I was recently reading a blog by a priest which said basically, “Don’t look to the past, but look to the future.” He referred to the “Golden Years” of Catholic practice and expression from 1930-1965 and said basically we are fooling ourselves if we think they are coming back and we should not try to emulate them.
Having visited the Holy Land recently, I recognize that it is a wonderful thing to look to the past. Celebrating Holy Mass in the grotto where the Annunciation took place is definitely looking to the past–to a very crucial event in salvation history. Every memorial, feast, and solemnity looks to the past, and every Mass looks back to the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. In fact, it does more than that–it makes these events truly present here and now.
Every time we celebrate the memorial of a saint, we look to the past–to the life of the saint. We do so to remind ourselves of what they did–they gave their lives for God in obedient service to the Church and to their neighbors.
Indeed, the “golden years” are not coming back, but there are even now young saints that are living out the Gospel in their lives, and how are they doing it? They are looking to the past for the future.
If we look too much to the recent past (1965-present), we will be like a record that keeps skipping back to the last 1/2 of a second. How quickly we forget that 98% of the history of the Church is before 1965. A 1/2 a second of music is quite monotonous, but to hear the entire piece can be quite pleasant, and to focus on those points where the infinite God enters into history is to focus on infinite variations of music.
So, we must focus on the past. They tried not to 40 years ago. The results are…