Ambrose buildings, even today
2001.09.07 09:44
I was not aware of the Ambrose strategic church building program at Milan. Thanks for letting me know about it.
There are three (rather large) Catholic parishes in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney, St. Ambrose, St. Helena and The Incarnation of Our Lord. They are all just over 75 years old now, and all within a section of Philadelphia where the demographics is now changing rapidly into incredibly dense multi-culturalism. I've lived here over 43 years now, so I well know the local history. Only recently (Spring 1999) did I learn of the connection between Helena and Ambrose (i.e., Ambrose's late reporting of Helena's finding of the Holy Cross). I began to wonder who it was that actually picks the patronage/names of new parishes when they are instituted, because I am curious if having St. Ambrose next to St. Helena is just an accident. I have yet to pursue this research largely because I don't think I'd actually find an answer, at least not an answer that states specifically whether or not this particular coincidence was intentional. Later in 1999, I learned of Athanasius and his connection to Constantine, and then I learned of Athanasius' influential theological text on the Incarnation.
I'm relating all this because I very unexpectedly found myself living in a otherwise undistinguished place, yet full of huge, and quite specific, late antiquity references. References, moreover, that no doubt no one else around here has any idea of, nor, probably, would care about even if they were informed. I guess what I'm trying to say is that as remote as late antiquity is, it's still very much there, and sometimes right in front of your face and you still may not recognize it.
ps
You may remember that I wrote about a nun that was recently attacked while going to Mass at St. Helena's. Well, that same week there was another nun attack news story that came out of Olney. A nun from Incarnation parish was attacked by a pit-bull dog. Not that these examples are exactly 'persecution', but they do give one a real sense of the kinds of stuff that went on almost exactly 1700 years ago.
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