For the fourth Sunday

A holy heritage

I remember a period of about six years while I was finishing elementary school and working my way through high school, when one of my grandfathers lived with us in Sault Ste. Marie.  At one point, I sat with him in the living room and asked him to tell me about his father and the rest of his family.  You see, he was quite elderly, and I wanted to get the story straight before he wasn’t able to tell it.  Thus began a journey of discovery which led me from the island of Madeira, aboard an onion boat across the Atlantic Ocean to Guyana, but my thirst for knowledge wasn’t satiated yet.  I then asked the same questions of my other grandparents, and discovered that on my father’s side, my ancestors had travelled as indentured slaves from south-western China, most probably around the horn of Africa to the British colony of Guiana.  Knowing the details about this heritage has allowed me to appreciate the heritage that I share with family, and to discover some of the strengths and gifts that I offer, but most importantly, this knowledge allows me to feel grounded, rooted in a tradition that is unique.

The story of our common heritage is told and retold each time we listen to the scriptures.  In a very particular way, its details are recounted in these latter weeks of the Advent period.  My immediate family has traced our roots back at least four generations, but the heritage that is ours through baptism can be traced all the way back to Abraham, who lived around the year 1000 BC.  In fact, Abraham is the common father in faith to Christians and Jews alike, so the family of faith that we belong to is even larger than we might at first believe.

One chapter of our story of faith speaks of a young virgin named Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph of the House of David, and therefore part of the lineage descended from Abraham.  Having heard the message of the angel, and having given her fiat, an act of faith for which we are all grateful, she then set out to visit Elizabeth.  There is a glow that comes upon the face of a woman who is expecting.  I can imagine that this glow must have been radiant as Mary and Elizabeth met outside Zechariah’s house.  The words of greeting that they spoke to one another also portray their joy.  Even now, more than two millennia later, we still repeat the words Elizabeth spoke to Mary that day: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  Mary’s visit might very well have caught Elizabeth unaware.  After all, there were no telephones, and this was well before the age of the internet, however, it would appear from her greeting that Elizabeth too had knowledge of the news that Mary had come to impart: Why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  Even before his birth, John was announcing the presence of God by leaping in his mother’s womb.  We are not told any other details about the visit that these two women had together during the three months or so that they may have been together, but we can infer that there must have been many days and nights of sharing stories about their own encounters with the angels, about their own musings over the precious gifts that had been entrusted to their care.

During this Year of Faith, each of us needs to learn how to tell this story to our children.  We need to be particularly aware of occasions when we can tell this story to the adults too.  I have shared the story of my ancestry in varying levels of detail with children and with adults alike, and each time, there is rapt attention and there are questions as people want to know more and more of the story.  The same is true of our story of faith.  Children and adults alike never seem to tire of the details; each time it is told, there is another part of the story that unfolds.  For instance, today’s first reading reminds us that Bethlehem, the place where the story unfolded was a little town which was by no means well-travelled, but even from this all-but-forgotten little village, great things were about to happen.  O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judea … from you shall come forth one who is to rule in Israel.  If this language were applied to today’s circumstances, it might speak of a person who could make sense out of a tragic shooting which takes place in an elementary school; a person who could explain why such suffering must be endured so close to Christmas, which is supposed to be a time of joy and celebration with families.  Even the later reflections of the Book of Hebrews don’t appear at first to bring much consolation to such situations: In place of the ancient practice of offering sacrifices to God, Jesus came among us to show us that the best way to live is to do the will of God, but how could it be that the will of God is that children and their families should suffer?

Our faith teaches us that when this life here on earth is complete, each of us will be welcomed into the everlasting embrace of our God, and there will be no more suffering, so as we have watched in these past days, and heard reports of the funerals celebrated for the victims in Connecticut, we give thanks that each of those little ones is now in the everlasting embrace of our God, and we pray for their parents and friends who must now continue their earthly journey without them.  May Mary and Elizabeth intercede for them, and hold them in their loving embrace so that they may come to believe that the great history of our faith includes another chapter which is not yet written: the final chapter which will be known when we are all in the loving embrace of our God.