Eating Ice Cream while He Dies

I am in St. Peter’s Square in Rome on the morning of Good Friday, watching Jesus die. Actually, he’s a Belgian student and he’s only pretending. He is part of a troupe from the Emmanuel School of Mission at the French Seminary in Rome, which is acting out the Way of the Cross, the road that tradition has it Jesus of Nazareth walked between his judgment and his death. The actors are dressed in bright cartoon colours, blue for Mary, purple for Pilate, flip-flop sandals on their feet. ‘Jesus’ has rolled up blue jeans under his tunic. We are here in the bright sunlight near the place where tradition again has it that St. Peter was crucified upside down so as not to die with the full honour of his Lord and Master. The Basilica that Rome built over his bones stands over us and we are encircled by the pillared wings of Michelangelo’s great church, which spread out from the dome around the square, as if to embrace the world.

The world, as usual, pays very little attention.

I’m having trouble myself. This Easter I am on retreat at the French Seminary with the members of the troupe enacting the pageant and with others. I’ve been for gelato with some of these guys. It’s a rather intense spiritual retreat, so their schoolyard talk at the gelateria counter catches me off guard. They talk about women, the beautiful women of Italy and Rome, and the Spanish Steps where these women are sometimes topless. They talk about glimpses, joke about sin and having to go to confession. It gets me in a judging mood. I, obviously, am above this type of average male, skirt-chasing chatter. But today I catch my eyes wandering away from the Cross and drifting to the pretty girls in the crowd, so apparently I’m not that holy, either. And you know, those guys are right; there are a lot of beautiful women here.

The pageant has moved on. They ‘soldiers’ are snapping their ‘whips’ on the paving stones and ‘Jesus’ falls for the third time. I try to snap my attention back to the show again but I keep getting distracted by the drama of everything else. The crowd spills around the actors’ circle, some with noses raised curiously, some with that automatic photo-taking response that seems to come quicker than thought these days. Some are mocking, some are moved to kneel with us, some pretend not to notice. Children stand wonderstruck until their impatient parents pull them away as if they are reluctant dogs. Two girls in tight tops and gigantic sunglasses stand with hips cocked out in the universal gesture of youthful insouciance and hold up ice cream cones like pistols, as if they’re on a Charlie’s Angels poster. The guy pretending to be Jesus pretends to die and the girls watch as he falls. They lick their ice cream.

It comes to me that this is who we are. We are the Catholic students talking about girls and the Charlie’s Angels girls eating ice cream and me with my wandering eyes, and in the middle of us Jesus dies. Ok, I know it’s just a pageant and it’s a little bit corny and not the real thing, but I’m not sure we’d be much different with the real thing. Here in this sunny square in Rome on Easter weekend I feel a shudder of revelation run through me: This was the crowd when it really happened, when it wasn’t just a pageant. They were just like this, just like us. ‘Whoever hears truth hears my voice,’ Jesus says, and we play the part of Pilate, absent-mindedly replying ‘What is truth?’ as his eye wanders over the body of the slave girl walking by and he wonders what kind of ice cream will be for dessert. Outside the crowd yells for blood, or lifts their digital cameras high in hopes of a good shot to show their friends back home. Maybe a few kneel. Maybe a few cry, or protest. But this is who we are, all of us, when Jesus dies.

Mostly, we are lukewarm Laodiceans of the 21st century and our trademark is not to care. The most you can say of us is that we are very cool, which is not actually a compliment, but we are too in love with worthless and paltry things to notice. This will be the death of us.

I want to commit that most socially fatal of errors and earnestly believe in something, to live for it despite this cloudy spirit of smug cocktail-party mockery that has fallen over us. I want still to say things about Kings and Heroes, about Prophets and Martyrs. I want to know that some hearts – that my heart – will still stir at the thought of being saved, of honour at all costs, at love that lays its life down for its friends. But I’m afraid that everyone would just lick their ice cream cones and check each other out, and as much as I hate it, there’s a good chance I’d do the same after the fervor of the moment was gone. My spirit almost fails at the thought.

But just so it’s said, so my heart beats a little stronger and the blood runs more hotly in my veins if only for this minute, let me say it anyway: There is a King, and there is no honour or power or glory without Him. He knew we were eating ice cream and He died to save our lives anyway. He knew we’d be taking photos and eyeing the crowd for hotties, and He asked that we be forgiven, because we didn’t know and we didn’t get it. He died, but he is risen, and one day there will be no choice about it; we will know and we will get it. The ice cream cones will drop and the cameras will stop clicking and there will be no one else worth looking at. And then no one will be cool. Everyone will do what we really ought to have been doing all along: falling facedown and praying for our lives.