Roma

Ladies and Gents, welcome to Rome.

The Eternal City.

Our first official stop was here. 5 days of incredible sites, achy feet and a bajz;ellion pictures.

On the first day we made our way over to San Pietro in Vincoli or "St. Peter in Chains". The relic in this church is a set of chains that Peter wore. The chains were from two different imprisonments and the story goes that when these two separate chains were brought together they magically fused, making one long chain.

An interesting thing about many of the Catholic Churches is that they always have some sort of relic in their chapels. There are many that claim to have things like a piece of cloth from Christ's clothing or pieces of wood from Christ's cross. A scholar once said that if all the claimed pieces of wood were combined it would make a thousand crosses.

In that same chapel is a very famous sculpture by Michelangelo. It was supposed to be tomb for Pope Julius II but when he died nobody ever took the responsibility to do as was asked. So here it is.

MMMmmm, definitely one of my favorites of Michelangelo. This is "Moses".

Take a good look because there is a lot to take in here.

This is supposed to be the exact moment when Moses has come down from the mount, just having talked to God, and sees the children of Israel in a state of complete wickedness. 

Four things about this statue:

1)  Moses is twisting his beard. LOOK! It is so interesting to me that Michelangelo gave Moses a nervous characteristic like that, one where he twists his beard when he's angry, anxious or nervous.

2)  His brow. scroll back up right now and look at it.  That is a face of disappointment, anger and perhaps fear.

3)  Look again, notice anything peculiar on his head. Horns perhaps?  Right! This is because in the bible Michelangelo used it translated wrong and said that Moses had horns while the real translation would be "Moses' face shone".

4)  What makes Michelangelo such an admirable artist was that he saw it as a duty. He believed that every piece of stone he took from the mountain already had a being inside, it was just his job to free it.  So here's Michelangelo carvin' away and he finishes...

he steps back and takes a good look at Moses. 

He then takes one of his tools and hits Moses' knee yelling "SPEAK"! His sculpture seemed so real, he was certain that his sculpture could have stood up and spoken to him.

So I'm done looking around the church and I take a seat on the very back bench to listen to the prayer service going on.

Ever have that feeling where you KNOW someone is staring at you? You can feel their eyes on you?

I felt that way once I sat down and 

BOOM

 I look about 45 degrees to my right and I see these eyes.

These eyes!

Look closer.

CLOSER!

I turned to see the face of Moses, a face of disapproval and disappointment, looking right at me. 

It was definitely one of the cooler moments of my life and it made an impact on me. I felt uncomfortable sitting there with him looking at me like that.

It made me think that what if God looks at me like that every time I do something stupid or sinful on this earth.

Yikes.

The worst kind of punishment a child can get from their parents is a look of disgust, disappointment and disapproval.  No words need to be said, just a simple look can do ya in.

The thought of this brought me to Elder Holland's General Conference talk last April titled "Lord, I Believe". Here he brings to our attention the idea of a frustrated God.

"Except in the case of His only perfect Begotten Son, imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it."

I can't even begin to imagine how many times I have frustrated my Father in Heaven. It makes me want to be that much better and work that much harder.






Alright well I just did an entire blog post on the first place we visited in Rome. I'll try to be a little more concise but no promises...

Oy vey.