Sunday Reflection II: Complementary Structures

Last Sunday, after completing the day’s entry on my experience at the “Michelangelo cloister” at the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels and Martyrs, I set out for an afternoon walk. I had no destination in mind; my goal was to get lost and see what I discovered on the way. I followed Rome’s circuitous streets along the ancient cobblestones—what a local friend told me on Thursday are known as pietrini, or “little Peters,” for their similarity to the pavements around Saint Peter’s Square—until I turned up at Trajan’s Column north of the Forum.

I walked slowly down the Via dei Fori Imperiali, listening to the strains of the street musicians beneath the bulk of the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument, and paused to listen to a four-piece Italian band do a memorable rendition of American songwriter Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” It felt then like the distance between the ruins behind them and the present moment wasn’t so vast: this place has been a gathering space for millennia, I thought, and it is still a gathering space today, still filling the same function of bringing people from a range of cultures and backgrounds together to swap languages, stories, and songs, to conduct business and commerce, to work out the human project.

I hadn’t bothered to check my map, so the sight of the Colosseum at the end of the way took me a bit by surprise: the sheer mass of it, set against a blue sky visible through the rows of archways. The shape of them took me back to the Michelangelo cloister. In a curious way they felt like complementary structures: two arcaded spaces surrounding a field of action, one a center of public spectacle, the other of private contemplation. The Carthusian monks, too, stepped into an arena to undertake the work of spiritual combat, and in their turns around the cloister I imagine they did battle against arrogance, pride, self-conceit—all those vices by which we try to elevate and thus separate ourselves from God.

As I drew closer to the Colosseum, another thing surprised me: the amount of restoration work that is visible, including the brick “spurs” designed by architects Raffaele Stern and Giuseppe Valadier in the 19th century to prop up the aging structure. It felt like an analogue for the church itself: a locus for collaboration across the centuries, through periods of weakness and strength, growth and decline, held together by the contributions of thousands of architects and laborers who have worked—often anonymously—for its preservation and renewal.

In my travels over the past two weeks, I have managed to accumulate three prayer cards: one of Saint Bruno from the Basilica of Saint Mary; one of Saint Benedict from the Collegio Sant’Anselmo; and one of Servant of God Dorothy Day given to me by a friend. I think of them all in their relation to the church and its ongoing Synod—how they each might contribute in their own way to the evolving “Conversations in the Spirit” that are seeking new ecclesial self-understanding.

From Bruno, we have the gift of silence, pure receptivity: the members of the Carthusian order he founded are artisans of silence, technicians of the Spirit, and they show us, in the words of one of their prayers, how “to give without counting the cost, without asking what Christ does with my prayer, my heart, my life.”

From Benedict, the gift of theological reflection developed through a rhythm of life, a pattern of work and prayer that regulates and pacifies the day. He helps us not to run ahead of God or of each other, even when we are impatient, but instead to slow down and respond to the moment without any prejudgment. It is no wonder the opening word of his Rule is Ausculta—“Listen.”

And from Dorothy, whose three pilgrimages to Rome were guiding lights for this trip, we learn how to dwell in the contradiction of loving and serving a church that so often falls short of our expectations, that has been a sign of temporal power as much as a sign of grace. Her works of mercy and justice flowed from the depth of her faith, which was itself founded on the paradox of a God-made-man. And not only a man, but a crucified man, a failure in the eyes of the world.

At this midpoint of the second session of the Synod, we are still far from knowing what the concrete outcomes might be. But with the examples of these three, and with so many other “everyday saints” I’ve encountered throughout my stay, we might find ways to rediscover the church as “the source of lost joy.” ♦

Michael Centore
Editor, Today’s American Catholic

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