Death at Pompeii 79 BC

After a three hour drive, we arrived at the ancient Roman city of Pompeii where August 24, AD 79 over the next twenty five hours thousands died when Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the entire city in ash. It was very warm and we found out just how critically important keeping hydrated is (see Gillian beginning to fade). Amazing the restorative powers of water.

Mass for the Dead at Montecassino Italy

Winding up hairpin turn after hairpin turn, we made our way to the site of one of the many tragic victories for the Allies in WW II. Here's a few quick facts: Battle of Monte Cassino - Conflict & Dates: The Battle of Monte Cassino was fought January 17 to May 18, 1944, during World War II (1939-1945). Armies & Commanders

Allies

• General Sir Harold Alexander
• Lieutenant General Mark Clark
• Lieutenant General Oliver Leese
• US Fifth Army & British Eighth Army

Germans

• Field Marshal Albert Kesselring
• Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff
• German 10th Army
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  Here's what it looked like in 1945
  
  
  
  
  
  Here's why we so desperately needed and need every generation a REFORMATION, a rediscovery of and passionate embrace of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in CHRIST alone.
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  Here, lined with marble statues of popes, lie the relic of St Benedict, and here have flocked for centuries pilgrims to pray to him and seek "grace" from him. And they do so today. We came for other reasons...
• A Polish tour group brought along their own priest to say and sing a mass for the dead at the Polish war cemetery at Montecassino:

Tyrrhenian Sea, the Euro, and the US Dollar

We are enjoying a spacious villa with a walled yard like a park, a stones throw from the Tyrrhenian Sea, sand and water considerably warmer than Puget Sound. Thanks to the strength of the dollar to the Euro we can do this for less than it would cost us to stay in a mediocre hotel, no joke. What a blessing and undeserved gift from our Heavenly Father. We are gradually clawing our way out of the fog of jet lag, though never as instantly as I would like.

Death and Freedom at Anzio 1944

Public funds are so much better spent on war memorial cemeteries like this one in Italy commemorating the deaths of over 10,000 American soldiers than on Rock-n-Roll museums or fecal "art" on display at tax payer expence at American art galleries. The Sicily-Roma war cemetery, memorializing the combat dead of January 1944, is profoundly beautiful and profoundly moving. A sobering reminder of the futility and emptiness of sin, and the unrelenting trouble sin causes in the world, perhaps no where seen in its aggregate ugliness than in war. "O quickly come, dread Judge of all." I long for the day when swords are beaten into plowshares, when the enemies of Christ and his kingdom are finally defeated, and the Prince of Peace brings true freedom and eternal rest to his beloved church. 

Giles did not feel it appropriate to smile at such a place, nor does he really approve of taking photographs at places where so many lost their lives in the cosmic and ever-illusive human struggle for freedom.

Nero: the one-man ISIS of the early church

I felt almost physically sick as we stopped to visit Nero's palace ruins in Anzio. Clearly it was a vast and opulent structure in the first century; sobering to think that he probably cooked up some of his schemes to destroy the body of Christ right in the midst of the columns, chambers, and arches still visible along the sandy beach. Bronzed-bodied Italians today sunbathe, laugh, and play in the surf of the Tyrrhenian Sea, some setting up their umbrellas and lounge chairs amidst the ancient ruins that project onto the beach. I'm reflecting on how difficult it us for we comfortable Christians to ger our minds around the normality of suffering for Christians then and in so many places in the world today.