A FATHER, A SON, AND THE HOLY SPIRIT.

A Roman holiday holds some soul-changing moments for one American father and his teenage son.

It had not been the most pleasant morning on the streets of Rome for this American family.

Why wouldn't we allow the boys to buy that lighter fashioned in the image of a Colt .45?

Castel Sant' Angelo? The Roman Forum? Big deal! A lot of dank chambers and old, chipped columns.

Traveler's meltdown loomed. And now we wanted to show them still another church? We decided to divide, not conquer, and compromise. Daniel's leg was hurting, so my wife, Tracy, took him back to the hotel for a rest. Noah and I turned onto Via della Conciliazione.

Three blocks later, we passed through the wooden barricade, past groups of Italian polizi in their impeccably tailored uniforms, who were engrossed in their conversation and totally oblivious to the traffic jam no more than 20 yards away. Past the souvenir sellers, the magnificent obelisk, the splashing fountain, we joined a line of people headed toward the towering building shrouded mysteriously in veiled scaffolding. Only the huge and familiar cupola rising above the scaffolding (holding craftsmen who will assure a new face as the millennium arrives) proclaimed that this was still St. Peter's.

I was thinking transcendence and the fabulous opportunity to visit the greatest church in the Catholic world. Noah was into imminence and the lighter. I trudged on, knowing that if I opened my mouth, I might quickly regret what might come from it.

It had been our dream vacation--Easter in Rome--for which we had planned and saved, and, except for re predictable complaints, it actually had been going reasonably well up until then.

Noah, 15, and Daniel, 13, had proved to be good enough travelers, flexible and agreeable for the most part. Only one major thing was seriously lacking, and this day, this moment underscored that.

We hoped that the Holy City, with its profusion of extraordinary churches and its decidedly Catholic air, might somehow, some way, work its magic on these two boys. They were both Catholic school products, but they had grown increasingly indifferent, often negative toward their faith. But thus far, although we had marched through catacomb and Vatican Museum, into churches like St. Mary Major and St. John Lateran, their disregard for things expressly Catholic had not abated. No Catholic flame had been ignited, no Catholic fervor engendered.

Noah and I approached one of the massive doorways as the drone of a French, then a German tour guide gave the impression we were at but another tourist stop that had to be checked off if one were to really "see" Rome. Overhanging the door was scaffolding and a network of structural supports, so it seemed as though we were bending low to gain entrance to a cave.

Within the space of no more than 20 feet, Noah and I entered into another world.

As we left the muggy, warm April day behind and were enveloped by the cool, damp air within, Noah s neck flexed backward, still more. The sheer scale, the massiveness of St. Peter's, seemed at once to enfold us and shrink us to size. After walking the congested streets of Rome, here, even with hundreds of others around us, there was room, a different kind of air to breathe. Here, hushed voices quickly established that this was not just another tourist stop.

To the right was Michelangelo's incredible Pieta. I stood transfixed, momentarily breathless at the agony of this good woman emitting from that cold, smooth marble. Noah glanced at the glassed-in magnificence of perhaps the world's greatest work of religious sculpture, and moved impatiently on. I followed, a few sad paces behind.

As we approached the small line of people standing before the statue just ahead, I whispered to Noah the legend of the statue of Saint Peter--perhaps embellishing what it actually was--saying with great authority that any prayer rendered from the heart before that implacable bronze would be answered.

When his turn arrived, Noah warily, somewhat hesitantly stepped forward. His is not a generation so steeped in saintly lore as mine. He extended his hand and gingerly rubbed the right foot, worn smooth by millions upon millions of hands--and supplications--over the years. He stepped back. Oddly, he reached out a second time. This time, with a gentler touch. We moved on.

I told Noah what I knew about the massive pillars and Bernini's immense canopy over the main altar and noted it was here that the Holy Father often said Mass. I pointed to the crypt below that main altar where Saint Peter is buried.

At the rear of the basilica--with Gian Lorenzo Bernini's fantastic bronze chair of Saint Peter held aloft by Saints Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom, and suspended above still another massive altar--we paused, but only for a moment. Our tour of the basilica would be over soon, I realized.

Noah was moving ahead of me now. I guess I was deliberately slowing my pace so we wouldn't whisk through here as we had through many churches we'd seen, first in our two days in Venice and now that we had come to Rome. But there was no magic here for a 15-year-old high-school freshman.

Impatient with me, Noah wandered into the high-vaulted alCove off to the left of the main altar. I turned my back to him as was my fashion when I wasn't pleased with the way he was acting.

I faced the altar and tried to take in its majesty, to imagine Pope John XXIII summoning the Second Vatican Council into being, Pope Paul VI blessing the thousands gathered around him, Pope John Paul II, stooped yet so virile, making still another plea for peace or forgiveness or justice in his now-quaking but still commanding voice.

I expected at any moment to get a tap on my shoulder. But I didn't. Finally, slowly, I turned around.

At first I couldn't find Noah, but then, as I squinted into the darkness deep within that alcove, there was his blond head. At the end of a pew, facing not in the direction the benches would have him--for this is a boy who never does things the ordinary way--he sat at a strange angle, almost perpendicular.

I watched. The boy who could barely be still for a moment sat there like one of Michelangelo's statues.

Five, 10, 15 minutes went by. He didn't move. I quietly crept closer to see what he was looking at.

Before him was Vincenzo Camuccini's dramatic rendering of the Incredulity of Thomas. Christ, his tunic pulled aside to reveal a gash on his rib cage, stood patiently before the apostle, whose tentative, outstretched hand and skeptical eyes searched the wound he had vowed he would touch before he would believe that the one he had followed for so many years had indeed not left him at all.

Noah didn't stir. I went to the last pew and--as my son was obviously involved in his meditation--began my own. Initially, although this was exactly what I was trying to dissuade Noah from doing, my mind soared outside St. Peter's. I listed the various sights we had yet hoped to see, mourned the damage to my MasterCard by those all-too-available cash machines. But, eventually, the logistics of travel gave way to something else, inspired by the still presence of a boy before a mosaic some 10 pews away.

What was it? What caused me--a practicing Catholic who had not been to Confession for decades (it may be called the sacrament of Reconciliation now, but my dated terminology further indicated how long I had been away from it)--to look first to Noah and then for my eyes to pass over the dark-wood confessionals that lined this alcove?

As Noah had held certain things Catholic at a distance, so had his father. There, no more than 20 feet to my right, beneath the gold-lettered "Italiano" was a printed sign: "Italian and English." A priest sat within, bending over to bless a woman who had just concluded. I had time--Noah was providing it--and I no longer had a good excuse. No one waited in line.

I surprised myself, not only with my tears before a compassionate Carmelite from Connecticut, but with the sins I proclaimed as my greatest. Arrogance and pride, certainly. But even more deeply imbedded and too often practiced these days: impatience with my children, anger, lack of charity, lack of understanding and compassion.

The penance meted out by that good man was certainly not commensurate with the sins I had laid before him. He told me to simply go to the altar next to where Noah was sitting, look to the Blessed Sacrament, and ask for light--the light to be a good parent, to know when to admonish and when to just unabashedly love and forget.

I arose from my knees and turned. The next person waiting in line was Noah.

Noah's dialogue with this Carmelite I may never know. But I liked the way he stood there before the priest--yes, stood there, eye to eye--and spoke that which was either burdening his soul or troubling his inventive, questioning mind.

Not long after, as we walked out into the brilliant sunlight of St. Peter's Square, I was tempted to ask Noah what had so attracted him to that work of art, why he had gone to Confession.

Thankfully, I recalled the advice of a good Holy Cross brother at the University of Notre Dame, where I was teaching that spring. After a talk I gave to the brothers during Lent, during which I bemoaned the lack of Catholic interest on the part of my boys, he had written me a note. "Let God speak to them in His own time, in His own way," he advised. "Don't be so worried. It will happen."

We were abreast of the obelisk, and it was Noah who was the first to speak. "If we had a church like that at home, I wouldn't mind going so much," was all he said. There are few things I wouldn't do to encourage or foster my boy's Catholic faith. But, as St. Peter's Basilica was not about to be transplanted to Wilmington, North Carolina, this was not a promise I could make.

On our last morning in Rome, two days later, I wanted to pay one last visit to St. Peter's, which was only a five-minute walk from our hotel, the Bramante, which is tucked away on a tiny, cobblestoned street bounded by Rome's ancient wall and Borgio Pio. We had an early flight, but Noah hinted he, too, might be willing to get up early for a final visit.

As we walked to St. Peter's in the pale early-morning light on an overcast day, Noah chatted on about a recent Simpsons segment in which Homer had once again showed himself to be the humorous but unlovely American boob that he is. If there was anyone I didn't want to hear about in those last moments in the Eternal City it was the decidedly ephemeral Homer Simpson. I said nothing. Noah went on. And on.

Once we were inside the basilica, Noah strangely took the lead, not the other way around as it had been a few days before. First to the statue of Saint Peter and that glistening foot. He reached out confidently. Just once this time.

Then, hearing voices from the catacombs below, which are normally closed during the day, he found a stairway. His boldness provided an unexpected tour of the burial places of so many of the popes. Masses in English, Italian, French mingled in the strangely sweet-scented air. The remnant of so many censors of incense? Sweet prayers wafted to heaven?

Noah emerged from the maze of narrow passageways, sarcophagi, and altars, and, having his bearings perfectly, headed for that alcove, that picture. He sat before it once again. Only the demands of Lufthansa's scheduled departure forced me 10 minutes later to tell him we had to leave.

We walked silently for a while through St. Peter's Square, which was still virtually empty. The Sunday before we had stood here with thousands of others for the Easter Mass, a Mass that had gone on too long, with a pope too distant to hold the attention of either of my sons. A few forlorn pigeons picked disconsolately among the glistening stones.

"You know," Noah said finally and with great certitude. "Power. It's all about power." I braced myself. More criticism of the church that he viewed with such suspicion and held at such a distance?

"The power of love," he continued, with equal surety. "It's the only thing that really changes people. That's the greatest power. When they are loved. The only way. We all have the power. How we use it, well, that's the...." His voice trailed off.

Exactly where this came from I may never really know. It was certainly not something, even after my many years of Catholic education, I ever had the boldness, honesty, or trust to say. It was not "the fullness of faith," which is so often held up as our objective in raising our children as Catholics. It was not a catechism or a CCD answer. But somehow, a doubting apostle, his hand reaching out to that wound and his friend and master looking over him with such calm understanding, had imparted something to Noah.

For one of the few times in my life, I didn't come back with a sermonette, trying to make an experience into an object lesson in morality. Fortunately, I said nothing. We went back to the hotel, assembled the rest of our family and luggage and were soon on our way to Fiumicino Airport.

As the plane lifted off the ground I watched as Rome was soon lost beneath a low cloud cover. My hope--and final prayer--was that in the days ahead I could be less of a parent and more of a child, less of a teacher and more of a student, patient not demanding, and continually open to the strange and mysterious ways that God speaks to his people.

By PAUL WILKES, a writer in Wilmington, North Carolina. His most recent book is Beyond the Walls: Monastic Wisdom for Everyday Life (Doubleday, 1999).