9:30pm (7 until Midnight) thursday
Saint Paul Cathedral
Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh
Maundy Thursday Private Adoration
108 North Dithridge St, Pgh PA 15213
oakland
This past fall, I met a patron at a south side café; she was taking delivery of a painting she had purchased and we had agreed to meet on a Friday morning. Happened to be immediately after my visit to Saint Paul of the Cross Monastery Chapel, my 18th visit (not to be confused with the church of this 54th visit). It’s the similarity in name that prompted her to mention that she was married at St. Paul’s the Diocese in Oakland. This St. Paul’s (my 54th visit) also happens to be the Roamin’ Catholic nun’s most frequent destination, whom I met at the end of my 34th visit. Cheers to both of these women.
To start: visually, this one is well worth a visit. Whiteness. Huge brimming space.
I feel that the most appropriate time for private adoration is at day's end. Same with making art. And so at 9:30pm I arrive. I climb out of my car, watching in front of me, three school-age brothers, a sister and their father do the same. Imagining this yearly household tradition. I enter the sanctuary and shoot photographs with the other tourists. Sit quietly in a pew with the other pray-ers. Stare at the humbling arches, stories and stories above, and at the faces pushing out of the stone trim, the whiteness of the alter. Decide what it is I am going to draw. Move myself to a pew with a better view. Realize I do not have any unused paper with me. Drive home. Get paper. Drive back. Draw.
It is after 11:30pm when I finish. Two visits plus an unexpected return: I have completed my Maundy Thursday.
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