I am sure you will have heard someone confidently assert something along the lines of “we’re going back to the catacombs” recently. We nod sagely, and sigh, “well, yes. Perhaps we are.”

We are not.

To make that statement demonstrates a kind of hyperbolic, rhetorical laziness – for a start, what do we mean by “going back”? The catacombs are not some kind of Christian fortress, like Tolkein’s Hornburg of Helm’s Deep. For a start, it is vanishingly unlikely Christians would have routinely hidden from persecution in them – they were well known to the authorities. Cowering in the crypt, the early Christians would have been a sitting duck.

Not a bit of it.

Neither are they churches. Yes, in some catacombs there are larger aulas, where perhaps it is conceivable the Eucharist may have been celebrated on occasion – but never routinely. This does not make sense of early Christian liturgical practice – and has given rise to a very warped view of what the Eucharist ‘should’ look like. Bogus conclusions from the archaeology have done immense damage to the understanding of our Liturgy.

Instead, the catacombs are burial places – cemeteries – where the Faithful Departed are sleeping. Just as today we visit the graves of our loved ones, so too did the Romans, both pagan and Christian alike. Indeed, the ancient practice of sharing a meal with them was not utterly discarded by Christians – the aulas are most likely designed for these non-Eucharistic celebrations, sometimes known as love-feasts (or, for us here in Georgetown, convivia) so perhaps you can imagine the Pryor-Hubbard Hall as the successor to these kinds of spaces.

If our lazy commentator were really trying to voice the idea that we are going to be persecuted more stridently and more fervently in the coming years: then the Christian response is: Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. Only supernatural Faith can withstand the searing heat of political or ecclesial pressure (sometimes they are combined). Do you wish to save your life? You and I must be prepared to lose it.

God always works by the tiniest of margins; the thinnest of threads. It is always, almost lost. Consider for a moment how unlikely it was that Nazi Germany would lose the Second World War. In 1939 it was vanishingly unlikely! Indeed, in 1941 the Axis powers were a week or two away from victory in Europe. Neither Roosevelt, nor Churchill, had anything to do with it – the Nazis lost the war because Hitler made one catastrophic tactical mistake in committing troops to Russia and not Suez, and refused to listen to the advice of his generals.

So close we were! Would the Church have survived a Nazi victory? Categorically not. The regime was deeply atheistic and, of course, anti-Semitic, which is a fundamental problem if the Word became Semitic Flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin. Why the history lesson? Do you see how we are always covered by Christ? Do we recognize God’s Providence, even when He permits evil to flourish for a while? We are not going back to the catacombs. We never left them.