September 26, 2004

Visit some historic site and you are likely to be shown around by "docents" in period costume who then will take you to a gift shop where historical reproductions are on sale. This is usually enjoyable unless one has a guide who spends undue time in the kitchen lecturing on archaic cooking instruments. It is a danger of house tours to be avoided. In places like Jamestown and Williamsburg and Plymouth whole villages are reconstructed, and there now are television series with people spending months trying to live as people lived then. The psychological results are interesting and instructive, but they mostly prove that "you can't go home again." The most detailed reconstruction of the past is not the same as the past.

Christianity is historic, born of real events lived by real people, but the practice of Christianity is not archeological. Christianity is living history in an authentic way far different from trying to recreate it. The Christian motto semper idem (always the same) means that the essence perdures through the changes of culture. Christians do not "re-live" history: they live it. At Mass, the "remembrance" of Christ's sacrifice is a participation in it. The calendar of the saints does indeed recall the great deeds of past heroes, but those saints are actively involved in the life of the Church on earth right now, through their intercessions.

Last week, we celebrated the modern martyrs of Korea and St. Pio of Pietrelcina, recently canonized, and also St. Matthew who saw our Lord. The dynamic of the Holy Spirit united them across the separation of centuries. This week we celebrate Vincent de Paul who was a patron of charity in the seventeenth century, Jerome who pioneered Scripture study more than a thousand years earlier, and the modern Thérèse who is a Doctor of the Church even though she lived but twenty-four years.

Intermingled almost casually with these human saints are archangels and our guardian angels. To some this seems impossible territory, and to others it is a temptation to silly and sentimental speculation. The holy angels are creatures beyond our intelligence, pure spirit, who adore God and help us. They exist outside the boundaries of time and so they relate easily to people of every age without any complex of antiquarianism or nostalgia. People of the twenty-first century are to them no different from people of the first century of human history. They are the only creatures who know precisely when that century was. Modern communications make very accessible basic doctrine about the holy angels who are God's own communicators. This week of the feasts of the angels is a prime time to study this splendid mystery. Avoid the exotic and arcane. For solid starters, authentic doctrine and helpful references are available on the website by looking up "angels" through www.Catholic-Pages.com.

Fr. George W. Rutler