Station at St. Peter's

Saturday of Ember Week in Lent.
Station at St. Peter's.
(S. Pietro.)

The Station for the Saturday of Ember Week
is always at the great basilica erected by Constantine
and rebuilt by the Popes in the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries
on the hill of the Vatican
on the spot where St. Peter died on the cross
and where his body rests.
It is there that ordinations take place.

The ancient Station at the Vatican Basilica
was prompted by the eminently Roman idea
that every transmission of ecclesiastical power,
through the conferring of one of the sacred orders,
was derived from the supreme power of Peter.

Therefore ordinations in Rome
must take place at the Vatican,
with this distinction,
that whereas it was a the prerogative of the Pope
to receive consecration
at the altar which was over the tomb
of the Prince of the Apostles,
in other cases
the ceremony took place in one of the adjoining oratories.

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Oremus.
Let us pray.

The snares of the enemy have involved me in darkness:
enlighten me, O Christ, Who, when hanging on the Cross,
didst obscure the sun,
and bring to Thy faithful the rays of pardon.
May I walk in the light of Thy commandments and,
being purified, come to the brightness of Thy saving Resurrection.

Thou, O my Saviour and Christ!
Hanging like a vine on the wood of the Cross,
didst enrich the whole earth with the wine of immortality.
Therefore do I cry out unto Thee:

I was miserably blinded by the intoxication of sin,
but Thou didst bestow upon me
the sweet refreshment of true compunction;
grant me, now, the strength that I may fast
from sinful pleasures,
for Thou art a good and merciful God.