Churchgoing: from Chicago to Santa Pudenziana.

My father taught me to love churches. A surprising feat, really, since he spent most of his time in bed. At least that is how I will always remember him. He worked at a night job for more than forty years and seemed to lengthen the time away from home by using public transportation. At points in the daytime he would appear downstairs at the dining room table to visit with my mother and to talk with any of his seven children who might happen to be home. He rarely went into the living room, just ran up and down the stairs from bed to table and then back to bed again.

People tiptoeing in and out of the bedroom prevented him from ever really sleeping, so he settled for a lifetime of resting. He could tell which one of his children was home by which artiste was being played, and once, in the early 1970s, he confided to me that he would lose his mind if he heard "American Pie" one more time. That he rarely complained about any of this enshrined him for me as a model of patience, which he held highest among virtues.

He read in bed. I can still see him turning over on his elbow to show me Diary of a Country Priest. Sentimental Education impressed him, as did other French novels, though he never went into detail when telling me why. He would stack his books on the floor next to his side of the bed, until he had thought them through, then he would move them onto his bookshelves. I thought of him as the Proust of our city block, resting but thinking.

He died right after he retired, so he never had a chance to reverse his schedule and start getting a good night's sleep. When I walked in procession past him, lying down for the last time, I slipped him his paperback of James Joyce. I had taken it from his bookshelf, instead of picking up the volume on Christian tradition by Jaroslav Pelikan that lay on the floor next to his bed. Although he was probably still thinking that one through, I chose the Joyce. It was smaller, and "The Dead" was his favorite story.

Earlier that week, on the evening that turned out to be the day before he died, I had left my mother, sisters, and brothers at the intensive care unit so that I could get something to eat and go home. On the way, I stopped at a video store to look for a film that I had been thinking about all that day, Otto Preminger's The Cardinal.

I had been in seventh grade in the mid-1960s when my best friend and I went to see it. Even then I knew it was a cheesy movie, but some of the scenes have stayed with me all my life. Preminger, fascinated by the church, picks up on themes of pre-Vatican II Catholicism. There is a great deal of talk about abortion, celibacy, obedience, worldly vanity, parish fundraising, and even the pope's deeply ingrained suspicion of Americans. All of it reminds me of the hours I spent as a girl, discussing such issues with my father. The two of us puzzling it out together: Is the Catholic Church the only true church? We were so earnest. That was a mark of the time. Watching the movie brought it all back to me. Then, a few years later, a vacation day evoked his legacy even more.

The winter of 1998 had been a sad one for me in several respects, and I comforted myself by booking a trip to Rome in late March. In particular, I wanted to visit the ancient churches of Santa Prassede and Santa Pudenziana. I had visited them before and hoped that seeing them again would give me the boost that I needed. For me there is no surer way to sense God's protection and love than to enter a church and to see what's beautiful there.

People say that they feel God's love when they are in natural settings, but when I think of nature, I just hope that the basement isn't flooding. I intend to relax someday and quiet myself with nature, but I really am less drawn to a mountain brook than to, say, the Baroque frenzy of Ignatius Loyola's tomb. Perhaps my workaday urban background has conditioned me this way, but leaving one interesting city to visit another is usually what vacation means to me.

I entered Santa Prassede. Do people think of Saint Paul as easygoing and friendly? I hadn't until I saw him pictured in mosaic on the great apse, his arm around Prassede looking calm and relaxed. She is wearing beautiful earrings for her presentation in heaven. The opposite side of the mosaic shows her sister, Pudenziana, with Saint Peter's arm around her shoulder. She looks purposeful and his gaze is steady. Christ is in the center, surrounded by his friends, these early Christians. The arches above depict the Paschal Lamb with the angels and saints. Beneath a palm tree at the far left is Saint Paschal, wearing nice shoes and the square halo of the living. He commissioned the church in the ninth century, and I enjoy thinking of him studying the plans and nodding his approval of this golden panorama.

I moved on to Santa Pudenziana, just across Via Cavour. Low, like many early Roman gathering places, Santa Pudenziana invites a quiet approach. Built around 400, on one of the earliest sites of Christian worship in the city, it is small and dark. Christ sits on a throne, holding some papers, and the heavenly Jerusalem is behind him. Although his business is serious, he looks kind and at ease. I had read that this mosaic is pre-Byzantine and free of stylized influences, but its direct effect unsettled me.

Emerging from a damp church into Roman sunshine may be one of life's most invigorating delights. I walked for over an hour trying to find the inviting trattoria I had spotted the day before, but by the time I found it and realized it was closed on Mondays, the bright promise of lunch had begun to fade. I had but one option. I turned the corner into Piazza Navona, took an outside table at Tre Scalini, and splurged. It was a dazzling finish to a wonderful morning.

As I rose to leave, I decided to visit San Luigi dei Francesi, the French church nearby. Although I had passed it many times on previous trips, I had never gone inside. Of course, people who know Rome understand that the city takes its time to beckon. So, for the third time that day, I left the sunshine behind and entered relative darkness. The church was crowded with workmen and noisy tourists. I stepped around them, made my way toward the main altar, and turned left into a chapel. And there it was, a surprise to me. I had no idea. Even in the poor lighting and behind a wall of scaffolding, the power of the great painting was undiminished.

There are more important works of art than Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew, but we don't need reasons for having favorites. The tax collector sits at the money table with his cronies. A boy at the head of the table is armed. Entering from the right are two figures in shabby clothing. Saint Peter gestures to the boy to wait. Christ, his face in partial darkness, looks across the room at Matthew and points to him. The verb "looks" is inadequate and "points" is wrong too, but this is how the action begins. Perhaps the light is more important than the gesture--books have probably been written about it--but certainly it is what makes the painting so wonderful. The action centers on Matthew. This is his moment, his life now changed forever.

Visiting the church on impulse and seeing the painting in the flesh transfixed me. Yet all the while I kept thinking, "If only the boys were here with me..." Would my two sons have enjoyed discovering the painting in San Luigi? Probably. But they would have teased me about it: church after church. Looking back now I have to admire their patience. I saved for years to take them to Chartres, but what they remember is stopping at a Paris carnival and eating all the croissants the next morning. What I remember is two little boys in shorts entering the cathedral and, well, looking up.

Several years before this day in Rome, at the time of my father's unexpected death, my family had kept vigil at the hospital during his ten days in a coma. His sister, my beloved aunt, did her best to comfort us. At one point she stood with me at a window. "He was crazy about you," she said. "Of course, you were the oldest and he was just a kid when you were born. On his days off, when you were a baby, he would put you in his car and drive you all around Chicago. We teased him about it because, do you know where he took you? To churches! To Saint Vincent's, or to Our Lady of Sorrows ... everywhere. We used to laugh about it. 'She isn't even walking yet!' we told him. But Patrick would say that he wanted to show you what's beautiful."

He had never mentioned any of this to me. He had probably forgotten it, and he certainly wasn't one for looking back. At the time of these visits he would have been about twenty-four and already settled into the job that he would hold for the rest of his life. I don't know if his visits with me as an infant in his arms had anything to do with the feeling of peace and the love of God that I can often summon just by walking into a beautiful church. But I suspect that they had everything to do with it. And for that, I owe him a debt that can never be repaid.

People who know Rome understand that the city takes its time to beckon. So, for the third time that day, I left the sunshine behind and entered relative darkness.

Diane Filbin works as a research manager and lives in Chicago.