As a child, some of my fondest — and least fond — memories involve riding in the car with my dad as we tried to find the ruins of places he visited decades ago: A desolate restaurant in Massachusetts, an abandoned theater in Connecticut, the empty field his childhood home once stood on. These are my father’s American ruins. They are his Pompeiis, his Acropoleis, his Chichen Itzas. One particularly hot and miserable day was spent roaming the ruins of civic leader Samuel Untermeyer’s estate, as we scaled a hill in blazing August heat just to see the ruins of an old gatehouse. I didn’t see the point of it at the time and would much rather have been reading my book someplace cool. It wasn’t until years later, when we returned to the site,since restored, that I could acknowledge its natural beauty. The restoration made me appreciate its beauty; but the potential for restoration that I saw in other sites made me appreciate them all the more.
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My father’s fascination with the old world — and the potential for it to be restored one day – is something I inherited. I confess I detested it at the time, and my patience can be tested today when we, for instance, spend several hours driving around San Francisco looking for an old theater. But at the same time, I have come to see my father’s perspective, perhaps starting with my own visit to Italy. Looking at the ruins of Pompeii and the Roman forum’s marketplace, I finally saw how beautiful it was to look back on what was, and see it as something connected to me in its own distant way.
It’s a very Catholic thing, I feel; the awe and wonder of discovering something old and ancient, whether that’s an abandoned Roman swimming hole, laden with statues of Neptune and Triton playing on the shell — or a motel last occupied 50 years ago. A Catholic knows that nothing lasts forever, that even the city that once conquered the whole world will one day be conquered itself – but that all will be restored one day in the eternal city.
This fascination manifests as early as the first millennium. In the aftermath of the Sack of Rome in 410 A.D., many a Roman wondered if this was a punishment for turning away from the old gods. They saw Rome’s sacking as the apocalypse. In response, St. Augustine of Hippo wrote “The City of God,” in which he says: “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.” Earthly cities will pass away — that is a guarantee — but the heavenly will never fall into ruin, and all things of heaven, all things of beauty, will be restored on that day.
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An obsession with old things is also nothing new; Homer’s “Iliad” is rife with bemoaning about how weak the men of Homer’s day are compared to men during the ages of Hector and Achilles. But ours is not a religion of clinging to the past — it is one of looking to the future. It is a very Catholic thing to find beauty in destruction, as we understand all things will pass and fade, except the love of God. We see no wrong with that; on the contrary, we’re in awe of it, and its potential.
The very Coliseum St. Thérèse robbed.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux was in awe of beauty in destruction as well. While visiting Rome, St. Thérèse writes in her memoir, “How shall I describe the feelings which thrilled me when I gazed on the Coliseum?” only to be disappointed, for, “As the result of excavations the center is nothing but a mass of rubbish, and an insurmountable barrier guards the entrance; in any case no one dare penetrate into the midst of these dangerous ruins.” Nevertheless, Thérèse and her sister Celine snuck away from their tour guide and into the off-limits ruins and proceeded to steal several rocks as souvenirs of their trip to Rome. The saint gazed at the ruins not in forlornness, but in awe. So too did I feel staring at the Coliseum as we drove by it in Rome. The same awe has followed me around the globe, up the hillsides of the Catskills and into the catacombs of Catholic cathedrals.
The Vista at Untermeyer Gardens, Yonkers, New York.
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Yes, winter is upon the country, and with it, a reminder of the end of all things. Everything dies, in the end: flowers, nations, loved ones. There is no shame in that. Everything ultimately becomes a ruin, even the human body. But in the words of Isaiah, “Though the mountains fall away and the hills be shaken, my love shall never fall away from you nor my covenant of peace be shaken, says the Lord.”
Yet restoration is possible. The buried ruins that St. Augustine and St. Thérèse bemoaned have now been excavated and are visited by tourists from all around the world each year. In my hometown, the ruins of Samuel Untermeyer’s estate were restored, and I visited them again with my father in the cool spring and beheld them with joyful eyes. Winter gives way to spring. Things fall into ruin, indeed, but ruined things can be restored.
Even the human body will one day be restored in the kingdom of heaven.
