“Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” —Mother Jones

Arizona was a great place to grow up during the 1960s and 1970s. It was there and then that I made my first attempts to understand what it means to be a human being. I was young and often nervous, but I was smart and, most of the time, I paid attention to what was going on around me.

The sun rose bright in Boston Monday morning, fending off one final chilly surge from old man winter. Runners of the 112th Boston Marathon were ascending Heartbreak Hill and charging down Copley Square. Manny Ramirez and the reigning champion Red Sox were taking batting practice at Fenway, preparing to lay the wood to the lowly Texas Rangers.

Ask any English major — or anybody with even a modicum of knowledge about world literature — and they’ll be able to quote the opening line from “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

It’s common for long-established communities to ignore the history that preceded them. The history of the Americas didn’t begin in 1492. Football didn’t begin with Rutgers-Princeton. And the area that became Georgetown has a rich story that began long before our university and cobbled sidewalks came along.

Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States encouraged many American Catholics to reflect on their faith. Speaking about the tendency of many practicing Christians to ignore the teachings of the Gospel that challenge their daily practices and desires, the pope proclaimed that “[a]ny tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted.