Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Where there is hatred, let us sow love.

where there is injury, pardon,

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

Grant that we may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

and it is in dying

that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

– Prayer attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

When Carl, our program leader, asked us to find the most beautiful thing inside of the Basilica of Santa Croce for our Tones of Florence class, I was sure I would have no problems. After all, Santa Croce is one of the must-sees in Florence. Erected in the memory of St. Francis of Assisi, it is not only the largest Franciscan church in Italy, it is also renowned for its religious art.

So a day after receiving the assignment, I confidently made my way up the steps toward the enormous church, dropped a couple hundred lira in the hands of the homeless woman seated at the door, and entered the church with a renewed sense of purpose.

My first impression was amazement. Inside its hallowed walls I not only found tombs designed by famous sculptors and artists, but in these tombs lay the remains of the most elite Italians to make their mark on western civilization – Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Rossinim, Fermi. Even Marconi, the inventor of the radio, was buried there.

To be in the presence of so many icons of the Renaissance was humbling, to say the least, and as I passed each one, I grew more and more convinced that at any moment I would run into something that would inspire me. I made my way through the church, admiring the handiwork of such sculptors as Vasari and Donatello. And I found myself transfixed by brushstrokes from painters like Cimabue and Giotto. Scenes depicting the life of St. Francis seemed to jump out at me from the walls of the church and soon I took a seat at one of the pews, ready to discover what I would write about.

And I sat there, looking at the altar, waiting for the words to come into my head. Five minutes passed. Then 10. Then 15. Then 30. Surely I could narrow it down to one thing. But when I looked at my paper, all I saw were scribbles and rough starts.

Patience has never been one of my greatest virtues and the frustration that I felt at this point was immense. How was it possible that amid so many grand masterpieces and monuments, I could find nothing I would consider the most beautiful thing in Santa Croce.

I had all but given up and was making my way back to the front of the church when I saw it. Resting on the tomb of Michelangelo, was a single yellow rose. Its petals were crumpled and dying and its leaves were beginning to curl, but its beauty was unmistakable. I stood there and stared at it for awhile, pondering its significance and I knew that this would be what I would write about.

But why was it this that struck me as so beautiful? It wasn’t a famous painting or sculpture. It wasn’t an elaborately designed tomb. It didn’t hold any permanency there; in fact, in a few hours it would be swept into the garbage with the rest of the debris left by the steady stream of tourists who had flooded the church that day. So why the rose? I asked myself.

Then something clicked. It was the simplicity of it. Saint Francis was the patron saint of the poor and disadvantaged. He and the rest of the Franciscan monks lived their lives according to the principles of simplicity. Saint Francis himself didn’t even encourage religious art.

If you visit his tomb in Assisi, you will find it isn’t made of a piece of carefully sculpted marble, but of something resembling a piece of extremely weathered cement.

Santa Croce was financed by wealthy Florentines during a time when the economy of Italy was booming. They were the ones that insisted upon all the grandeur and show and even today, if you were to garner enough money or prestige you could buy yourself a spot in the crypt of Santa Croce along with the 250 other people buried there.

But I think that if Saint Francis were alive today he would find more pleasure in the simple beauty of a rose, lain there out of love and respect by a random passerby than in all the hoopla surrounding it.

Christy Steffen is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Ruthven. She is studying abroad in Florence, Italy for the semester.