No visit to Rome with a teenager you would like to impress is complete without a visit to the Capuchin Crypt located under Santa Maria della Concezione . Perhaps you know the story – the chapel is decorated with the bones of 4,000 Capuchin monks disinterred when the church was built. They are – arranged. Artfully and ingeniously, even extending to the light fixtures swinging above your head.

The place is smaller than I expected – five rooms in a row – well lit, and not really creepy. It’s kind of strange that it’s not creepy, even with the skeletons in monk’s habits leaning forward from the wall or the skeleton hanging from the ceiling. It struck me as fundamentally, the fruit of love and hope – love for the brothers, and hope in the resurrection. And of course, you all must know the message that greets you in the last room:

What you are now, we used to be; What we are now, you will be.

Memento Mori, indeed.

And then back into the light, down the street to S. Maria della Vittoria and the Ecstasy of St. Teresa. Another sign – this time of more hope – faith that what we might, once in a great while experience through these bodies, through this flesh and blood and bones, points to life beyond, to God’s promise that in the end, he will indeed, gather up these dry bones and refashion them for life eternal with him.