Celebrating Our Roots

Grandparents Day is a fairly new secular holiday, only having been on the calendar since 1978, celebrated in the U.S. during the month of September set aside to recognize some very special folks who help shape our lives. This year this day was a little bittersweet for me. My own Grandmas and Grandpas have all now gone to their eternal rest. We only just lost my mother’s Mom last October so the hurt is still fairly fresh when I am reminded of the loss. How I miss all of them and their guidance and support in my life. In my family, grandparents are just as much an influence on the children as parents are. They hold a special place in our family tree.

It was while meditating on that I was handed a bit of insight and understanding into a profound truth about Jesus, and I was blown away by just how deep our roots really do run. Not just our spiritual Catholic roots, either, but the very roots of our humanity. The truth about Jesus I think we at times tend to forget is that he was as much human as he was divine being, and he probably had a huge family tree with branches and branches of relatives to include…grandparents. We may never know the extent of this because the shoots of Jesus’ family tree aren’t discussed in much detail, but we know this much: he was born of and mothered by the Virgin Mary, fostered by her husband Joseph, and had at least two grandparents, St. Joachim and St. Anne, parents of Mary. To me this notion so firmly grounds the truth of Jesus’ humanness; it gives me hope. If Jesus was human and erred as a human and still saved humanity, think what that means for the rest of us. It certainly helps me, and should help us all, to realize our worth and that we are completely deserving of forgiveness and redemption through our human tendencies to mess up.

So who were these people Jesus called Grandpa and Grandma?

We don’t know much about them, actually. The oldest known recorded evidence of them is from the Gospel of James whereby Anne, after having been barren for years, is told by an angel she will conceive. Much the same way Mary is later visited by Gabriel and told she’ll be the Mother of God. In their elation, Joachim and Anne consecrate this child, Mary (Mariam), to God to be raised in a holy home. This event, the conception of Mary, is in fact the Immaculate Conception, not to be confused with the conception of Jesus as so many often do. Jesus was divinely conceived, but in preparation for her motherhood to the child of God, Mary was immaculately conceived. In other words, she was born without the stain of original sin as we all are, which requires baptism to wash away. She was conceived with a destiny and purpose to be the pure vessel, or first tabernacle, in which Christ would reside and grow.

And it’s by that, the Immaculate Conception, I am simply in awe of how far back our roots run. Much as Mary was the first tabernacle of Jesus, both human and divine, Anne was a tabernacle of her own sort in carrying Mary, Mother of God, and thereby carrying Jesus through the egg Mary was born with. That part of the equation, that egg, was already named long before Jesus began to grow and thrive. I am reminded in a huge way that he knew you before you knew your mother’s womb. He certainly knew Jesus as is proved by Jesus’ destiny having been set in motion long before his actual conception through this preparation for his coming. How intrinsically our God works through and in and around us.

I know the joy and pride of being a grandmother, but I cannot fathom what Anne must have felt when she was informed by Mary that she would indeed be granted a grandchild after never even having thought she’d have a daughter. Not only that, he’d be the Savior of the world. Anne must have been elated, after the shock of Mary turning up pregnant out of official wedlock that is. I’m sure the pregnancy threw her for a loop. But like all good mothers, my guess is she accepted what was, nodded, and while Joachim likely railed against the notion his daughter was pregnant, and by God no less, Anne secretly beamed inside. What mother wouldn’t?

As I sit in contemplation of the brevity of the notion our family roots and Christian roots go much deeper than even Christ, I can’t help but wonder what Anne did in preparation for the Child Jesus to be born. Did she make swaddling blankets? Did she make Him tiny outfits? And after all that railing, did Joachim carve tiny baby toys? As Jesus grew, did he ever get to sit on his grandfather’s knee and retain bits and pieces of the family history? Was Joachim the first person to teach him to pray?

We know very little about Jesus from the time he was twelve until his ministry began at age thirty-three. Did he visit his grandparents often? Did he seek their advice? Did he receive homemade treats when he ran up their steps with arms wide open, offering a hug?

Jesus’ grandmother played an enormous, human role in his life much larger than we can probably fully understand. She held an extremely special place in the family tree. And it’s by this family tree we are linked, through our humanness, the humanness that gives us hope. It should also help us to feel closer to Jesus knowing that he was as much human, just like us, as he was divine. In that knowledge, we should definitely be celebrating our roots, on Grandparents Day and every day.