St. Vincent de Paul | Louisville

Yesterday Brothers Paul, John and I enlisted a few boys from St. Vincent de Paul’s and journeyed to the General Patton museum at Fort Knox.

There we scouted tanks from World War I to the present, from a behemoth 1917 French castle-on-tracks, to a sleek and intimidating modern US main-battle-tank.

We also saw many of Patton’s iconic possessions, such as his pearl-handled revolvers and his leather jacket that he wore on campaign.  

Withdrawing from the museum, we set out for Fort Duffield, a Civil War fort entrenched atop the bluffs commanding the Ohio River at West Point, Kentucky. We wandered its ruins and reconnoitered some magnificent views of the river. 

We finally debriefed at Dairy Queen over ice cream.

Standing astride the same walls upon which Union sentinels stood, and seeing the same six-gun that Patton carried, I was struck by the reality of it all. These are not just men in books--not fictional characters in novels--but men who lived and breathed and accomplished heroic deeds.

The objects that survive their mortal lives, the stuff of museums, remind us that they are not just myths or stories, objects of private thought and feeling, but men who are as real as any of us now living.

These objects are secular relics: as Patton’s revolver signifies his historical reality, so the venerated relics of saints remind us that the saints are not just the stuff of pious stories, but are real people who lived and died like us. And because the saints are real, we can ask for their intercession as we strive to imitate their virtues. Relics help us to be mindful of truths we often overlook.

Even more so the saints themselves are like the stuff of museums in that they point beyond themselves to a deeper reality: they demonstrate the glory of God, who transformed them into saints. They are living reminders of the truth of Jesus Christ: just as Patton’s jacket in a museum brings us closer to the truth of Patton who defeated the Nazis, so the saints are people of God who bring us closer to the real Jesus who really walked this earth and conquered sin and death.

And so, a trip out of the classroom and into the gritty places of historical happenings allowed us to see firsthand the reality of things and people often only encountered in books. Let us not forget that this world is more than our thoughts: people really fought and died for our country, and that Jesus really does save those who trust in him.

Brother Boniface Endorf, O.P.