Friday of the Third Week of Lent at St Lawrence in Lucina

This ancient church stands in a small piazza just off the busy Via del Corso.  The titulus of St. Lawrence in Lucina took its name, as with many other of the early tituli, from the name of the donor of the site or structure itself, who in this case was the Roman landlady Lucina.  This area first became developed during the early Imperial period, with the famous Ara Pacis standing in a location just behind the apse of the church.  On this spot itself stood a large apartment building, known as an insula, traditionally that of Lucina though the original place of worship may have been located in another location nearby.  In the mid 430s, Pope Sixtus III built the first basilica here, like others of the time with a nave flanked by an aisle on each side and terminating in an apse.  Being in the midst of an area often hit by floods of the Tiber, the church was in need of periodical restoration, with at least two recorded in the first millennium.  During this era this church fulfilled an important liturgical role as the starting point of the procession for the Greater Litany, a penitential procession and liturgical service, on 25 April.  This procession, beginning here, would head up the Via Flaminia, crossing the Tiber at the Milvian Bridge before returning down the other side of the river for the stational Mass at St. Peter’s. (From: Procedamus in Pace, PNAC)

Collect

Pour your grace into our hearts, 

we pray, O Lord, that we may be constantly 

drawn away from unruly desires and obey 

by your own gift the heavenly teaching you give us. 

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, 

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of 

the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.