“What do you feel when you see the Coliseum? The feeling produced by any ruin: sadness. Its vast and beautiful proportions remind the whole world of greatness but its decrepitude involuntarily drives our thoughts to the fragility of human things. There is a time for everything and the monuments that seemed to defy the test of times fall apart as if demonstrating that only God’s works are durable and when the debris spread everywhere protesting against the eternity of human’s works, you dare call eternal a city littered with the remains of the past! Where are you Babylon? Where are you Nineveh? Where are your huge and splendid palaces? The traveler hopelessly searches under the sand of the desert. Don’t you see that God has erased it from the surface of the Earth? Rome, do you expect to defy the laws of nature? You say you are Christian and Babylon was Pagan. Yes, but you are stones, as she is also, and God’s breath may disperse the stacked rocks. Isn’t the trembling earth around you a warning that your cradle under your feet may become your grave? You say: ‘I am Christian and God protects me.’ However, how dare you compare yourself to the first Christians who died for their faith and whose thoughts were no longer from this world, you who live the pleasures, luxury and indolence? Cast your eyes upon those arenas when you go by with indifference. Ask those still standing stones and they shall respond and the shadow of the martyrs will come to tell you: What have you done to the simplicity turned into law by our divine Master; to the humility and charity that he gave us as an example? Did the first propagators of the Gospel live in palaces, and were they dressed in silk and gold? Were their tables overflowing with the superfluous? Were they surrounded by useless entourages of servants flattering their pride? What is it in common between you and them? They only wanted the treasures of heaven while you seek the Earthly treasures! Oh! People who call yourselves Christians! Looking at your attachment to the perishable things of this world one would say that you don’t really count on those things of eternity. Rome, self-proclaimed to be immortal, when the future centuries will not be able to find your location as it is today when we seek Babylon!
Dante”
OBSERVATION: Out of an incredible coincidence these two messages came to us on the same day. Although they deal with the same subject it is clear that the spirits see it from their own personal point of view. The first sees a religious Rome and eternal in his opinion because it shall always be the capital of the Christian world. The second sees the material Rome and says that nothing constructed by humans can be eternal. It is a fact that the spirits have their own opinions and may disagree among themselves when still influenced by their worldly ideas. It is only the purer spirits that are exempt from prejudices. But leaving aside the opinion that may be controversial, it is not possible to deny the fact that the two communications show great elevation in style and thought and we believe that they would not be denied by the authors whose names they bear.
