Hello folks back home or buongiorno, as they say here, we have finished our first actual day of our pilgrimage in Italy. With no sleep after a nine hour flight, it sure was hard to keep keep awake after we went through customs and got on the coach. However the day’s activities provided enough entertainment to keep most of us awake. After taking the coach into Rome, we walked through the plaza of the people which was riddled with peddlers and artists as seen throughout most of Rome. Throughout this area of Rome and later on by the forum of the late Roman empire temples and monuments surrounded us. In a place so connected to God on polytheistic and monotheistic levels one could not help but feel spiritual. These old monuments of many different faiths (Egyptian obelisks as well) showed that people and objects of different ideas survived with each other and managed to do so peacefully. These monuments showed how peaceful everyone can really be.
At the Roman forum, temples to polytheistic gods surrounded us. Yet, as we journeyed to the Colosseum a cross stood before us in a arena famed for bloody battles. I asked myself how we could travel less than a mile and end up at a spot of different faith. I thought about it and about the tolerance of the people that practiced these beliefs. They coexisted as members of the same community but of different faiths throughout a time period ranging from the beginning of Rome and now. Surely these late people developed their beliefs in one area as time passed by and more specifically in the Christian faith. The developing ideas forming during this time living on to today show me the peaceful reality of God. I now see through these monuments of various faith that we are the believers of our own faith but there is no need to battle with others when we can continue in harmony. I hope this for many other faiths with their own schisms and troubled areas, and though nearly impossible I hope everyone can find peace in their faith as they did in early Rome.
Matthew Knauss
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