Mercy Sister Lois Mueller was a bundle of energy when I first met her at The Villa retirement home in Baltimore three years ago. I was visiting for a story I was writing about how retired nuns kept in shape by playing bowling and other Nintendo Wii video games donated by students of St. Joseph School in Cockeysville.

The Scala Sancta, “Holy Stairs,” are believed to be the passageway Jesus walked on his way to face Pontius Pilate before the crucifixion. St. Helena, mother of Constantine, brought the staircase to the Eternal City from the Holy Land in the middle of the 4th century.

Romanticizing the past fogs its hardship. For all the appeal of bygone days, does anyone really want to go back to 1932, when our grandparents in Appalachia had to haul wood and water, and stoke the stove to cook and clean?