Tomorrow we drive up to L.A. for a long weekend while Kim is off in Wabash. In 2002 I lived in L.A. for six months and must say, was not so fond of the lifestyle as I thought I might be. It may have been the circumstances of my life at that time, but I have a hard time getting past the things about the city that didn’t appeal to me. First among those things was the traffic (no surprise), but a close second was the attitude of the people I ran across. I lived in a rented apartment in Studio City, which was nice enough and my work took me mostly to an office building in Encino just off Ventura Blvd., which was a straight shot west of me across the length of the lower San Fernando Valley at the base of the hill heading over into the City. I thought maybe it was Valley living that didn’t agree with me so I spent some time looking for houses to buy in the Hollywood Hills, figuring being over on that side of the hill might work better. Luckily, I never transacted but I remember a lecture I got from a real estate agent who explained that if I wanted to be anyone in L.A. I would have to buy a higher-end Mercedes, BMW or Lexus and that was that. Few comments could have turned me off faster to the culture of the city than that one, whether it was true or not.
Since moving out here seven years ago, I have only occasionally ventured up to L.A., finding the whole driving in the L.A. Basin program to be a big barrier to entry for me. So why is this the City of Angels? Los Angeles gets its nickname directly from its original Spanish name. The city was founded in 1781 by Spanish settlers under the name “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles” or “The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels.” This was a devotional name honoring the Virgin Mary, specifically referencing “Our Lady of the Angels” (Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles), a Catholic title for Mary tied to a Franciscan feast day and shrine tradition in Italy (Porziuncola) that Spanish missionaries carried with them to the New World. Over time, the lengthy formal name got shortened in everyday use, to “Los Ángeles,” which translating gives you “The Angels,” which is where the popular nickname “City of Angels” comes from. The name traces back to Franciscan missionary tradition rather than anything specific to the site itself. The key link is a small chapel in Assisi, Italy, called “Our Lady of the Angels” (Santa Maria degli Angeli), which was deeply significant to St. Francis of Assisi. Franciscan missionaries carried devotion to this specific title of Mary with them as they established missions throughout Spanish colonial territory, including California. Franciscan friars (most notably Junípero Serra and his successors) led the mission system that established Spanish settlements throughout Alta California in the late 1700s. When Spanish colonial governor Felipe de Neve authorized the founding of a new pueblo (a civilian farming settlement, distinct from the religious missions) in 1781, it was common practice to give new settlements religious names honoring saints or Marian titles — reflecting the deep intertwining of Spanish colonization with Catholic missionary purpose. The full name, “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula” directly invokes the Porziuncola/Angels connection, tying the new California settlement back to that formative Franciscan holy site in Italy. It placed the new pueblo under Mary’s protection using a title with special resonance for the Franciscan missionaries who were central to colonizing the region.
Los Angeles has a complex history. Before Spanish arrival, the area was home to the Tongva (also called Gabrieleño) people for thousands of years, with a village called Yaanga near what’s now downtown LA. Based on the Spanish conquests of Mexico and what was the land to the north (Alta California), L.A.was Mexican before it was American. After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, L.A. became part of Mexico. It was ceded to the U.S. in 1848 after the Mexican-American War, and then California became a state in 1850, but L.A. itself was a small, rough frontier town of just a few thousand people at the time. In fact, it was briefly one of the most violent cities in America with the 1850s marked by extraordinarily high murder rates, probably due to Gold Rush lawlessness, vigilante justice, and ethnic tensions, including the horrific 1871 Chinese Massacre, one of the largest mass lynchings in U.S. history. Water is what made L.A. possible (remember…”It’s only Chinatown…”). L.A.’s explosive growth in the early 1900s was engineered as William Mulholland built the L.A. Aqueduct (completed 1913), diverting water from the Owens Valley 233 miles away. This remains one of the most contentious water grabs in American history. Hollywood got its film industry start in the early 1900s partly to escape Thomas Edison’s patent enforcement on film technology, and partly for the reliable sunshine and diverse scenery. Hollywood was an independent town until it merged with L.A. in 1910. As it turned out, L.A. sat atop major oil reserves, and by the 1920s it was producing roughly a quarter of the world’s oil. Many neighborhoods still have old, hidden pumpjacks disguised as buildings. L.A.’s sprawling shape comes from aggressively annexing surrounding communities (largely to secure their water rights via the Aqueduct), which is why the city’s borders are so irregular and why places like the San Fernando Valley are part of “LA proper.” The 1932 Olympics helped build its identity with L.A. hosting the Summer Olympics during the Great Depression. Then the Freeways reshaped it with L.A.’s mid-20th-century freeway expansion (and the decline of its once-extensive Pacific Electric streetcar system, the largest in the world) cemented its identity as a car-dependent city, a shift still debated as one of urban planning’s most consequential mistakes, Mercedes, BMW and Lexus notwithstanding.
So, we will go look for the angels that still exist in the city. Angels have a substantial basis across the Christian tradition, rooted in both scripture and later theological development. In the Old Testament, Angels appear frequently. In the New Testament, Archangel Gabriel announces Christ’s birth to Mary and to Zechariah, angels announce the Nativity to shepherds, an angel comforts Jesus in Gethsemane, angels appear at the empty tomb on Easter Sunday and Revelation is full of angelic imagery like armies of angels, archangels like Michael battling Satan, and angels delivering God’s judgments. Angels are understood as created spiritual beings, not divine themselves, but servants and messengers of God, distinct from humans (no physical bodies, though they can take physical form to interact with people). They deliver God’s will and offer protection or guidance (the “guardian angel” concept). Thomas Aquinas systematized angelic theology, developing the idea of angelic hierarchies. Angels sit on fairly firm scriptural ground as recurring figures throughout the Bible, and the elaborate systems built on that with centuries of theological interpretation. In today’s world, and perhaps especially in L.A., we need angels more than ever. Much of the authoritarian-loving world has stopped listening to the messages from God and that may be that angels have just grown too weary to stand up to their will in favor of God’s will, which I define as simply putting our care for other people first. Being in the City of Angels will cause me to think angelically as I ponder the world.