I did not go to the Papal Mass today but instead sat around listening to the rain, reading Pope Benedict's writing on St. Paul, and thinking about "what God wills". (I know this sounds pretentiously melancholic and exactly like what we aren't supposed to write. I'm getting somewhere, I think.) The will of the gods in the Aeneid caused Aeneas great sacrifice and pain, but because of that Rome was founded, and the will of God brought St. Paul to hardship and death, but in it he found absolute joy.
After supper we watched a biography on Pope Benedict XVI and he said clearly (in writings) that he holds Christianity to be a joyful thing, centered on love. Christianity fulfills the questions the ancient world had. It does not do away with death and suffering, but finds in it utter joy. Being in Rome is this way- not easy (sometimes awful), but joyful and fulfilling.
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