Optional Memorial of Saint Elizabeth of Portugal

Lectionary: 3

Early the next morning Jacob took the stone

that he had put under his head, set it up as a memorial stone, and poured oil on top of it.

He called the site Bethel,

The Book of Genesis is essentially the prehistory of Israel. It is an account of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, with cameo appearances of Adam, Eve, and Noah. The book also recounts the foundation of the shrines of Bethel and Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, where Abraham offered the sacrifice Isaac. 

The Book offers a narrative of God's choice of the Jews as his elect. The four patriarchs comprise two admirable men -- Abraham and Joseph -- and two lesser men, Isaac and Jacob. Women appear also, especially Sarah who focussed Abraham's attention on their son; and Rebeccah, the conniving mother of Jacob. 

Anyone who has looked past the names of their family tree might find similar characters in their past. Some appear heroic to this present generation; others are simply biological links to the past.

 

I am reading a book about the collapse of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a church with too many familiar similarities to the Church in the United States, The Best Catholics in the World by Derek Scally. (If you have a taste for painful reading, I'll recommend it to you.) 

The book is too complex for a simple essay but Scally's description of Catholic religious education in the late 1970's and 1980's struck a familiar chord with me: 

...the spirit of the new books was to embrace the progressive, pupil-centered approach to teaching that was popular at the time. The program operated on the assumption -- largely mistaken as it turned out -- that children were being supported in their parish or experiencing religion in the home. What Veritas felt should have been a three-legged stool of faith transmission was, by the 1980's effectively balanced on one leg -- the school. Without church involvement and the family contribution, things were doomed, regardless of any school books. 

I saw that clearly enough in 1975 when I was given responsibility as a director of religious education, for which I was woefully unprepared. But, from the stories I hear today, not much has changed in forty years. 

In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses repeatedly urges the people to tell their children of their release from slavery: 

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children— (Deut 4:9)

and again

Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise.  (Deut 6:6-7)

Often, when I give a Veteran a rosary in the VA hospital, they tell me their grandparents used to pray the rosary. Some remember they were taught to pray by their grandparents. However, their parents rarely appear in that story of faith; many of their boomer parents adopted American ways, divorced, and abandoned their children. The link to the past was broken, and the faith is lost. 

 Some Veterans tell me they don't agree with the Church on some issues, as if the Church were a political party. I have to remind them faith is a history, an ongoing story in which we find ourselves, if we are initiated into it. Without the history, there is no faith. It is just a set of opinions, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. 

It falls to those who still believe today to tell their stories of faith to their children, friends, and neighbors. As the Church regains her footing in this new age, she will remember a continuous story from Abraham through Jesus to you and me and those those who were blessed to know us.