On the second day of our stay in Rome, we got up super early, ate a hearty breakfast, put on comfortable shoes, and got on the subway headed for Vatican City with a tour book in tow. We were confident we would surely beat the crowd with an early start. In addition, we were smart enough to plan our visit to this tourist-magnet in October, not in the middle of the busy summer months, so we figured we wouldn’t have to spend a lot of our precious time waiting in lines. We had even purchased tickets online, and we felt good about ourselves!
But as soon as we arrived at the metro station closest to Vatican City, we realized that a whole lot of other people had the same plan! As if we were competing in a speed-walking event, the three of us walked as fast as our short legs could carry us to get ahead of the mob of people headed in the same direction. Even with all that advance planning, however, we still ended up waiting in line for the security check and to rent an English audioguide for the Vatican Museums tour. You indeed need a lot of stamina and patience to visit the Vatican City.
They say you haven’t seen Rome unless you have been to the Vatican Museums so we were determined to take the time to explore every gallery. However, we soon realized that doing this might take a whole week or more! The galleries were filled with so many amazing, breathtaking, magnificent (I need more adjectives to do them justice) works of art - paintings, sculptures, tapestries, etc. - that after a while my mind couldn’t handle any more. It was definitely a case of too much of a good thing, an awesomeness overload! But we had no choice but to move slowly with the mob in order to reach the pinnacle, the Sistine Chapel, with its famous painted ceiling depiction of the creation account by Michaelangelo. Incidentally, the Sistine Chapel is also important in that the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church is elected there.
While I was glad to see the most famous ceiling image, “The Creation of Adam,” I was more impressed with and touched by the huge painting on the wall titled “The Last Judgment,” done by Michaelangelo some 25 years after painting the ceiling. The older Michaelangelo depicts the second coming of Christ and the ensuing judgment. With Christ in the center, the damned who are being pulled down to hell to be tortured by demons are to His left while the blessed who rise from their graves to enter heaven are to His right. In addition, Christ is surrounded by important figures in church history, including many martyrs who suffered particularly painful deaths. One particular image that is still vivid in my mind is that of Saint Bartholomew, holding a knife in one hand and his own skin in his other hand. He is known to have been martyred by being skinned alive. What a painful and slow death he must have suffered for the sake of Christ! As great as that suffering must have been, however, it is still nothing compared to being tortured by demons, as the painter seems to convey.
What really struck me was how many of those tens of thousands of daily tourists will just walk away from that painting, considering it as a depiction of a fairy tale or the artist’s wild imagination. Many may even be shaken by the disturbing nature of the painting, but within a few minutes of leaving the chapel, will forget about it. I too would have been one of those passerby tourists had it not been for Jesus Christ who saved me out of millions. Why me and not them? I may never know, but I am eternally grateful for His amazing grace. How about you?
From Pastor Sara’s Heart
October 28, 2012