Stone and stone. Blood and blood. We cannot escape.

The purpose of the Colosseum was for people to watch people and animals killing other people and animals. "We who are about to die salute you" the gladiator shouted to the emperor. The Colosseum is a monument to death. It's demonic. I wanted to run screaming, like the figure in the Edward Munch painting. No. No. No. This is a low point in human architecture, not a high point. It's all about death. Yet, get this. Across the river is another structure, roughly the same size, souring to the Roman sky, also about death, the sacrificial death of the Son of God, the death that ended death, and produced the Pieta, the Sistine Chapel and the soaring graceful Dome. Shall we say it is time to free ourselves from all obsession with death? Or shall we acknowledge that every human activity comes in two forms: redeemed and unredeemed. That which is connected to the Son of God or unconnected. Does that pile of yellow bones in that crypt across the Tiber, which may be the bones of the man who denied and was chosen to serve our Lord somehow redeem this pile of blood soaked stones? Stone and stone. Blood and blood. We cannot escape. We can only transform; we can only redeem, or better yet, say we can only accept redemption and be grateful.