Churchgoing: from Chicago to Santa Pudenziana

My father taught me to love churches. A surprising feat, really, since he spent most of his time in bed. At least that is how I will always remember him. He worked at a night job for more than forty years and seemed to lengthen the time away from home by using public transportation. At points in the daytime he would appear downstairs at the dining room table to visit with my mother and to talk with any of his seven children who might happen to be home. He rarely went into the living room, just ran up and down the stairs from bed to table and then back to bed again.

People tiptoeing in and out of the bedroom prevented him from ever really sleeping, so he settled for a lifetime of resting. He could tell which one of his children was home by which artiste was being played, and once, in the early 1970s, he confided to me that he would lose his mind if he heard "American Pie" one more time. That he rarely complained about any of this enshrined him for me as a model of patience, which he held highest among virtues.

He read in bed. I can still see him turning over on his elbow to show me Diary of a Country Priest. Sentimental Education impressed him, as did other French novels, though he never went into detail when telling me why. He would stack his books on the floor next to his side of the bed, until he had thought them through, then he would move them onto his bookshelves. I thought of him as the Proust of our city block, resting but thinking.

He died right after he retired, so he never had a chance to reverse his schedule and start getting a good night's sleep. When I walked in procession past him, lying down for the last time, I slipped him his paperback of James Joyce. I had taken it from his bookshelf, instead of picking up the volume on Christian tradition by Jaroslav Pelikan that lay on the floor next to his bed. Although he was probably still thinking that one through, I chose the Joyce. It was smaller, and "The Dead" was his favorite story.

Earlier that week, on the evening that turned out to be the day before he died, I had left my mother, sisters, and brothers at the intensive care unit so that I could get something to eat and go home. On the way, I stopped at a video store to look for a film that I had been thinking about all that day, Otto Preminger's The Cardinal.

I had been in seventh grade in the mid-1960s when my best friend and I went to see it. Even then I knew it was a cheesy movie, but some of the scenes have stayed with me all my life. Preminger, fascinated by the church, picks up on themes of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. There is a great deal of talk about abortion, celibacy, obedience, worldly vanity, parish fundraising, and even the pope's deeply ingrained suspicion of Americans. All of it reminds me of the hours I spent as a girl, discussing such issues with my father. The two of us puzzling it out together: Is the Catholic Church the only true church? We were so earnest. That was a mark of the time. Watching the movie brought it all back to me. Then, a few years later, a vacation day evoked his legacy even more.

The winter of 1998 had been a sad one for me in several respects, and I comforted myself by booking a trip to Rome in late March. In particular, I wanted to visit the ancient churches of Santa Prassede and Santa Pudenziana. I had visited them before and hoped that seeing them again would give me the boost that I needed. For me there is no surer way to sense God's protection and love than to enter a church and to see what's beautiful there.

People say that they feel God's love when they are in natural settings, but when I think of nature, I just hope that the basement isn't flooding. I intend to relax someday and quiet myself with nature, but I really am less drawn to a mountain brook than to, say, the Baroque frenzy of Ignatius Loyola's tomb. Perhaps my workaday urban background has conditioned me this way, but leaving one interesting city to visit another is usually what vacation means to me.

I entered Santa Prassede. Do people think of Saint Paul as easygoing and friendly? I hadn't until I saw him pictured in mosaic on the great apse, his arm around Prassede looking calm and relaxed. She is wearing beautiful earrings for her presentation in heaven. The opposite side of the mosaic shows her sister, Pudenziana, with Saint Peter's arm around her shoulder. She looks purposeful and his gaze is steady. Christ is in the center, surrounded by his friends, these early Christians. The arches above depict the Paschal Lamb with the angels and saints. Beneath a palm tree at the far left is Saint Paschal, wearing nice shoes and the square halo of the living. He commissioned the church in the ninth century, and I enjoy thinking of him studying the plans and nodding his approval of this golden panorama.

I moved on to Santa Pudenziana, just across Via Cavour. Low, like many early Roman gathering places, Santa Pudenziana invites a quiet approach. Built around 400, on one of the earliest sites of Christian worship in the city, it is small and dark. Christ sits on a throne, holding some papers, and the heavenly Jerusalem is behind him. Although his business is serious, he looks kind and at ease. I had read that this mosaic is pre-Byzantine and free of stylized influences, but its direct effect unsettled me.