GK Chesterton once wrote about a magnificent story he never
wrote about a man who ventured off to discover a new land, only to find that
his new land was his own home country. The idea was meant to be something of
analogy to his own discovery of Catholicism and I could think of no better
image to begin a post about my trip to Rome: it was on many levels, a
confrontation with who I am, in light of where I hope to be, a new adventure to
explore my own native soil.
Familiarity with many of Rome (and the Vatican’s) major sites
does not require much research: a quick scan of the cover of contemporary
Catholic books usually reveals the dome of St. Peter’s, the mosaic at St. Paul
Outside the Walls, or any number of statues or monuments in the eternal city.
But to be there in the person is quite a different experience: the strange
stones underneath your feet as you walk on Roman streets; the dizzying heights
of many domes and high ceilings; the sweet smell of incense wafting throughout
a basilica so large that Mass is only one thing occurring at any given time. You
must be in Rome to take in all the majesty and splendor of God, imagined by the
fathers and ancestors of the Church: If these shall hold their peace, the stones will cry out.
Experiencing Rome in person reinforced all my previously
held thoughts about the irresistibility of truth, and the reality of beauty.
Truth and beauty, after all, are one. While I visited various churches, I very
frequently returned in my mind to a scene in the movie Gladiator, in which a
band of slaves encounters the Colosseum for the first time. Upon seeing the magnificent
structure, one slave sums up their entire reaction when he utters in awe: “I
didn’t know men could build such things.”
Whether it was the procession of gorgeous statues standing
reverently at the top of St. Peter’s Square, within St. Peter’s Basilica or St.
John Lateran; or the myriad of beautiful frescoes in the Basilica of St.
Francis of Assisi or the mosaics at St. Paul Outside the Walls, the beauty of
all the art and architecture was mixed with the very real intimidation of all
its physics; for example, one may read that two Statues of Liberty standing on
top of each other could fit underneath the cupola at St. Peter’s, but it’s
quite another to look up at the vertiginous height beyond the amazing baldachinno.
It is one thing to see Bernini’s Moses in a photo, and another to be so close
to it to see the very intricate muscle fibers and strands of hair in his beard.
But perhaps the most awe-inspiring parts were the ones that
most non-Catholic would deem as strange, if not utterly morbid: the skull of
St. Agnes; the skeleton of St. Frances of Rome; the tombs of St. Peter, St.
Cecelia; the chains of St. Peter and St. Paul; the relics of a number of
saints.
Those beautiful reliquaries and the basilicas that house them sums up the trip, and my encounter with my own faith: within something magnificent is a very poetic and yet terrifying experience with one’s own mortality: the extravagance of truth and tradition, the cold reality of beauty.
