Someone pointed out to me at St. Paul's the other day something that is equally true of St. Peter's: these things were designed to accomodate huge numbers of pilgrims, so they had to be big. But they were also designed to feel more intimate than they are. It is astounding how well that has been accomplished.
We got off the bus and crossed the Tiber (I thought of my many convert friends who have done this metaphorically and was quite pleased to finally join them, more literally) along the "angel" bridge, and I got my first really good view of the domed basilica together with the courtyard. Even from a distance, you notice the statues of saints lining the roofline. It really feels like the communion of saints are gathered there to welcome you in.
After enjoying the courtyard for a while, we made our way through security and lined up for our chance to get into the basilica. I think it was at this point that I began to be impressed by the sheer numbers of people making this journey. Jim made a comment at a later point that one can see how, when American bishops or others who spend much time in Rome have no patience for American Catholics (or other Americans) who seem to think we ought to almost apologize for being Catholic, well ... you can see something else at work here. St. Peter's (like so much of Christian Rome) is a world designed as if the Catholic worldview is spot on. Saints and angels are a part of the fabric of being. Christ is king. And people are flocking to it.
Jim, who's been here a thousand times before, walked me through some of the key sights and gave me some of the highlights from his book on the place. We started in the portico, which is impressive enough. But walking through the doors into the main church, it literally took my breath away. It is hard to say exactly why; I suspect that those who have been there know, and those who have not cannot really be told. I feel like I was told before, and I don't feel like I really got it until now.
Before you even notice anything in particular, you feel both grandeur and balance at once. If you have read any Thomas Aquinas, for whom such ideas as "right ordering" and the "fittingness" of things looms large, you feel like you have entered the world as he must have seen it. And then you begin to notice the art--so many sculptures and paintings (okay, mosaics copied from paintings) of the saints. You feel that you are being welcomed in, invited to be a part of this church.
It wasn't long before I found myself before Michelangelo's Pieta, with a crowd of my new friends. I'll go ahead and admit it: I found myself in tears and I can't really give an account of why. But I want to share one thing that I noticed and one thought process. I have of course seen photos of the Pieta before. But I have never noticed or at least not remembered what (if anything) is behind it. As it stands in St. Peter's (behind bulletproof glass), on the wall behind it is an empty cross. I was so struck by the fittingness of that.
The moment the Pieta embodies is the absolute darkest moment in the history of the church. The one that the early Christians had followed was dead and needing burial, and the promises of resurrection seemed nearly forgotten. I found two questions coming unbidden to my mind. First, how could we possibly, as a church, live through that moment of humility and despair and respond to it by building all of this? And the second, more simply, how could we not?
I mean both of those quite honestly. On the one hand, it seems completely ridiculous to think that the followers of Christ (who said such things as blessed are the poor and those who fail to renounce their possessions are not worthy to follow me) could or should ever imagine such a place, let alone build it. And yet, the real historicity of the thing is astounding, too. There is a tradition of Peter's death and burial in this place, pilgrims came to venerate it, they needed a church. After several centuries, that church was falling down and we needed a new one. Who else to get but the best artists of the age over the 120 years of building the thing? How to do it except exquisitely?
It really did feel, for the most part, like the people's place. People were praying and snapping photos everywhere. I think the name (St. Peter's) suggests that you would find the pope hanging out in there lording it over people ("Look at MY church!). But I really got the sense that this is the church of the people. Sure, it houses the bones of a lot of popes and quite a few theologians (Chrysostom is there, and Gregory of Nazianzus, to name but two). But they belong to us, too.
I had a few moments of prayer in the midst of the whole thing. We slipped into a side chapel where they had Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament going on and spent a little time there. I also spent a little time before John XXIII and Gregory of Nazianzus, praying for the church and for myself and all my friends who try to live our vocations as theologians in service to the church. I also stood beneath the central dome, near the tomb of St. Peter, and prayed for the unity of the church. I thought with gratitude of all my Protestant friends who have been real witnesses to Christ in my life, and, of course, with sadness over the divided Body of Christ. May Christ use Peter's office to make us one.
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