Italy v--Worship

Even though you don't see it happening all that often, some people come to Italy and walk into churches to worship. They do. While I was walking around, slack-jawed at the the breath-taking grandeur of The Church of Santa Maria, Florence, what looked to be an extended family took seats in the wooden pews in front of a chapel of that cathedral, and two priests took their places behind the altar. 

The gathered seemed a family because they were all Asian, but they may well have been residents of Florence and regular worshipers at the Church of Santa Maria. Somehow, they'd arranged something of a private mass--at least they were the only ones in attendance, and the service took place in a chapel, off to the side of the incredible nave. 

Up high and off to the left you'll see some art work that's clearly unfinished, unusual in cathedrals as famous as Santa Maria.

If you look back up at the shot at the top, you'll see half-finished characters, part of an entire setting that seems a work that never got done, an old-time work-in-progress. 

I don't remember the story, but that unfinished wall reminded me of other cathedrals in Europe, houses of worship that bear scars set in the fleshy excesses Roman Catholicism by hard-headed Calvinists who were bound and determined not only to bring down idols, but cleanse God's house of all that phony finery created by a Christianity they'd determined had gone to rot--and the pope, the anti-Christ.

There's more unfinished in the Church of Santa Maria; but in Italy, it seems a rare find. Most of Europe was changed by the Reformation, but Italy never really suffered the scourge of Calvinism--or even, more generally, Protestantism. For reasons which may well have to do with the immense grandeur of what the Catholic church had accrued through the centuries, Luther's re-formation never bothered Florence or Venice or Rome itself all that much, even though Calvinist warfare raged elsewhere in Europe. 

Perhaps the Benedictine order in place here in Santa Maria since the 11th century (that's not a typo) simply ran out of money and couldn't finish the art work begun in the chapel beside the nave. 

Whatever happened, I couldn't help but think of my own Calvinist ancestors rubbing out the excess from cathedrals they determined to purge of their excesses; and I must admit, as I often do in ancient cathedrals, I was beset by the same weird juxtaposition of feelings. At once, oddly enough, I'm appalled at what my people did, and thankful. The wondrous sensory experience of great Roman Catholic cathedrals leaves me speechless for a time. But then, soon enough, a kind of sensory overload cripples perception, and there's just too much. 

That's when I recognize my own fundamental Calvinist DNA. 

So there I was when this mass went on up front, a half-dozen people up close in the pews, above them the soaring arches of the Church of Santa Maria and beside them a wall for some reason left unfinished. 

And then the priest who did the homily came down from behind the altar and stood in front of the family in the pews, stood there a couple feet away to tell them what he thought that day they needed to know. The picture reminded me of childhood Sunday School, before churches insisted on education wings, a time when classes from third and fourth grades up met in pews in different sections of the nave. When he came down to speak to them, it seemed very Vatican II. 

Here in the Church of Not Just Any Saint, but the Church of Saint Mary, there's a varied assembly of historical moments in Christianity--the overpowering grandeur of a cathedral a thousand years old, a wall unfinished and somehow reminiscent of nothing less than the Reformation, and a priest who comes down from behind the altar to talk, oh, so familiarly, to worshipers, just a few who'd that afternoon asked to take the host.

Some cathedrals have long ago become world-class museums to those who, like me, can't help but stare in bewonderment at the sheer magnificence. But just for a moment, there in a chapel off to the side, I watched people do more than stare. I saw people worship. 

Of the Church of Santa Maria, right there in its own square in Florence, Italy, what I'll remember best is not the massive sculptures, the flying buttresses, or the immense bible story paintings. 

What I'll remember is a half dozen people worshiping God.