Day 3 - My Mother's Favorite Angel

By noon on Friday my paperwork had been taken care of(praise God!), and I was released to spend a day of toursim with the rest of the team.

For lunch we squeezed ourselves into the second story of a crowded restaurant and ate hotdogs, Chilean Style. They really are quite popular down there, and they do use hotdogs, but there is something distinctly Chilean about them. I think it’s the amount of avocado, tomato, and mayonnaise piled on top - the actual hotdog was hiding somewhere underneath the mountain of condiments. It was an interesting experience in itself, but I could only handle about two bites before I snuck it into the trash. (vegetarian, remember?)

That afternoon we went careening through the trees in a park on top of San Cristobal Hill. I rode with Marco and my teammate, Crystal, and it was in a cramped, rickety bubble of a sky trail car that I discovered they were both afraid of heights. It is never a good thing to discover when you are a few stories in the air and the door won't shut all the way, but nevertheless, we bonded and survived.

Both of those activities were certainly adventurous, but the most memorable part of the whole day was spent in silence. We visited a Cathedral in one of the city's main plazas. It was so ancient and beautiful, all stained glass above and creamy marble sepulchres below. There were statues all around, monuments to Christ, angels, and the saints. I stopped in front of a statue of the Archangel Michael casting Satan down from heaven and stood there for a while. Looking at it and thinking about it brought tears to my eyes. There is so much sadness in it all. Was Michael sad when he had to battle his fellow angel? What if Satan had just kept loving and worshipping God like the rest of the angels? What if his heart had never blackened and twisted itself beyond recognition?

But he fell, and man fell too when we chose to trust him over God, and now we cause ourselves so much needless suffering. We'll never know the world that might have been, only the world that will be reborn through Christ's restoration. And thankfully God commissions good people and angels like Michael to protect us and show us true courage until the darkness passes. It stuns me to think that there are people who faithfully attend mass every week in these beautiful, illustrative buildings, with constant reminders of Christ's sacrifice staring down at them from every angle, who do not understand or even recognize the staggering weight of His love for them. My heart breaks for them, and I pray a passion for Him rises in their souls once again.