I wasn’t quite sure what I would say today on the Memorial of Saints Joachim and Anne. In all honestly, I don’t know that I have ever reflected deeply on the significance of the grandparents of Jesus, but I thought of my own grandparents and how faith in God is passed from one generation to the next.
Last night, as I looked at the readings for today the parable of the Sower and the Seed stood out. Although typically we look at the parable in terms of how faith takes root in our lives individually, I thought how it is often the case that it is we who are the sowers: we sow the seed of faith in the lives of those whom we meet each day—principally we share our faith with our families, with our spouses and children, and perhaps with our grandchildren. If we are single, we also sow the seed in our dealings our friends, relatives, and all others. It's good always to be mindful of what we are sharing through what we say and do in every situation.
As I think back on my own life it is easy to see the significance of the individuals who planted the seeds of faith when I was very young. While I was nurtured to adulthood by my great aunt and great uncle, for me they were always Mom and Dad. Mom had a special way of sharing her faith with me. I remember her regular time for reading the Bible and her encouraging me to do the same. I still have the King James Version Bible she bought me for my eighth birthday—by the time I was 18 I had read it entirely.
Perhaps one of my best memories is when I was only five mom sat down with me at the kitchen table and shared the essential truths of having faith in Jesus. I have believed and called myself a Christian from that moment. I actually even anticipated baptism from that time, looking forward to it more and more each day.
I never wondered where mom had gotten the faith that she felt was so important to share with me. She frequently shared stories of her childhood and the faith of her parents, who were actually my great-grandparents, the descendants of early Texas pioneers. Mom told the kinds of stories about them that children love to hear. However the thing that I enjoyed most was hearing about their faith. Grandpa was a minister—a preacher—and Grandma, a Sunday school teacher, had a special gift for listening to God. I can imagine Jesus sitting with Mary and hearing her stories about the faith of Joachim and Anne.
My great-grandparents were some of the first members of the Church of the Nazarene, which actually began in a small north Texas town called Pilot Point around the beginning of the 20th century. It was part of the beginning of the Pentecostal holiness movement of that time.
It was around 1967 when I first remember meeting my great-grandparents. We had traveled extensively through the southwest for the first several years of my life. When I met Grandma, Mom told her that I had been reading the Bible, and she told me that the Lord had spoken to her heart about me—that I would someday be a minister. Whenever I read in Catholic documents that the ordination of the deacon is an ordination to ministry I can’t help but remember the seeds of faith that my great-grandparents planted in my heart, both directly and through their children.
Without a doubt I know that Saints Joachim and Anne prepared Mary for her special role. It also must be that someone shared faith with them too. It's easy to understand the significance of biblical genealogies when we see the connections of belief and the stories, the parables, that grow around this very special human experience of believing in God and interacting in a living and dynamic way through our belief, a reality that shines through clearly.
I guess in the end we see that faith is never something that is only ours, just as when we fail God it is never only sin between us and God alone. We are connected to a bigger reality, a truth that spans the generations.
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