On the Way to Rome

130:8.1The first stop on the way to Italy was at the is­land of Malta. Here Je­sus had a long talk with a down­hearted and dis­cour­aged young man named Claudus. This fel­low had con­tem­plated tak­ing his life, but when he had fin­ished talk­ing with the scribe of Da­mas­cus, he said: “I will face life like a man; I am through play­ing the cow­ard. I will go back to my peo­ple and be­gin all over again.” Shortly he be­came an en­thu­si­as­tic preacher of the Cyn­ics, and still later on he joined hands with Pe­ter in pro­claim­ing Chris­tian­ity in Rome and Naples, and af­ter the death of Pe­ter he went on to Spain preach­ing the gospel. But he never knew that the man who in­spired him in Malta was the Je­sus whom he sub­se­quently pro­claimed the world’s De­liv­erer.

130:8.2At Syra­cuse they spent a full week. The no­table event of their stop here was the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of Ezra, the back­slid­den Jew, who kept the tav­ern where Je­sus and his com­pan­ions stopped. Ezra was charmed by Je­sus’ ap­proach and asked him to help him come back to the faith of Is­rael. He ex­pressed his hope­less­ness by say­ing, “I want to be a true son of Abra­ham, but I can­not find God.” Said Je­sus: “If you truly want to find God, that de­sire is in it­self ev­i­dence that you have al­ready found him. Your trou­ble is not that you can­not find God, for the Fa­ther has al­ready found you; your trou­ble is sim­ply that you do not know God. Have you not read in the Prophet Jeremiah, ‘You shall seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart’? And again, does not this same prophet say: ‘And I will give you a heart to know me, that I am the Lord, and you shall be­long to my peo­ple, and I will be your God’? And have you not also read in the Scrip­tures where it says: ‘He looks down upon men, and if any will say: I have sinned and per­verted that which was right, and it prof­ited me not, then will God de­liver that man’s soul from dark­ness, and he shall see the light’?” And Ezra found God and to the sat­is­fac­tion of his soul. Later, this Jew, in as­so­ci­a­tion with a well-to-do Greek pros­e­lyte, built the first Chris­tian church in Syra­cuse.

130:8.3At Messina they stopped for only one day, but that was long enough to change the life of a small boy, a fruit ven­dor, of whom Je­sus bought fruit and in turn fed with the bread of life. The lad never for­got the words of Je­sus and the kindly look which went with them when, plac­ing his hand on the boy’s shoul­der, he said: “Farewell, my lad, be of good cour­age as you grow up to man­hood and af­ter you have fed the body learn how also to feed the soul. And my Fa­ther in heaven will be with you and go be­fore you.” The lad be­came a devo­tee of the Mith­raic re­li­gion and later on turned to the Chris­tian faith.

130:8.4At last they reached Naples and felt they were not far from their des­ti­na­tion, Rome. Gonod had much busi­ness to trans­act in Naples, and aside from the time Je­sus was re­quired as in­ter­preter, he and Ga­nid spent their leisure vis­it­ing and ex­plor­ing the city. Ga­nid was be­com­ing adept at sight­ing those who ap­peared to be in need. They found much pov­erty in this city and dis­tributed many alms. But Ga­nid never un­der­stood the mean­ing of Je­sus’ words when, af­ter he had given a coin to a street beg­gar, he re­fused to pause and speak com­fort­ingly to the man. Said Je­sus: “Why waste words upon one who can­not per­ceive the mean­ing of what you say? The spirit of the Fa­ther can­not teach and save one who has no ca­pac­ity for son­ship.” What Je­sus meant was that the man was not of nor­mal mind; that he lacked the abil­ity to re­spond to spirit lead­ing.

130:8.5There was no out­stand­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in Naples; Je­sus and the young man thor­oughly can­vassed the city and spread good cheer with many smiles upon hun­dreds of men, women, and chil­dren.

130:8.6From here they went by way of Ca­pua to Rome, mak­ing a stop of three days at Ca­pua. By the Ap­pian Way they jour­neyed on be­side their pack an­i­mals to­ward Rome, all three be­ing anx­ious to see this mis­tress of em­pire and the great­est city in all the world.