Every once in a while, someone comes up to me after Mass and tells me: “I loved your column.” Invariably, it was one in which I spoke of my Italian childhood. The stories are nothing special, they describe a simple life which most folks would call “boring.” No excitement, no fabulous trips, no extraordinary events. So, why the attraction? Isn’t it the same feeling we have when we look back at the memory of our childhood, when things were simpler and life less threatening? Besides, the older we are, the more there is to look back and reflect upon: people, events and even landscapes that have shaped us. We turn around to recapture a beauty that is now lost. In fact, many of the folks who attend R.C.I.A. (the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults), say that they come because the memory of their parents or grandparents is all bound up with the Catholic Faith. After years of wandering all over the place, they are coming back to what is familiar, what is loved, what is safe; to what the song calls “that old time religion.”

Despite the common thread, every person’s experience of the Faith is different. Not only family, but friends, teachers, events and buildings, yes, buildings, mold our lives forever. Years ago I was getting ready to visit my family, in Italy, when someone asked me what I was going to do with my vacation. The answer came spontaneously: “I’m going back to walk in the footsteps of my ancestors.” That’s right. My ancestors who, known or unknown, walked the same marble floors of the same old churches in which we still worship the same Lord. The footsteps of our ancestors still mark the preferred route to the main altar and the side chapels: the Blessed Sacrament chapel, the chapels to Mary, St. Joseph, St. Anthony, and the favorite local saints.

The countless feet that preceded us grooved the old stone; the countless hands that, like ours, dipped in the Holy Water fount, smoothed the shell-shaped stone basin hanging from the wall. The centuries’ old scent of incense is indivisible from the ageless walls. Statues, candelabra, altar railings, even the wooden pews, which bear the imprint of countless knees, radiate the soft glow of polishing, rubbing, washing and tending that has kept them worthy of housing the Savior of the world. Regardless of how big city churches are cleaned today, in towns and villages the “nonnine” (little grandmothers) still bring their woolen rags, their herb-scented polish and kneel on the floor, to give the stone that loving rub that keeps them glowing; what the antique dealers today call “patina.” Everything they touch is handled with the same loving care. While they polish, they talk to the Lord.

Sometimes they weep, as they tell Him of their troubles: a son’s marriage woes; a jobless daughter; a grandchild on the wrong path. Entering these old churches, it feels as though loving arms reach out and hug you. All those things: worn floors, scarred pews, ageless paintings, and distinctive scent seem like an extension of the One who has lived among them for centuries beyond number: our gentle Lord, the King of the universe. How could anyone forget that experience? Maybe in the thoughtlessness of our youth we step away from the familiar, the safe, the traditional in order to explore, to “find ourselves.” But that gentle beauty keeps calling us back.

Yes, our gentle Lord has given us a mind to call our own and He lets us go our own way while all the time, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, He watches for our return. That is the way of gentleness. No forcing, no violence, no harshness, no threats: only patience, love and kindness. Just like grandma (at least, most grandmas!). When a culture has been shaped by God for 2000 years, and St. Peter and St. Paul came to Rome almost that long ago, it imitates His ways, and transmits His presence.

Oh sure, Italians are just as busy trying to distance themselves from their Catholic roots as the rest of silly Europe. Divorce, abortion and other forms of violence are taking root there as well as everywhere else. My sister, who volunteers full time at her parish, tells me of bewildered children who are shuffled between divorced parents; and mothers who are left to raise their children by themselves by a husband who follows his lust. And she sees the same devastation that we have observed here for years. Gentleness gives way before violence every time. Not because of fear or surrender, but because of greater strength and wisdom. That’s right. Gentleness may seem to lose at first, but its greater strength lies in patience, in determination, in commitment, and in hope.

When violence will have spent itself, consuming everything that it can and leaving us empty, we will turn back to gentleness for safety, for consolation, for healing. Just as, after years of “looking for love in all the wrong places,” we turn back to the Faith that kept our ancestors so strong, so kind, so giving. None of the gods that mankind has built for itself will satisfy us in the end. Only the one true God, who leads by example, who teaches with kindness, and whose patience endures forever, will satisfy our restless hearts. As St. Augustine said 1600 years ago: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”