Prologue Story and Metaphor

Prologue Story and Metaphor

In the summer of 1960 I was a monk and a priest in the Servite monastery high on the Janiculum hill in Rome and halfway through two years of postdoctoral research at the downtown Pontifical Biblical Institute. Rome was preparing for the Olympic Games in late August and so, apart from its standard heat, the city promised too much construction and too many people. (Even the pope abandons the Vatican in August for cool Castel Gandolfo among the Castelli Romani in the nearby Alban Hills— a sure if minor proof of his infallibility.)...