Adventures in Italy: Day 2

To pick up where I left off, we had spent the day seeing the sites (the ones we recognized, anyway) in Rome and were now ready to see the city (and the bars) at night.  We joined our hostel's guided night tour/pub crawl and were surprised to find out that our tour guide was from none other than...... Cedar Rapids, Iowa!  A recent graduate of Coe College, no less.  Talk about a small world.  Too bad he insulted both Iowa and the French during his short tour, otherwise we might have been more proud of him!  

All in all, the tour was fun.  Mr. Iowa gave us a brief overview of the history of some of Rome's most famous families and told a decently spooky ghost story about the Trevi Fountain before leading us to a popular student bar, upon which our sizable group descended enthusiastically.  There, Kate met an attractive young man from South Africa, via Germany, where he works for Mercedes-Benz! - nice going, Kate!  Also, the bar had a fake "Mouth of Truth," which, if you look at the Rome photo album, you can see how thoroughly enthused I was about it.  (For those of you who haven't seen "Roman Holiday", the Mouth of Truth is the subject of a pivotal scene between Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.) I was even lucky enough to visit the real thing a few days later!  

The next morning I had made reservations for the Galleria Borghese for 8:30am, whew that was early!  But boy was it worth it- we decided to take a guided tour and it was one of the best tours I have ever had.  The museum is famous for its Bernini sculptures, which are absolutely breathtaking.  Pictures are not allowed inside, so unfortunately you won't find any in my albums.  Check out this link to the Galleria if you would like to see some photos and learn more about the museum: http://www.galleriaborghese.it/en/edefault.htm    At any rate, it was one of the most beautiful and fascinating collections I have ever seen.  The sculptures seem to be stepping right out of the stone, frozen in a precise expression and moment of time but ever on the verge of their next movement.  

After our tour, we hurried on over to St. Peter's Square, emerging from the subway just as the noon bells were ringing.  When we arrived, the pope's Sunday blessing was already underway, the square filled with people from all over the world.  What a sight: you enter the square and everyone seems to be looking over your shoulder- you turn around, and way up there in a little window second from the right is the Pope himself, a speck of goodwill all dressed in white.  It could easily be an impressionist painting: the crowd of thousands gathered in the vast square and basking in the noon sun, their faces turned eagerly toward the holy white dot.  

Once I had taken in the scene, my attention quickly turned to the Pope's speech.  He delivered the same speech over and over, in at least a half dozen languages, each time mentioning a special group (from the country whose language he was speaking) that was in the crowd that day, which always spurred isolated bursts of cheers and applause.  When he switched to English, it was as if I had never heard anything so clearly ever before.  He wished to us that, through our stay here, our faith would be strengthened in Jesus Christ.  That is what stuck with me the most.  You didn't have to be Catholic, or even a Christian, to feel a shiver of something bigger in the world (and beyond it) when he spoke.   

During my time there, I often found myself reflecting on Rome, the Vatican City, and their intense veneration of religion and history.  There is an immense, almost unfathomable amount of art dedicated to Christianity and the Roman gods, just in these two cities.  It was humbling and perplexing to imagine the number of people who had dedicated their lives to creating these works, and all of the people who have come since to admire them or to worship in their presence.  I know, it goes without saying that Jesus is important.  I mean, he's the Son of God, according to Christians.  But to see the life work of so many people dedicated to one man, well I finally felt like I understood just how real and important he has been (and continues to be) to an innumerable amount of people over millenia.  Not only was this visible in the artwork, you could see it in the people, too.  More than anywhere else, I saw it in the faces of the faithful, drinking in the Pope's precious blessing.  I didn't need a mirror to see I had some self-reflecting to do.