The Eternal Shrug of Rome

When your daily life is an encounter with nearly everything that has come before you, you develop an appreciation for what is important, and what is not, what is passing and what will last, and how quickly time marches forth and away from even the greatest of artists, the holiest of men, the loftiest of ideals. To be a Roman is to remain unswayed by tempers and trends, because all of them fade into the shadows of temples and time.

There is greatness in that understanding, a breadth of wisdom born within these narrow avenues; Rome watches history, makes history, shrugs at history because Rome lives surrounded by the entirety of time; she is grateful for and comfortable with mystery

Tomorrow a pope speaks to a hundred thousand souls and that is as usual and normal as a plate of pasta with garlic, or a magnificently inlaid marble tomb; everything is made remarkable by its sheer everyday ordinariness, and that is why Rome can shrug and tell you to sit down and watch the world go by, without a fret or worry. She is a queen bee, reigning within precise dimensions of an improbably serene hive, because she does not fear the constant buzz of ages; they only portend an eventual and inevitable sweetness.

Rome trusts in the promise of sweetness, she comprehends the purpose of the buzz, and that is why she can shrug. There is a sound theology to all of it, one that says "all things work to the glory of God, whose thinking is not your thinking, and whose ways are not your way.”

Read Elizabeth Scalia's article here.

The Vatican Dome from the Piazza del Quirinale

I miss the Eternal City.