If you could have lived in any time period...

[DrBombay]

I'm quite content to live in this place and this time, for all the flaws.  I figure God must've known what he was doing when he placed me here. 

We tend to romanticize times and places, especially if we've only experienced them through the pages of history books.  If we were actually to travel back to such places, I'm afraid reality wouldn't live up to our expectations.  "The grass is always greener" would be the idiom to keep in mind here.

For instance.  I find myself often reminiscing about my high school years.  Being totally supported by my parents, very little responsibility, hanging out with my friends, eating the most hideously unhealty (but delicious) food and not gaining a pound, summer vacations, girlfriends....you know the drill.  Even having lived through it, I still romanticize it.  However, in my more lucid moments, I remember how much I generally hated it and couldn't wait to be "grown up" and out on my own.  Would I want to go back to that time and live it over?  No way.  The negatives far outweigh the positives. 

So, now that I've rained on everyone's parade, I'll still play along.  If I could have been born in any time and place, I would choose a large Catholic family in the mid to late 19th century in a very Catholic American city like St. Louis or New Orleans.  I would pursue my vocation in a diocesan seminary and be a simple parish priest.  And, since I can choose when I was born, I would choose my date of death also.  October 11, 1962.  The date Vatican II opened.

I know.  Not very exciting.  But it is what it is.  

[ResiduumRevertetur]

Like Doc I kinda prefer the here and now. Without modern medicine (and the grace of God!) I could have lost two children so far and another two would have to live with drastic deformities, so...


Anyway, playing along here  St Patrick's Ireland. 5th-6th century?

[StrictCatholicGirl]

Like Doc and RR, I love being a member of the here and now. We are not here by happenstance! I also believe that all times are "the best of times and the worst of times" (to quote Dickens), so I can't base my decision on which era I perceive to be the least troublesome or the most glorious. I would have to base it on WHO I might meet face-to-face amidst the awe and the agony. Therefore, my first choice would be to live in Palestine between 1 and 33 AD, for obvious reasons.

 

My second choice would be late 19th century Lisieux, France, so that I could meet my super hero, St. Therese. I once wrote a letter-poem about being a pilgrim in Lisieux on the centennial of her death, wishing I had walked that holy place when she graced it with her smile. I hope you don't mind....

 

 

Dear Therese,

I saw you among the little flowers
buttoning the pathways

to Les Buissonets,

and in the touched-up
photographs sold
as souvenirs on the street
corners of Lisieux.

I saw you in the company
of kings and heroes
shelved among the books
blazoned with haloed crowns,

in the ready eyes of pilgrims
breakfasting at the Café Normand;
the tour guide with a dozen legends
to relay in a French accent . . .

But I never saw you as you were,
an ordinary saint among the simple,
among the routine cloud of faces

veiled behind the grille,

I never passed you in the corridor,
never saw you press your finger
to your lips, a song stifled
in cloistered silence,

only in my mind
does your smile sneak up on me,
a humble visitor,

a century late.

- Lisa

 

 

[Monica]

Lisa, thanks for your wonderful post.  Therese is a favorite in our home;  through my daughter, then aged 3, and another loved one, Therese brought me back to the Church.  

[viscount_slurpee]

Absolutely any period of history whatsoever.  And I'm not romanticising the past.  I know it would be full of huge struggles that today’s well-off, such as us, no longer have to contend with.  But the struggles we face in this godless day and age are far more challenging.  At least, back then, they had pious families and friends to share the struggle with.  Many of you might have that today, but for those of us who don’t, it’s a terribly lonely struggle.  And even for those who do, I’m sure you spend half your time bickering and trying to subdue pointless conflicts and religious differences.  Satan’s great victory has been to reduce the truly faithful to a mere handful, then split them into a million factions so that they all turn upon each other.

 

The bodily sufferings of the past would not have mattered because those who were truly pious would have suffered anything, with complete confidence and trust in God’s will.  These days, after 200 years of arrogant French bastards “enlightening” us, we’ve all been brainwashed into this belief that we ought to be happy and we need to achieve all things materially and personally, and prove ourselves to the world.  Especially with all the temptations and excess and luxuries around us, it has become so much harder to resign ourselves to God’s will and accept a life of suffering and struggle.  And most especially if (as in my case) you were raised as an atheist and told that life was all about hedonism.  That attitude does not disappear as soon as you become a Catholic – it hangs around and you spend your whole life fighting it.  We will find that, when the proverbial hits the fan, as it surely will - our air-conditioned, remote-controlled lives will be poor preparation for the sufferings ahead.

 

The internet is only a blessing in this horrible, irreligious age.  Having to conduct your entire social life on a computer instead of face-to-face is only a blessing because it’s preferable to having no social life.  Thus, in any other day and age, the internet would be a curse.  It’s a bit like having your family killed by an axe-wielding maniac but then being consoled by the fact that your wife left you a box of chocolates in her will.
 
Those who are worried about the pending New World Order don’t realise that it’s already here.  Look at what we had and look at what they’ve done to it.

 

Perhaps the absolute worst part is that they refuse to even kill us!  Denying us the grace of martyrdom and forcing us to endure their maggot-infested corpse of a civilization is worse than being stretched out on the rack.

 

Excuse my somewhat off-topic rant.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.  :rolleyes:

[jovan66102]

Central heating and the Internet have spoiled me. I like the 21st century.

If I could pick, though, I'd like to live in 17th century France and be a musketeer.

Some elements of the Middle Ages sound cool, and others.... well, if I have to be a medieval serf, you can just forget about that, LOL.

Hey, get outa my head. I'm torn between the XIIIth and XVIIth centuries myself. And of course, it would have to be France. Can you imagine seeing the Angelic Doctor in debate or St Louis IX sitting in judgement under the oak tree? Or in the later time, meeting St Francois de Sales or St Vincent de Paul (or any number of other, more obscure Saints and Blesseds)? Both were a much more devout time than ours, I'm afraid.

FRANCE??? NO WAY! Siding with the Turks against Christendom?? Waging war throughout Europe for the glory of "la grande nation" and the bloody tyrant, Louis the killer XIV?? NO WAY!

Alsace and Lorraine are ours, get over it.

 

Vive la France!!!

[viscount_slurpee]

France is a cancer that needs to be cut out.

[jovan66102]

France is a cancer that needs to be cut out.

 

An interesting view for a Catholic. So you propose the genocide of the French people?

[viscount_slurpee]

YES! YES! YES!

Oh wait...

............No.

I just didn't want a post praising France to get the last word.  ;)  My hatred for the enlightenment tends to spill over into a hatred for everything French.  Forgive me.

[jovan66102]

YES! YES! YES!

Oh wait...

............No.

I just didn't want a post praising France to get the last word.  ;)  My hatred for the enlightenment tends to spill over into a hatred for everything French.  Forgive me.

 

I'll put my hatred of the enlightement up against yours any day. I just can't forget the fact that France's vocation is as the Eldest Daughter of the Church and I pray for her conversion every day.