A stained-glass image from St Joseph Church in Kellnersville, Wisconsin, depicts a youthful Mary with her parents, St Anne and St Joachim. Photo: OSV News /Sam Lucero. In last week’s edition of the Irish Catholic, I reflected on how St Macrina inspires us to share the faith with our siblings as she did with her brothers and sisters, three of whom became saints. This week, we feature two better known saints who can help grand-parents share the faith with their grandchildren. I refer of course to Sts Joachim and Anne, the parents of Mary and grand-parents of Jesus, whose feast we celebrate on July 26.
Pain
As many faithful parents will share, it is a real source of pain when their children no longer practise the faith and even worse if they reject it completely. There is a sense of failure and immense disappointment. If they become grandparents, this sense of failure can discourage them from actively participating in the lives of their grand-children. Yet, ironically, their role as witnesses of the faith to their grandchildren, then takes on an even greater importance, especially at a time when many are looking for reasons to believe. So how can Sts Joachim and Anne help grandparents to do this in a way that gives them more confidence about the importance of their role?
No one can come to me unless the Father draw them”
The answer doesn’t emerge from explicit texts of the Gospels, much less from details of the lives of Sts Joachim and Anne, but rather from our understanding of how faith is caught and passed on – both as a gift from God and yet a gift that is mediated through traditions, events, experiences and above all through people.
Jesus’ words: “No one can come to me unless the Father draw them” (John 6:44) are a constant reminder to us that faith is a gift from God, given not just for us, but to be shared. Faith is born from the living Word of God that is heard and also modelled in the lives of other Christians. This gift of faith is mediated through times of prayer, encounters with God and each other in the sacraments, seeking the truth together, helping each other grow in holiness and connecting with the living faith traditions of our ancestors that continue today.
In the case of Mary, her great faith was a gift from God but was also mediated by the example of her parents Joachim and Anne and through the faith tradition of Jewish communities at the time. It is impossible to know any precise details of what life was like in Mary’s home as she grew up, but what is likely is that her virtues of faith, hope, love and the justice she proclaims in her ‘Magnificat’, were nurtured and practised in her family and wider faith community. Here I would like to identify a few ways that grandparents can evangelise their grandchildren today.
First, by staying close to them. Despite the age gaps and despite the cultural spaces between the generations, the love and closeness of grandparents to their grandchildren is an immense source of stability and wisdom for them as they grow up.
Love
Second, when it comes to faith, share it by telling them what you love. If you love God, find opportunities to tell them why. If you love the Eucharist, tell them why you love it and what it means to you. Don’t keep it secret or hidden in private. This is what evangelisers do – they tell people what they love and why. They do this not because they have to, but because they want to. If you love the Lord Jesus as a friend, you burn for others to know him too.
Third, be proud citizens of what the poet Patrick Kavanagh called “villages of ancient holiness” (From the poem ‘The Same Again’). In a special prayer composed by the late Pope Benedict XVI for ‘Grandparents Day’, he hoped that grand-parents would be “strong pillars of Gospel faith, guardians of noble domestic ideals, living treasuries of sound religious traditions. Make them teachers of wisdom and courage, that they may pass on to future generations the fruits of their mature human and spiritual experience”.
Pope Leo XIV hopes that this celebration may be ‘an inspiration for everyone, especially the young, to revive the beautiful custom of visiting their grandparents’”
In today’s world that is much faster, less stable and more mobile than ever before, young people need role models and points of reference to which they can turn and be helped to find their way. This is why grandparents are so important today as witnesses of the ancient holiness that can save us.
In his message for this Sunday’s “World Day for Grand-Parents and the Elderly”, Pope Leo XIV hopes that this celebration may be “an inspiration for everyone, especially the young, to revive the beautiful custom of visiting their grandparents, the elderly members of the family and even those who have no one to visit them”. As the elderly and grandparents need the young, so the young need their grandparents and the elderly to walk the path of life with them and share with them the ancient holiness that is needed for the present and future.