I found myself in Rome

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I think that for the most part, I'll just let these stills of mine do the talking.  There's really not that much to say; not because I have nothing to say, but because I have too much to say.  But a few thoughts --- the Vatican, man.  If you're not an ardent lover of sculpture and painting and the like, you really ought to become one with all haste.  Seriously.  Gorgeous.  We met up with a seminarian from our diocese and he gave us a tour of Rome, and one thing that he said that has stayed with me was that the Saint Peter's Basilica is a grand illusion.  When Michelangelo designed the basilica, he made it so grand, so great, but when a pilgrim first enters the basilica and stands beneath it, it doesn't seem so large.  It's a trick of the eye.  The gold letters that line the dome don't seem that big, but they're really ten feet tall.  Small cherubs are larger than fully-grown men, and the pen that the apostle John holds, in the upper right of the third photo [and also in the sixth], is over seven feet long. Michelangelo and the other artists that the Popes commissioned wanted to express the grandeur of Our Lord, God's infinite majesty, but they also wanted to highlight the fact that through the Catholic Church, the ineffable was brought to earth, so to speak, so that all men could grow closer to Christ and His greatness.  And don't get me started on Bernini.  I LOVE Bernini.  (He made the baldacchino and the Saint Peter's Square... also the angels that bear relics of Christ's passion and death.)  Bernini's probably my favorite.  Everything that he did had a purpose to it, a special symbolism designed specifically to draw men closer to the culmination of Beauty.  The colonnades of Saint Peter's, for instance.  He meant them to be as two arms, the nurturing arms of Mother Church, drawing all men to Christ.  ♥♥

But.  But.  But.  The highlight of the trip.  Guys.  The Solemnity of Pentecost's Sunday Mass at Saint Peter's with none but Pope Francis, about a hundred cardinals and bishops, about three hundred priests, and the Sistine chapel choir.  I'm still kind of in awe.