Tag Archives: travel

Michelangelo’s mistake

I always thought there was something wrong with Michelangelo’s Pieta. 

You can see the statue in your mind’s eye: After watching her son tortured to death on a cross, a mother cradles his broken body.

I first saw it as a six-year-old in 1965 at the Vatican Pavilion of the New York World’s Fair. During the fair, millions patiently waited on long lines to view the Pieta, but all I can remember is looking down at the cool mobile walkway as it moved me along.

It wasn’t until I was a twenty-year-old student in the University of Dallas’s Rome program that I noticed the flaw: The expression on the woman’s face is all wrong. 

She’d just been forced to helplessly stand by and watch as her son endured the most horrific death imaginable. And yet, look at her face. Any Hollywood actress playing the role would throw her head back and scream in anguish. But Michelangelo chose to give her an almost peaceful expression of sorrowful acceptance. Why? The question haunted me for years.

I came across the phenomenon again decades later while watching a documentary about the Kennedys. Shortly after Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president, he called President Kennedy’s mother, Rose, from Air Force One as it flew from Dallas to Washington D.C. with her son’s body aboard. An audio recording of the conversation plays during the documentary, and Rose Kennedy’s composure is stunning. She essentially consoled LBJ and had the presence of mind to call him “Mr. President” mere hours after the murder of her son.

Later in the documentary, the Kennedys are shown gathered together for a group interview shortly after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. Rose spoke for her stricken family, and once again exhibited otherworldly, Pieta-like composure.  

I had kids of my own by then, so I had some idea of the hellish grief she must have suffered. How did she maintain such composure? I couldn’t for the life of me understand the source of that kind of strength.

I did a little research and found that her son, Senator Ted Kennedy, stated at Rose’s eulogy, “She sustained us in the saddest times – by her faith in God, which was the greatest gift she gave us – and by the strength of her character, which was a combination of the sweetest gentleness and the most tempered steel.”

She wrote in her autobiography, “The most important element in human life is faith. If God were to take away all His blessings, health, physical fitness, wealth, intelligence and leave me with but one gift, I would ask for faith – for with faith in Him and His goodness, mercy and love for me, and belief in everlasting life, I believe I could suffer the loss of my other gifts and still be happy.” 

My mother also had the gift of faith. It sustained her through a difficult life including the almost unbearable sudden death of my infant brother, Johnny. 

When mom was in her eighties, her neighbor, a retired psychiatrist and vocal atheist, would visit and try to talk her out of her faith. For the sake of friendship, mom put up with it for a while. But one day, she’d had enough and threw the woman out of her apartment shouting, “I’m happy, and you’re miserable. Leave me alone!”

I’ve experienced moments of faith twice. The first – while I was just looking out my office window – lasted about fifteen minutes. The second came during a work crisis and lasted about two days. Both times, all my anxieties vanished, and I was suffused with faith-filled, peaceful feelings I’d never experienced before and wanted desperately to continue. I pray daily for a return to that beautiful place.  

I saw the Pieta for the third time last summer while participating in another UD Rome program. I stared at it for a long while and wept because this time I believed I understood the expression on Mary’s face, and I knew it was no mistake. Michelangelo was simply portraying the transcendent peace that comes from dwelling in the kingdom of the faithful.  

Here’s wishing you and yours a peaceful New Year. 

A brief American odyssey

I have a severe case of fluorescent light poisoning. I contracted it by sitting under their pitiless glare eight hours a day for forty years. My one symptom is a wanderlust that can only be satisfied by watching 400 miles of countryside roll past my windshield every day. 

Having just returned from a 4677-mile cross-country trip that included swings through the Poconos and the Ozarks, I can tell you that seeing America decked out in its fall foliage glory belongs on everyone’s bucket list. Mile after mile of nature’s pointillist perfection was almost more beauty than I could apprehend.

But, as with any journey, it had its ups and downs.

On Long Island, I overheard a conversation between a shop owner and a Jewish couple who were considering purchasing a lighted menorah. They asked the owner if he thought it would be safe to display it in their front window. He advised that they might be safe in their neighborhood, but it really wasn’t worth the risk. They agreed and said that while they felt relatively safe at home, they worked in NYC and were afraid of being attacked. The next day, the NYPD reported a 214 percent spike in “anti-Jewish incidents” in the weeks following Hamas’ genocidal massacre compared to the same period last year. 

Such sectarian violence is the inevitable, tragic result of America’s recent descent into tribalism. A descent caused by pernicious ideas that have emanated from our elite academic institutions. Proving yet again that the prestige of one’s alma mater is inversely proportional to the likelihood that one’s opinions are sound. 

Abe Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address has been called America’s second founding. A strong argument can be made that Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is our third founding. Its last paragraph sounds a desperately needed note of sanity that just might help us find our way back to the sacred, unifying mission of Lincoln’s last best hope of earth:

“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

In Fort Worth, I worked the food line at a homeless shelter. I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong. You owe it to yourself to do this at least once. It’s one thing to drive past people sleeping on the sidewalk. It’s quite another to interact with them as individuals.

It’s the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. I was four years old on the day of his funeral, but I remember it well because my mother wept all day.

While visiting Oyster Bay, Long Island I dined with my family at the historic Rothmann’s Inn where my sainted Uncle Jim O’Rourke (R.I.P.) was the maître d’ for many years. My Aunt Gloria O’Rourke (R.I.P.), then editor of the Oyster Bay Guardian, wrote this account of Jackie Kennedy’s visit to Rothmann’s shortly after her husband’s murder:

“When Mrs. Kennedy came to dine the second time, the children were with her. There was an old custom at the Inn to take children into the kitchen and let them take a peek at the lobsters, crawling around in the huge watery bin. My sentimental Jim asked one of the Secret Servicemen if he could take John-John on this customary jaunt to see the lobsters. The agent checked with Mrs. Kennedy, and to my Jim’s great surprise, the answer was, “Yes!” Taking John-John by the hand, he carefully walked him through the kitchen and held him high in the air. Jim told me later, “I was so proud to hold that brave little boy in my arms. He never knew it, but I was crying behind him as he gazed at the lobsters.”