First, I lost my way walking to the Basilica of Saint Praxedes, the shrine of a Roman woman Rome who lost her life defending her new Christian faith. Before her martyrdom she  cared for the bodies of martyrs and collected their blood with a sponge and their bones to be bur-ied. Praxedes was not lost but found and buried where her church now stands. There a Pope named Paschal built today’s church in the ninth century, lost (one might say) in Rome’s urban sprawl. I finally found it after a weary loop to Repubblica and on past Saint Mary Major around the corner. And there I found the great mosaics, but lost the light and had to dig to find a euro to buy illumination. I marveled at my find—colors proclaiming life lost and faith found. And, intending next to find a cartoleria to buy folders to hoard my re-cent research, I felt for my wallet—only to find I had lost it on the basilica’s cold benches (or one of Rome’s pickpockets, “post-graduates in the art,” a friar told me later) “found” it in my open pocket). My theological conclusion:               

Anthony had takenhis feastday off!