Luther made a full recovery and continued his journey to Rome, convinced that what he experienced there would make amends for the excesses which he had encountered along the way. Finally, he approached the holy city and, overcome with emotion, fell to his knees with the words “Holy Rome, I salute thee”  but as he entered the gates of what he believed to be heaven on earth, he was bitterly disappointed.

Rome was a cesspool. A pit of prostitution, profanity and profligacy, the likes of which he had never seen. He struggled to make sense of what he encountered, writing “No one can imagine what sins and infamous actions are committed in Rome; they must be seen and heard to be believed. Thus they are in the habit of saying, ‘If there is a hell, Rome is built over it: it is an abyss whence issues every kind of sin.

While in Rome and preoccupied with these thoughts, Luther availed himself of a recent indulgence that the Pope had issued to all who should ascend “Pilate’s Staircase” on their knees. While he was ascending the staircase he heard a voice saying to him for the third time “The just shall live by faith”. He jumped to his feet and left the scene in shame and fear, the verse seared on his soul. It was a turning point for Luther, one that would alter the course of his entire life. Soon he would go head to head with the infamous Johann Tetzel, common criminal and indulgence peddler extraordinaire, an encounter that would set in motion the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

The great question that Luther grappled with is one we all grapple with today; “how can a man be just before God?” and it is the answer to that question,“ the just shall live by faith”, that launched the nuclear impact of the Reformation. The mushroom cloud still hangs over Christendom today.