A couple of weeks ago on our Tuesday night teaching, we had a special teaching event for
grandparents. The topic of the teaching night was how to hand on your faith to your
grandchildren. And for the people that showed up, I’ve known this—I know how
challenging that can be—but I think I witnessed just how heartbreaking that can be as well.
Why is it heartbreaking? Well, a lot of you and your grandchildren or children have shared
that you’ve tried everything that you could, you did the best that you could to hand the faith
on. And for some reason, perhaps, some of your children might not be practicing the faith
anymore, might have left for another church, or might have completely abandoned God. And
then you find your grandchildren, the faith isn’t even being handed on to them. I just saw
the pain and the ache and the heart of a lot of our parishioners, and I know that probably
many of you who are here today struggle with that.
I want to share a story from the second reading that will give us hope. The story is a letter
from St. Paul, who’s writing to Timothy. Now, there’s a really interesting thing that I’ll give
you a little bit of the background that will help us understand what’s happening here. He’s
talking to Timothy and calling him, “Beloved.” He takes Timothy on as a son. He says,
“Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed because you know who you learned
and believed it from.” We’ll talk about who that is. “And that from infancy, you have known
the sacred scriptures.” So, from the very time he was an infant, his parents had been raising
him in the faith. Not his parents—let me talk about that.
The background is, he’s talking about Timothy, this child who had been raised in the faith,
and who heard scripture from the very time of his infancy. This is part of the reason we
have infant baptism. Who raised him in the faith? Well, it turns out that Timothy had a very
faithful mother and a very faithful grandmother. Now, they were Jewish—they weren’t
Catholic yet because Jesus was still working his new Church—but the father was a Greek.
And the way that they lay it out in scripture, it says that the father was, unlike the mother
and grandmother, not very faithful. He was a Greek. He believed in pagans, if he believed in
anything at all. And another clue is that Timothy was uncircumcised. For the Jewish people,
that would be like us taking our child to be baptized very early in their lives.
So, Timothy was raised in this mixed family. His mother and his grandmother were very
faithful. His father wasn’t very faithful. And we know that he would go on to live a life that
needed conversion. That’s where St. Paul comes in. Even though Timothy’s mother and
grandmother were very faithful—even though they handed him everything that they could
in the faith, taught him scripture from the time that he was a child—it was St. Paul that
brought about his conversion. And it was St. Paul that became a father to him. Paul would
often call Timothy, “my beloved son.” Paul brought that conversion about.
And so, I think what can give us hope—and give you hope as parents and grandparents and
maybe even great-grandparents—is that you may have done the best job that you could
have. You had your child baptized. You raised them in the faith. And maybe they have gone
off, maybe they have walked away from the faith or left God completely and haven’t raised
their family in the faith. I think not only should you keep up your prayers for your children
and grandchildren—don’t stop praying for them—but also ask God to send a St. Paul into
their lives. Ask Him to send someone, in their lives, who can reach them in a way that maybe
you as parents and grandparents haven’t been able to reach them.
We all know the famous conversion story of St. Augustine, right? Anybody remember St.
Augustine’s mother? St. Monica. A very faithful woman who prayed for her son. Augustine
went on to live a pretty horrible life—he wrote about it in his diaries. If you ever want to
read that, it’s a very interesting read. He lived a very bad life, but his mother never gave up
on praying for him. She continued to pray for him. And we know that later in life Augustine
had a conversion; he came back to the faith. But I think there’s a person we often forget in
that story. Does anybody know who Saint Paul for Augustine was? Who was the person that
brought about his conversion that wasn’t his grandmother or mother? (the Deacon replied)
Very good—St. Ambrose! Well, Deacon should know this. You’ve ruined it, Deacon!
Saint Ambrose. It wasn’t actually his mother that brought about the conversion. She did
through her prayers, but it was because he heard the preaching of St. Ambrose. It was
someone else who became this father figure to St. Augustine that brought about his
conversion.
There are many stories today like that too. Anybody know the story of John Wayne? Not our
John Wayne, but the movie star John Wayne. John Wayne was not a very faithful person in
his Hollywood career. He was married to a Catholic. They got divorced. His Catholic wife
never remarried while he was alive, but she continued to pray for his conversion—to pray
for her children, to pray for her grandchildren. Very near to his death, John Wayne met a
bishop who became part of his conversion. At the end of his life, he was baptized, received
the Eucharist, and was fully initiated into the faith. Anybody know what happened to one of
John Wayne’s grandsons? He’s a priest. God has a way of still working in your children’s and
grandchildren’s lives.
Fr. Donald Calloway is another really awesome figure. If you don’t know him, he’s got great
books and great stuff on YouTube. His parents were very faithful; they prayed for him
constantly. He lived a really horrible life. It was a friend of the family who handed him some
books on Mary. He read the books, couldn’t put them down, and had a conversion.
It’s not always—besides your prayer—it’s not always going to be you that brings about your
children’s and grandchildren’s conversion. God might place somebody else in their lives
who will do that. My encouragement would be, as the Gospels say of the woman with the
unjust judge, never stop praying. Keep praying for your family, your grandchildren, your
great-grandchildren, your children. Keep praying for them, but ask that God will send a St.
Paul into their lives.
It happened to me. My parents were both very faithful. They raised me up in Catholic
education. My eighth-grade teacher is right here in the front row—she was part of my
journey. I obviously went through, as some of you know my story, high school and college. I
pushed this call away from priesthood as much as I could. My parents were very faithful, but
it was another priest that I met along the journey who walked into my life, reminded me of
my call, and turned everything around for me.
Story after story after story of these conversions. The truth is, you might become a St. Paul
to somebody else’s kids. You can have an influence on other people as well. We hear this
desire of St. Paul, who wants to be a father figure to Timothy. He wants to bring him along in
the faith. Timothy’s grandmother and mother were very faithful, but they needed St. Paul to
come into their lives. Augustine needed St. Ambrose to come into his life. Maybe you even
had a St. Paul who came into your life.
This should give us hope. This should really inspire us to realize that, yes, we need to pray
for our grandchildren and children and all those who are away from the faith. But pray, too,
that God may send a St. Paul into their lives—that someone may convert them and draw
them back into the faith which we love so dearly.
