In the aftermath of the sack of Rome by Alaric and his Goths, St. Jerome wrote:
"The world sinks into ruin: yes! But shameful to say our sins still live and flourish. The renowned city, the capital of the Roman Empire, is swallowed up in one tremendous fire; and there is no part of the earth where Romans are not in exile. Churches once held sacred are now but heaps of dust and ashes; and yet we have our minds set on the desire of gain. We live as though we are going to die tomorrow; yet we build as though we are going to live always in this world. Our walls shine with gold, our ceilings also and the capitals of our pillars; yet Christ dies before our doors naked and hungry in the persons of His poor."
I am writing these words as the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris is burning to the ground.
It is hard for an American to imagine the shock that men felt when Rome, the ruler of the great Mediterranean world, was put to the torch. Rome had not been sacked in 700 years. Hannibal had been at the gates, but he never got inside. Catiline sought to ruin it from within, but Cicero checkmated him. A corrupt senate, massive dislocations of a once-stable agricultural populace, armies loyal not to the state but to their free-dealing commanders, and ambitious aristocrats nearly destroyed the state, but the steel-cold Augustus Caesar triumphed over his rivals and set the stage for 200 years of relative peace. And now this same Rome had been overrun.
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