People crave belonging. Belonging gives us a sense of security. If we belong to something big, we feel safe. That’s the logic behind all empires. It is built to imitate Divine embrace — a sensation of belonging to something big and secure. All imperial attributes — architecture, literature, culture, education, law, economics, and army — are focused on creating and fostering this sensation.
They say that each Roman emperor tried to outdo his predecessor by building a more magnificent palace for himself. The competition lasted for several centuries until Marcus Agrippa commissioned the Pantheon in 27–25 BCE during the reign of Augustus.
The idea behind Pantheon was grandiose and… imperial through and through. The Pantheon was designed with a spherical interior, symbolizing the vault of the heavens. Its dome represented the cosmos. The interior niches likely held statues of Roman gods, deified emperors, and sacred objects from different nations.
The idea was simple — when you walked into this temple dedicated to all the gods you felt embraced by the universe. Empire equals universe. All you need to do is bow down to the Emperor, and you are in. We all crave being in. We hate being left out. Empire is the perfect surrogate for the Divine embrace, the Divine womb, as the medievals imagined the cosmos.
And yet, there was a gaping hole in this magnificent edifice— both literally and metaphorically. In the center of the Pantheon’s dome, there was a hole called the oculus. They say was made for ventilation, but through Divine Providence, it became a window for people to peep beyond the suffocating confines of the empire.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the meaning of the Pantheon changed. What was an idol serving as a substitute for God became an icon revealing God’s embrace.
Every year, on August 15, a festivity is held in Rome where rose petals are thrown through the oculus of the Pantheon. It is called “Sacro Cuore di Gesù,” “Feast of the Sacred Heart.” The idea is simple — you walk in and experience being embraced by God. By the irony of fate, the oculus became a window through which God could enter the suffocating world of human surrogates.
Every empire has a hole in it. It claims to bring Heaven on earth, but its “surrogate heaven” feels too suffocating. Yet, every empire has a crack in it that becomes a window for the fresh air to come in. All idols have cracks, so we can look through them and find ourselves in God’s embrace with rose petals falling over our heads.
I can still remember the inimitable feeling of the New Year’s festivities during the Soviet times. The empire sought to replace Christmas with New Year’s to celebrate family, community, and the “bright future,” but ended up creating an unbeatable sensation of God’s womb. Movies, art, theater, and literature were heavily censured by the Soviet machine, and yet, they became a window for us to breathe through. As Vladimir Nabokov said:
“The only way to deal with the impossible is to make it beautiful.”
Yes, yes -- this immediately reminded me of the Soviet Union, and of Russia today. My daughter is six years old, and has never been in Russia, but she has learned the Russian language since birth and thinks of herself as Russian. Much of that sense of belonging is due to old Soviet cartoons that she watches almost every day, many of which were created explicitly to knit together a multiethnic empire. She has learned about Ukrainian and Georgian farmers, Chukchi fishermen, Russian boyars and Central Asian warriors. She has learned the myths and stories of a dozen disparate peoples, all united by the Russian language. I regularly tell anyone who will listen that these are the best cartoons in the world. In an unexpected way they have prepared her for a globalized world. She is now in her second year at an International Baccalaureate Spanish-English dual language school in a poor Hispanic area of southeast Houston, and is starting to speak Spanish with her classmates. She tells me she wants her to teach her Arabic and French. Her classmates come from all over the Americas. It is as different from my own all-White childhood in northern Maine as it is possible to be. The differences between the children are merely individual -- there is so much diversity that there are no groups of children from a similar background. She is just one of everyone. We live in a world in which it is possible to see the beginnings of one common humanity. I cannot tell you how glad I am.
"Every empire has a hole in it. It claims to bring Heaven on earth, but its “surrogate heaven” feels too suffocating. Yet, every empire has a crack in it that becomes a window for the fresh air to come in. All idols have cracks, so we can look through them and find ourselves in God’s embrace with rose petals falling over our heads."
Excellently put, Eugene. And I suspect we may have more than one hole in our current societies!