With World Mission Sunday celebrated across the catholic churches around the globe, and fall season just on the horizons, I took time out to visit Italy this year as part of my vacation. My friend from Brescia invited me to stay with his family during the course of my sojourn in Italy. I was so happy to be welcomed to their home and be treated like a member of their own family. Their warm hospitality was indeed molded with a heart to love, a story to tell, and a home to share that highlights clusters of greatness centering around friendship and good interpersonal relationship.
I came to Brescia on the cusp of excitement to touch base with the family and friends, along with my plan to visit Venice, Piacenza, Milan, and Bassano del Grappa. This year's attempt to explore Veneto came out as a window to profoundly high relative time of reconnecting with friends and confreres. It reminded me of an ancient maxim, quoted by Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, to guide a new pontiff: "Unity in essentials, liberty in doubtful matters, and in all things charity." I saw some shades of connections in dialogue with my everyday schedule with them.
It was both satisfying and literally suffused with good memories to hold close to my heart. I felt how the world was linked in my circle of gratitude like a powerful bridge between family and friendship. Like learning how to care for others and keep personal ties with faith and sincerity, my experience with them was indeed shared with Christ's presence in our hearts. That was one of my favorite moments living with them at this point in time. As the Bk of Proverb says, "the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good" (15:3).
My friend Dave and I drove to the city of Brescia and visited some major sights like Piazza della Loggia, the Old (Duomo Vecchio) and New Cathedral (Duomo Nuovo). We also visited the remains of the Roman Capitolium which is the Romaneque-Gothic church of St. Francis, with a Gothic façade and cloisters, the archbishop's residence, the Biblioteca Queriniana (containing rare early manuscripts, including a 14th-century manuscript of Dante, and some rare incunabula), the Broletto (formerly the Province Hall which is a massive building of the 12th and 13th centuries with a lofty tower), and the Piazza del Foro which is the most important array of Roman remains in Lombardy. These include the Capitoline Temple, built by Vespasianus in 73 AD.
According to history, there were different mythological versions of the foundation of Brescia. It says that one was attributed to Hercules and the other was to Altilia ("the other Ilium") by a fugitive from the siege of Troy. Another version was the king of the Ligures Cidnus who invaded the Padan Plain the late Bronze Age. However, many scholars attributed its foundation to the Etruscans.
The city of Brescia became Roman in 225 BC when the Cenomani gave in to Virginia. It was during the Carthaginian Wars when 'Brixia' was usually allied with the Romans. In 202 BC it was partly under the Celtic confederation that was changed later and was thus conquered. In 89 BC Brixia received its official title as civitas ("city") and in 41 BC its inhabitants got their Roman citizenship. Augustus and Tiberius were instruments in founding the civil colony and constructing an aqueduct to supply it.
In 312 Constantine advanced against Maxentius and they were compelled to move out as far as Verona. Then in 402 the Visigoths of Alaric I destroyed the city and again was besieged in 452 by the Gothic general Theoderic the Great against Odoacer.
