The Appian Way is one of the earliest roads of ancient Rome. An engineering accomplishment with both military and commercial significance, the first section of it was completed in 312 BC, by a guy named Appias Claudius Saecus. Parts of the original road still exist today.

Along the Appian Way are many catacombs, which served as burial tombs for the bodies of dead Christians. To give you an idea of the extent of the catacombs, there are about 60 of them along the Appian Way, with only a handful open to the public. One of the catacombs, the Catacomb of St. Sebastian, houses 7 miles of tunnels, all full of niches in the walls where bodies would have been placed and then sealed off with cement (Romans were, after all, rather good with cement).

The myth is that Christians hid and lived there during the 1st and 2nd century AD. Christians did indeed have it rough in Rome, at least until Constantine showed up, but it isn’t true that they used the catacombs to hide from persecution. Rather, it was a place where they could legally and cheaply bury their dead. Christians weren’t allowed burial plots inside the city proper, and since the Appian Way was technically outside of the city, they were permitted to use that area to put their families to rest.

The Romans knew about the catacombs. There were Roman mausoleums found intact in St. Sebastians’ Catacomb, which means that not only did the Romans know about the catacombs, but used them as well. It was not a secret hiding place for Christians.

One of the reasons we know that the Christians did not use the catacombs as a long term hiding or living place is because of the nature of the rock and earth of the catacombs. The dirt under the Appian Way is some kind of volcanic dirt. I’m not a geologist, but my understanding is that the dirt was very easy to dig out (which is helpful if you’re digging out 7 miles of the stuff), but then hardened very quickly when exposed to oxygen. This made it sort of ideal for burying bodies—easy to make a hole, but then the hole hardens quickly so decomposing bodily fluids and other unmentionables can’t leach out through the soil once the hole is sealed with cement.

We got to go see the catacombs this summer on our trip to Europe. We entered the catacombs with a tour, winding down steep staircases and padding along dirt floors behind a tour guide who pointed a flashlight at notable passages. We could smell sulphur in the dirt and also in the air, and were told that along with the properties described above, the dirt released sulphur fumes when disturbed. The guide had struct instructions not to keep the tour longer than 30 minutes down in the tunnels because of this very real health hazard. He said that Christians would have known of this health hazard as well, and would have known it would be dangerous to live there.

Like I said, it was not a secret hiding place. It was, however, a secret place of worship.

In the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, there is a marble altar still intact. The story goes that there was a young pope leading a service when Roman soldiers broke in and killed the worshippers and beheaded the pope, tossing his body behind the altar.

The catacombs are, by nature, a creepy place, so it wasn’t hard to imagine the violence.

We spent a great deal of time in Europe this summer, and as such, saw lots of places of worship. We saw so many churches that by the end of the trip my daughter moaned, “NO MORE CATHEDRALS!” Europe is filled to the brim with man’s monuments to God.

Most of the places we saw were spacious buildings with elaborate decor, soaring architecture that was meant to glorify God and make a man feel small as he looked up and sought for a higher being and purpose. Every cathedral/mosque/synagogue had some sort of light built in–the Pantheon in Rome, with that iconic hole in the dome, the stained glass of St. Peter’s at the Vatican, and the painted columns of the Meszquita in Spain–all things meant to lift the eye and soul to God. Sort of the opposite of a catacomb.

In the catacombs, it is pitch black. The only light to worship was brought in by oil lamps, the type of lamps that we think of when we talk about the parable of the ten virgins, a small thing with limited oil.

The rooms used for worship were small, maybe the size of a bedroom. They were cold, damp, and smelled of dirt and sulphur. There were no images other than the rough hewn carvings on the marble slabs that marked the graves, no soaring ceilings, no organ piping in music. The worshippers would have stood elbow to elbow, and would have felt each other’s breath as they prayed. Perhaps they whispered, to keep the secrecy, or maybe it just felt silly to speak loudly in a room that swallowed the sound with the dirt.

How would it have been, I wondered, to worship in almost total darkness? To pray by the light of a small lamp, knowing that doing so could cost you your life? Would I have been so brave? How did they find the courage?

And seriously, was NO ONE in the ancient world claustrophobic???

The noble cathedrals of Europe are stunning feats of engineering and design, and are awesome to behold. But I found myself moved to tears to contemplate the simple prayers of faith that were offered in the dark. These are the types of prayers that mirror my own. I don’t find God in the baroque architecture of a gorgeous cathedral. Rather, I usually find Him by the small altar of my bed by the light of the moon. It’s not a catacomb (although it does sometimes get a funky smell), but it is where I find Him the most.

And the catacombs prove that the Christians found Him, not in the stained glass, but by the light of a single flame.

Where do you find God?