I paid my respects at the
Catacombs of Domitilla where the bones of 900,000 Christians and pagans are
buried and the Crypt of the Capuchin monks where the bones of 3,900 Franciscans
are lovingly arranged in nine different chapels. In the evening I began reading the Life of Melania written by Cardinal Mariano
Rampolla del Tindaro (1900). The book
begins with a detailed description of the extent of corruption Roman Society in
the 4th and 5th centuries. The barriers and distinctions between castes and
classes of Roman society were insurmountable.
Melania the Younger wanted to break away from the excessive depravity
and corruption of the court and live as a child of God in faith as it says in Galatians
3:26-28, “neither Jew nor gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor
female.” To relieve the wretched condition of the poor, Melania sold her
extensive estates and gave up her wealth in penance for the insatiable avarice,
arrogance, extravagance and unbridled sensuality of the elite Roman class in
which she was raised. Saint Athanasius and Saint Jerome awakened religious
fervor in Rome at a time when the Christian martyrs, buried five layers deep and
three miles in circumference around the city, inspired Melania and young women like
her to sacrifice their inheritance to build a new way of life in accordance
with the ideal of the Gospel.
