Pagan Rome, Christian Rome
Of this task, the Church has
never fallen short. Docile to God’s designs, the humble fisherman of Galilee,
poor, ignorant, timid to the point of trembling before the handmaid of a simple
proconsul only a moment earlier, Peter comes to plant the Cross of Christ, and
his own, opposite the throne of Caesar. His brother in God, the apostle to the
gentiles, seals with his blood, at the gates of imperial and pagan Rome, the
supernatural orthodoxy of his teaching in all the Churches of Europe and Asia.
From this pair of tombs long unknown or scorned — like that of their master —
by all that Rome and the world reckoned of science, wealth, and strength,
suddenly arises the irresistable power of the Spirit who will rule all flesh.
On the ruins of pagan Rome, mistress of the world, dominator of peoples, harsh towards
the conquered, pitiless towards the weak, there rises up little by little
Christian Rome, mistress of the world in her turn, but through the mere
strength of truth, faith, and love; mistress of souls and hearts, liberator of
consciences and of peoples, protector of the oppressed, hope of the weak and the
conquered. She does better than to cut down the power of Rome the idolator; she
transforms and puts to use everything good and noble in Rome’s heritage. From
temples devoted to the cult of every vice deified, she makes basilicas and
churches consecrated to the one true God, just and good. From circuses watered
with the blood of Christ’s witnesses, she makes places of pilgrimage where the
sons of the martyrs come and pray to convert the sons of their executioners. By
Roman roads she sends her legions of apostles to the peaceable conquest of those
nations whom Caesar could conquer and constrain by force, but whom only Christ
will subjugate by love, and whom the Church will use to rebuild Latin and
Christian civilisation atop the debris of the shattered Roman empire. From
Roman laws, purified, spiritualised, she extracts a part of her own canon law,
foundation of the law of Christian peoples. Finally, from the Roman tongue,
firm, noble, rich, but tarnished by the corrupt inspiration of contumacious
flesh, troubled by the mad confusions of pride, and reduced to ignoble slavery
to the courtesans of Caesar, she makes the language of prayer; the language of
invocations to the Virgin Most Pure, the angels, and the saints, conquerers of
pride, of concupiscence, and of the world. In this tongue which recounted to
men the vile vices of mythical gods, She speaks to God only of kindness, of
justice, of sanctity. The language of idolatry, of blasphemy, of lust, becomes
the language of the most sacred mysteries, the language of the Sacraments, the
language of absolution, the language of the Mass, the language of the
consecration, the language which speaks that prayer at every moment of the day
and night, on every point of the globe, which commands God to come down on the earth to nourish souls, to enflame
hearts, to light up spirits, and in a word, to bring God to life in man!
