Santuario SS. Annunziata

Behind the Academia is a church of unbounded beauty. I was lucky enough to arrive as mass just started and went in to participate and gaze in complete wonder. Because mass was going on I didn’t take many pictures, but I will go back when I can to document…it is one of the most amazingly ornate churches I have ever seen and during mass they had all the candles lit. The images and ornate décor only speak to about the devotion of a flock and the depth of their commitment to Spirit. To be an artist that finds commission in religious art…kind of hard to imagine now when so much sarcasm exists. Don’t get me wrong, I do fully understand all that was at work and is at work now when creating something like that…but you can’t overlook the painstaking process and artistic eloquence.

It was a deeply moving experience given my Catholic history. When I got divorced the first time and realized that the church at that point would…well…turn it’s back on me in the ways of ritual I turned my back on the Church. All religious groupings are comprised of the failing of humanity and no religion is immune. So my faith turned outside of ritual and went directly towards that which so many call God.

Over the years, the reading, the learning and the path of forgiveness, I’ve come to terms with all of it. In that church I did however relive the pain of being denied the thing that was so essential as I grew up. I don’t know if there will ever be a place for me in the Catholic religion in the traditional sense but I do know that a certain peace has been made. I’ve come to understand that God is not something outside but only found within, in the very form of being human we must find our own divinity.

As I was leaving a woman passed me and she gave me a little wave. I was shocked to say the least since that isn’t really what I expected and I smiled and nodded at her. She must have turned around and come after me because I felt her hand lightly touch my arm. I turned towards her and she handed me a little religious charm she had gotten out of her coin purse. In Italian she said, “Go with God” and she had such kindness in her mannerism I was again moved to tears. I walked out feeling like the thing between the Catholic Church and I had finally come full circle.

So when someone says that God or Life works in mysterious ways….try to be less shortsighted in our humanness and rest in a faith from within.