Paulinus’ poems are songs of faith and love in which the daily history of small and great events is seen as a history of salvation, a history of God with us. (Pope Benedict XVI on St. Paulinus of Nola – Great Christian Thinkers)
Remember the deeds of our ancestors, which they did in their times, and consider this; from generation to generation none who put their trust in Heaven will lack strength. (1 Maccabees 2:51, 61)
Accept this candle, a solemn offering, which glowing fire ignites for God’s honor, a fire into many flames divided, yet never dimmed by sharing of its light. (The Exsultet: The Proclamation of Easter)
Oh LORD, you are our refuge. From generation to generation, from age to age, you are God. (Psalm 90:1,2)
Ancestors and Descendants in the Bible – and in our Lives
The Apostle’s Creed binds us to a “Communion of Saints” which includes those who have lived, are living, and will come after us. Love binds us to our deceased… relatives and friends we knew personally as well as those… in centuries past.
Daniel Horan, OFM Give Us This Day, Nov. 2, 2018
The Eternal Promise
God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has put eternity in their hearts, without them discovering, from beginning to end, the work which He has done.(Ecclesiastes 3:11)
Who has called forth the generations since the beginning? I, the Lord am the first, and with the last I will also be. (Isaiah 41:4)
I will make them increase, they shall not then diminish. I will establish for them, as an eternal covenant, that I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Baruch 2: 34-35)
One generation praises your deeds to the next. …Your dominion endures through all generations. (Psalm 145: 4, 13)
He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. (Luke 1: 50)
Blessed the nation whose God is the Lord, the people God has chosen as a heritage. (Psalm 33: 12)
Consider the generations long past and see: Has anyone trusted in the Lord and been disappointed? (Sirach 2: 10)
Honored, Remembered, Still in Communion
[A]t the present time some of [Christ’s] disciples are pilgrims on earth. Others have died and are being purified, while still others are in glory, contemplating “in full light, God himself triune and one, exactly as he is.”…[Our] union is in no way interrupted, …but reinforced by an exchange of spiritual goods.
Catechism of the Catholic Church #954, 955
May the Lord, our God, be with us as he was with our ancestors. (1 Kings 8: 57)
I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did. (2 Timothy 1:2)
In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets: In these last days He has spoken to us through His Son. (Hebrews 1:1-2)
Let us be on guard while the promise of entering into His rest remains… For in fact we have received the Good News just as our ancestors did. (Hebrews 4: 1-2)
For Love of Your Children… And Grandchildren
For love of your children, guard the faith. For love of your grandchildren, transmit the faith – whole and entire. For love of Christ, live the faith.
Dr. Scott Hahn, quoted in a homily by Fr. Mark Mary Nov. 19, 2018
To Him my soul shall live, my descendants shall serve Him. Let the coming generation be told of the Lord that they may proclaim to a people yet to be born. (Psalm 22:31-32)
Happy are those who fear the Lord, their descendants shall be mighty in the land, a generation upright and blessed. (Psalm 112:1-2)
I will pour out my spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing upon your descendants. (Isaiah 44:3)
Our forebears were given a command to make [You] known to their children, that the next generation might know it, the children yet to be born. They should arise and declare it to their children, that they should set their hope in God.” (Psalm 78: 5-7)
Our days are like grass, like flowers of the field we blossom. The wind sweeps over us and we are gone; our place knows us no more. But the Lord‘s kindness is forever toward the faithful from age to age, upon the children’s children. (Psalm 103: 15-17)
If they remain faithful they will possess me; their descendants too will inherit me. (Sirach 4:16)
The Country of the Shadows
[T]he shadows were not merely lying on the surface of the ground, but heaped up above it like substantial forms of darkness, as if they had been cast upon a thousand different planes of the air. Tangle and Mossy often lifted their heads and gazed upwards to descry whence the shadows came; but they could see nothing more than a bright mist spread above them. . . . About the middle of the plain they sat down to rest in the heart of a heap of shadows. After sitting for a while, each, looking up, saw the other in tears: they were each longing after the country whence the shadows fell. “We MUST find the country from which the shadows come,” said Mossy. “We must, dear Mossy,” responded Tangle.
. . .Everything she had seen, or learned from books; all that her grandmother had said or sung to her; all the talk of the beasts, birds and fishes, all that had happened to her on her journey with Mossy, and since then in the heart of the earth with the old man and the older man— all was plain: she understood it all, and saw that everything meant the same thing, though she could not have put it into words again. -George MacDonald, “The Golden Key”
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