By Paul Kengor, Crisis Magazine - I’ve thought of that passage in our own time, as we face a virus bad but not nearly as brutal as that which ravaged Milan four centuries ago. The Italian mom’s abiding faith in a better world, one unseen, in life after death, is something so utterly contrary to our day. She was sure her sweet Cecilia was headed to a superior place, as they all were. She dressed her beautifully, like a young bride, for Heaven. She would see her there soon, asking her intercession in the short interim. Death was an exit to eternity.