than from southern Italy and Sicily.
• St. Ambrose Catholic Church became the spiritual and social heart of the neighborhood. It began as a mission church in 1903 and became a parish in 1907.
• When the original wooden church burned in 1921, parishioners pledged $1 per month for five years toward a new church. The present St. Ambrose Church was dedicated in 1926—quite literally built through the sacrifices of neighborhood families.
• St. Ambrose was designed in a Lombard Romanesque style, recalling the ancient Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan.
• The names of contributing parish families were engraved on marble panels in the church—a lasting record of the immigrants who helped build it.
• You can recognize The Hill by its red, white, and green fire hydrants, painted in the colors of the Italian flag.
• The neighborhood is famous for family-owned Italian restaurants, bakeries, groceries, meat markets, pasta companies, and small brick homes. Some businesses have remained in the same families for generations.

It was an interesting and aesthetic area and we were impressed. We saw the Church and went to make a visit but it being the Feast of the Assumption, it was packed with standing room only. So we decided to go back the next day when things were quieter.

Monday morning we went into the Church. It was very lovely and the size and quantity of the statues was wonderful!

There was a side altar dedicated to Our Lady where you could put the names and due dates of expectant mothers on a tag attached to a single silk rose. The people of the parish will pray for that mother! Hannah filled out one for each of the expectant mothers in the family…5 of them! And then for two of our dear friends who are expecting. I thought that was a lovely custom!

Our little trip had come to an end. We snatched a few more photos of the lovely park in “The Hill” and headed on home. It was only a five to six hour drive for us so that wasn’t bad. And Baby Charbel was the best baby ever on the trip! 

Please, in your charity, if you would say a prayer for Angelo as he makes this new step of entering the seminary. God’s will be done!

Farm Life Apron! ~ Available here.