T A B L E_T A L K Bad trips: Discuss your most miserable travel experience in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Browse barnesandnoble.com for books about Rome ___________________   R E C E N T L Y An innocent abroad, Part Two By Bill Barich A young writer in Florence encounters enduring lessons in art and love (12/22/98) An innocent abroad: Part One By Bill Barich A semester in Florence shapes a young writer's life (12/20/98) If you film it, they will come By Steve Rushin A passionate sports fan begins his cross-country pilgrimage with a visit to Iowa's Field of Dreams (12/18/98) Christmas in Germany By Deanna Hodgin A family visit to Nuremberg's Christkindlesmarkt turns into a lesson for adults and children alike (12/17/98) Brahmaputra: Tales From the River By Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone Extraordinary photographs portray a mighty river's journey through Tibet, India and Bangladesh (12/16/98)   Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives     Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		At Christmas in the Eternal City, a seeker of truth discovers that sometimes the answer you don't get is the one you need. BY ZACHARY KARABELL | We do strange things when we're 19. We stay up all night and point to it as a virtue. We see just how far a cocktail of booze and caffeine can take us. We become passionate about the plight of homeless kittens, and names like Søren Kierkegaard acquire totemic significance. And some of us try to find God, and we look in all the wrong places. At least I did. Frustrated by the lack of religion and the dearth of spirituality in New York City, and animated by a peculiar mix of the Bible, Freud and the New Age, I went off in search of God in one spot where everyone said He'd be on a day that everyone said He'd be there: Rome on Christmas Eve. Now, I suppose I could have gone to Bethlehem, or Jerusalem, but I'd had enough of my ethnic Judaism and wasn't interested in plowing fields that felt fallow. Rome was where the church was. Rome was religion, and the pope was the conduit. It didn't matter to me that I wasn't Catholic. It didn't even matter to me that I wasn't Christian. I thought that God was non-denominational, and I thought that it would be easier to find Him in Rome than in New York. Maybe it was something about the Vatican. About that fey art history teacher in high school who lovingly lulled us with slides of Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel, of Bernini and his St. Theresa of Avila and her not at all subtle sexual delight at finding God. About Bernini's 1660s redesign of St. Peter's Cathedral and of the surrounding square in the highest style of the High Baroque. About the pomp of the Catholic Church and the seductive power of bishops, cardinals and popes. The vestments, the gold, the ceremony and the solemnity. And of course the mystery of the sacrifice and the sacrament. All of which I could idealize without the slightest bit of reality encroaching. My knowledge of the church was blissfully free of any experience of the church. I had studied the papacy and read the history of the early church fathers. I had lingered over the Gospel and the words of Christ, just as I had read the Bhagavad Gita and the Torah and the Dhammapada and the Analects. They were all paths to the holy, and on Christmas Eve, 1986, my path led me to St. Peter's Square and to a group of Carmelite French nuns who took pity on me and got me a precious ticket to midnight Mass. Even at the time, it seemed surreal. The nuns milled around St. Peter's Square in the late afternoon with the intensity of Yankees fans pouring off the subway in the Bronx. Told by the Vatican guards that there were absolutely no tickets for midnight Mass, I must have been drifting despondently, because one of the nuns, all alert eyes and a pietà's compassion, tugged my sleeve and whispered, in French, "I can help." It took me a moment to realize that she was holding a ticket in her hand. "One of the other nuns fell ill," she explained. "Would you like her ticket?" Five hours later, I sat surrounded by a pack of wimples under the gilt dome of St. Peter's. They spoke excitedly among themselves, and the one who had given me the ticket offered a running commentary of the proceedings. The nuns gasped, hands over their mouths, eyes wide, when the pope appeared. It was as if I were at a rock concert, starring John Paul and the Cardinals. The pageant lasted for hours. The cardinals processed. The pope blessed. Children from around the world brought offerings to the papal seat. Music was played. Frankincense was dispersed. Then the pope spoke, solemn, humorless. He spoke in many languages, and I understood none of them. The ceremony seduced, but it did not move me. This was the church, and I was looking for God. And I didn't find Him there. Perhaps He would come, soon. Perhaps during the holiest of holies. It was time for communion, and I hesitated, and stayed in my seat. I couldn't bring myself to approach the priests in their ornate vestments, surrounded by nuns, and take the body and the blood. The next morning, I resolved to go all the way. I would eat the wafers, sip the wine, experience the Eucharist miracle of transubstantiation. After all, it was Christmas Day. It was Rome. And all the restaurants were closed. N E X T+P A G E | Church hopping in Rome