The Extravagance of Belief - Lessons of Rome
Last weekend I went to Rome with the aim of ticking a major item off my bucket list. I am not a Catholic but for years now I have wanted to visit the Vatican. As a former student of art history I also could not help but be aware of the extraordinary works of art housed within its walls, or the historical spilt with the Catholic church that led to the reformation and the establishment of the Church of England within which I worship and preach.
My husband is also a Catholic; he may not practice but he has long been interested in religious history, art and architecture. As a photographer all his work has focused on religious iconography (he once held an exhibition called Pilgrim’s Eye: Sacred Sites) and he often points out the greater aesthetic heritage of the Catholic church versus other denominations. So I approached this visit with enormous expectations, and perhaps baggage, but now looking back over three extraordinary days in Rome, I realise that it there we lessons be learnt across the city.
There is no denying it, the Vatican City and its museums are extraordinary; to see in the flesh works of art that I had studied for so long was a very moving experience. I was particularly overwhelmed to see the Stanze di Raffaello, the papal apartments which contain works of art that represent the height of the Renaissance which I studied in depth as a student. It was a heady experience coming into contact with Raphael’s baroque eloquence expressing the confidence of the church at the height of its powers and as I shuffled with hundreds of others into the Sistine chapel, I didn’t’ need to be told to stay silent - I was literally speechless in the presence of such beauty and grandeur of vision of God and his creative powers. The experience was utterly overwhelming – as of course the artists and their ecclesiastical patrons intended it to be.
By the time I entered the Basilica of St Peter, the largest church in the world – the historical centre of Christendom – I felt almost drunk with awe and humbled by the recognition of my own insignificance in the great scheme of the God’s church, the body of Christ. As I stood before the famous seated statue of St Peter, I felt connected in a new way to the historical church, founded on this rock, who was martyred here in Rome in the name of Christ.
As I listened to the Latin mass, I found it hard to understand how any who stood in this place could deny that Christ was exactly who he said he was – the son of God, the word made flesh. The sheer existence of the Vatican and the power that it has wielded over the centuries seemed to provide undeniable proof that something divine happened on the cross more than 2,000 years ago; the sheer grandeur of the Catholic vision built on the blood of those willing to be martyred for their belief makes no sense if built on a delusion.
However the evidence of faith that ended up making the greatest impression on me actually lay beyond the walls of the Vatican; the simple cross erected in the centre of the Coliseum in remembrance of those early Christians who gave their lives in the most terrible ways for their belief in the one who called himself the Son of Man; the icthus carved into the rough walls of the Catacombs of St Calisto by early Christians and pilgrims many of whom had travelled all the way from Jerusalem.
It was as I stood in the dark narrow passages pocked with ancient tombs, not unlike the one in which Christ was laid after his crucifixion, and as I looked on the simple wall paintings of the baptism of Jesus painted by those so convinced of his divinity a couple of hundred years after his death, that they would face horrific persecution in his name - that I was blessed again with that utter sense of conviction that something beyond human comprehension played out in the arid lands of Palestine 2,000 years ago, in the ancient streets of Rome and continues its work in our lives today.
Kate Nicholas’s book Sea Changed can be found at Christian retailers and in Waterstones across the UK and online at eden.co.uk and Amazon worldwide.