The extra time also gave Stephen ample opportunity to vomit on me while Catherine was getting ready. I suspect this is a part of his spirituality as he does this regularly. It's how he consecrates his daily activity to the Lord. Unfortunately, I find it jars with my own secular goals of not getting thrown up on. I hope we find a laundry place soon.
Everything is much closer to our apartment than I anticipated. We began walking to our meeting place and before I knew it we had turned the corner to find half the horizon conquered by the dimensions of the Pantheon. And even though the square was full of tourists with absurd selfie sticks doing absurd touristy things, I found something about it to be frightening. There was the fact of sheer size but perhaps of greater significance is that before being converted into a Christian basilica it was the house of all the pagan gods known to Rome and the pure expression of her dominance at the height of her imperial power. It was commissioned during the reign of Augustus and one might think of it as the final gesture of paganism. But even while the stones were being laid, while Augustus oversaw this architectural apotheosis of religion and empire, he was also sending out a decree which would extend to the poorest and most barbarous margins of his realm. The Lamb of God was already coming to judge the nations.
Italians, it seems, do not know what a line is. When they want to get in somewhere, they huddle in undifferentiated crowds and push slightly forward. This was certainly the case when we got to the steps of the Pantheon. Some official-looking person was letting in small groups of people at a time according to how many tourists were leaving to avoid over-crowding. So many selfie-sticks. I did not know smart-phones had undone so many. Just in time, John spotted us and came to our rescue. We had been huddling for a few minutes wondering if they were going to let us go in for mass or not. He exchanged a few words with the official and ascertained that they were clearing out everyone who was just a tourist and then letting in mass-goers. A more toned-down bureaucratic cleansing of the temple for the sake of worship, I suppose. The set up was fairly small, a few nice wooden pews and a very lovely altar at the point opposite the entrance. The whole space was a perfect sphere with light provided from the open doors as well as the oculus above. There were no screens or panes of glass separating the temple from the sky above, like a porthole into heaven. Unfortunately, we've already passed Pentecost or we could have been there when thousands of red rose petals are dropped through the oculus to commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit. What we did get though, was an Italian incensed who went totally ninja with his job. He was twirling and spinning that censer like nobody's business. At first we thought it was a local custom or something but we conferred with John after the mass and he had never seen things done that way either. Too bad, because it was like liturgical nun-chucks. Also, Italian grandmas cannot be stopped from clucking at this baby at any time, not during mass, not even during consecration. He's unstoppable.
Part of the time during mass I spent thinking about what was removed and what was kept in order to convert this pagan temple into a Christian basilica and what significance this has. The idols could not remain because they claim to give explicit form to that which transcends all finite substances. These were replaced with statues of saints and apostles who lived in conformity with Christ and consequently became living stones and signs of the Divine Love. The lives of the holy witnesses also contrast with our accounts of Imperial Rome which chose the libido dominandi , and found its joy in unrepentant cruelty and sought from their gods the proliferation of erratic and unbounded desires. But some, whose consciences were pricked, might belong to those category of noble pagans that St. Paul tells us are a law unto themselves. Unless we are convinced that nothing worthwhile remains in the writings of those like Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero, part of conversion must be the appropriation of pagan learning, art, architecture, and even theology as adornments for the people of God. However, only what survives purification can be allowed to remain. Does anything survive the conflagration of Christian judgment in the Pantheon? Perhaps one such surviving adornment is the oculus, the survival of which, I imagine, is mostly an engineering necessity, but the tradition of rose petals at Pentecost make think that there is another reason. Didn't St. Paul praise the Athenians for their altar to the Unknown God precisely because it refused to give exchange the Creator for finite creation? It seems as if the oculus is a similar indication of the unknown god, an altar of absence that totally abnegates itself except as an opening to the transcendent. This remains a help for Christian spirituality and theology and within the liturgical practice. And, of course, this apophatic element must be paired with the kerygma of revelation. Christ is the infinite united to the finite and made present by the sacramental economy. In this way, the presence of an altar completes the Pantheon in a way its original architects could have never dreamed: the mystery of the Incarnation.
We saw several wagon-loads of other buildings today, so those will have to wait. Baby was a trooper and slept a ton while we carried him and put a blanket over his head to stop him from becoming a potato chip. He's still obsessed with water glasses and definitely had a fun time gnawing on a rim for a while. Resting up for now and then we're out to find a market to get groceries. For some reason, ND didn't think they should provide funding for us to eat at fancy restaurants every night. Bogus.
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