The Moscow metro

Elide Siviero

My friend Teresa has been in Moscow. She sent me some pictures from this trip. The ones that impressed me the most were the pictures of the Moscow metro stations. I couldn’t believe that those pictures referred to an underground railway: I had in front of my eyes the one of Milan, Rome, Naples, where the various stops are more or less clean, sometimes dirtied with writing, sometimes crumbling or with broken escalators, others closed because they cannot be used. In short, talking about the subway station certainly doesn’t evoke something beautiful.

Those of Moscow are small museums at your disposal. They look like the halls of imperial palaces: wide, large, full of magnificent chandeliers hanging from the ceiling; round with frescoes of various images of nature; marble benches surrounded by stuccoes of fine workmanship. Such a marvel to leave one speechless. Investing so much in the beauty of a subway station must have a profound purpose, I wondered.

The motivation given by the guide was that Moscow had to appear as a splendid city in all its facets, even those that concerned its subway stops. A sort of need to show its supremacy, its beauty even in these situations: Moscow had to be the most beautiful capital city in the world—and in fact the centre is wonderful and well-kept everywhere, Teresa told me. But this fact of such beautiful metro stations evokes a deeper thought.

It is fundamental to know where to go, but it is also important that along the way we can see beauty, because what makes hope, joy and strength grow in us is beauty. Because beauty gives birth to more beauty in us. I have always thought that the Lord could give us even only the final goal of Paradise: we know where we will arrive and that is not little, because it gives a direction to our life. But he did not want to deprive us of the joy of the journey with “stations” that refresh us with their beauty.

These are the stations that concern, for example, the presence of our brothers and sisters in our lives, the joy of sharing, but above all the Liturgy that every Sunday puts us within the beauty of the One who wanted to walk with us and leave us in the Eucharist a meeting place to be with Him.

This station of beauty is truly an imperial salon that allows us to meet the King of the universe; it is a welcoming area that allows us to await his arrival not among the ugliness of our smallness, but by placing us in the greatness of the Divine Majesty. The Lord didn’t content himself with giving us miserable stations where we can stop for a while, hoping that time will pass quickly, but he gave us the Liturgy in which the waiting room for his coming has all the flavour of the eternal encounter. It is a magnificent, rich, sumptuous, enveloping and beautiful room... just like the Moscow metro stations.