A Divine Inheritance: In Thanksgiving for the Catholicism of My ...

The wait to get warm as the cold pressed in from outside the blankets always felt like an eternity on those nights in late December that my family spent with my maternal grandparents, John and Patricia TePas — Grandma and Grandpa T — in the west suburbs of Cleveland. They always turned the heat way down at night in the house my grandfather built in the 1960s for his growing family. The warmth always came, eventually, and I would drift off into a comfortable sleep, waking as the morning light filtered through the white curtains patterned with yellow roses.

If I had slept late, I would find cereal boxes lined up on the counter, a stack of bowls and spoons set out next to them, and a green pitcher full of orange juice. I would help myself to the sugary cereal my mother would never buy us, sit down to the “funnies,” as Grandpa called the comics in the paper, and await their return from morning Mass.

On days I woke up early, I would find Grandpa sitting over his cup of coffee and eating his oatmeal right out of the pot, praying with the readings for daily Mass. Grandma would be setting up breakfast in the kitchen. Then I would go with them to daily Mass; it was always special to pray with them and then wait afterward as they visited with their friends. On the way home, we would stop at the grocery store for more milk and other necessities, or Grandma would bring me to her favorite overlook on Lake Erie.

We always visited them for a week in the summer and the week after Christmas, traveling from St. Louis, and I will be forever grateful to them for the gift of faith they passed down to me directly and through my mother.

A few weeks ago, my parents came to visit for Grandparents’ Day for the pre-K-through-sixth-graders at my children’s school. For the school Mass that day, my children sat with their grandparents and me. I glanced over at their faces as the first reading chosen specially for that day was read: “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you” (2 Timothy 1:5). And I was filled with gratitude to my own grandparents, to their parents, and to my parents, who lived out their faith, modeling for me how to live as a Catholic. They showed me how to swim against the cultural trends, fortify myself with the Holy Eucharist and daily prayer, stay committed to the sacrament of matrimony, and prioritize my Catholic community.

After Grandpa died in September at the age of 96, outliving Grandma by 14 months, the memories of our visits to them came rushing back to me. I realized the gift my parents gave us of living for two weeks a year with my grandparents. We were with them from morning until bedtime — seeing them pray, going with them to Sunday Mass and daily Mass, witnessing their service to their parish and noticing their private devotions.

Grandma loved sitting in her backyard, taking in the beauty of nature and lifting her heart to God among the birds she loved. She lived a quiet life of service to her family, faithfully reading Catholic publications, expressing her frustration with heterodoxy in “Catholic” institutions, and praying daily for her loved ones.

My grandparents were my biggest encouragers during my college years at Franciscan University of Steubenville and in my husband’s years of graduate school just a few hours from them in Buffalo. As our family grew, they delighted in my children whenever we stopped by on our road trips, always encouraging me in my writing for Catholic publications. In addition to their own lives, I have also had the gift to see the witness of their seven children living out their faith as adults and the way my grandparents rejoiced and sorrowed with their children and grandchildren, always bringing everything to prayer. We all know how much of a struggle it is to pass on the faith in each generation. Having been born in the mid-1980s into middle-class America, it has taken years for me to learn to appreciate the depth of sacrifice my Catholic ancestors made, leaving their homelands and coming to a place full of anti-Catholicism.

On my grandmother’s side, there are the Irish who moved to Louisville, Kentucky, as they fled famine and then suffered at the hands of the Know-Nothings who used violence to keep Catholics away from the polls. Her father, whose older brother became a priest, was descended from Germans who settled in Indiana with other German Catholics, hoping for a more prosperous future than they would have had in Germany.

My grandfather is descended from Dutch, Swiss and German immigrants, several of whom were founding members of an ethnically German parish in Cleveland. He is named for his great-uncle, who was a priest, professor and rector of the seminary. And my grandfather’s mother had a brother who was ordained a priest nine months before dying of the Spanish flu.

I have also inherited my Catholic faith from my father’s side. There is a Lebanese Maronite priest in my direct ancestry from the 19th century on my paternal grandfather’s side, and my paternal grandmother comes from German and Austrian Catholics. She was my St. Louis grandmother, attentive to each of her grandchildren.

When I was in high school, she joined our small, tight-knit parish. I was always delighted to worship with her every Sunday, giving her hugs and seeing her grandmotherly care for my friends. She passed away from cancer while I was in college, on Easter Saturday morning, just hours before Pope St. John Paul II’s death.

The generations since my ancestors came have seen the rise and dissolution of the ethnic parish neighborhoods of the Catholic Church in America. These tight-knit enclaves helped to preserve the Catholic faith that was brought over; the Church knows that faith cannot stand alone without community. And the struggle to keep our faith without being caught up in secular American culture is real.

A priest friend of mine talks about American culture as a “solvent” that breaks down anything that is thrown into it — especially one’s faith. Yet we are not helpless against this solvent — grace is more powerful than sin — and I know so many devotees of St. Monica, praying for their descendants to feel the tug of faith again.

The example of a lived faith, in a life lived in love, is the greatest thing a grandparent and parent can give to children. Philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, in his book Ethics, talks about how the “saint is the most perfect embodiment of morality,” meaning the life of a holy person gives us insight into how to be virtuous. Grandparents who seek day-to-day holiness make a life of faith accessible to their grandchildren. As von Hildebrand writes, “many people have been converted” by the example of virtue “found in the saints” (or those seeking sanctity). As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, let us remember with gratitude the example of faith that has been shown us by those who came before us.