“Why should I let you into my Heaven?” these were the words that Jesus spoke to my Great Grandma Roberts while she was unconscious during surgery. Upon waking up, she told my Great Grandpa Roberts what she had seen. Shortly after this, they went to a small Protestant church, and the rest is history.
My parents have told this story to us and to our friends for years. No one has ever doubted that it was true, or suggested that my great grandmother was hallucinating under the anesthesia. This story is not in the Bible, and my grandmother was no apostle. Yet, no one has ever questioned the truth of this story. Why not?
The reason that people do not doubt this story of my grandmother, is because it is a fact of history that explains why the Roberts family is Christian today. If that dream didn’t happen, then we would have never become Christians. Does that make more or less true than the miracles in the Bible? This question is meaningless, because truth is truth; the fact that I’m typing on a computer is just as true as Christ rising from the dead. Does that mean it has the same authority? No. Authority comes from God, not merely from facts or self-proclamation.
People could speculate all they want and cast doubt on the story, but none of that would change the truth of it because its veracity is rooted in family tradition and the experience is affirmed by scripture. My dad described Christian beginnings of the Roberts family this way: “Your great grandpa used to call themselves pagans. When I think of how little they knew…it’s like God just reached into history and plucked our family out of it and set us on a totally different trajectory.”
It reminds me of God “selecting” people for His plans in the Bible, like St. Paul on the road to Damascus, Jesus calling to fisherman from their boats, or the story of Lazarus: just as Lazarus was awakened by Christ for a plan only Christ knew, so my great grandma was awakened by Christ for a mission only He knows. Am I implying that my family has a unique role in the Kingdom of God? Yes, but so do you and anyone else who decides to respond to the call of God in their life. This is the “Disciples Journey” perfectly demonstrated by Christ’s Mother, Mary, the perfect disciple.
What prompted this reflection on my grandmother was reading 2 Timothy. In the opening verses, St. Paul writes,
…I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and that I am confident lives also in you.
— 2 Tim. 1:5
I’ve read this passage a lot, but this time it impacted more than it had in the past. For the first time that I can remember, I had a great love for my great grandparents and their testimony and realized how truly connected my salvation was to the tradition of my family. As a protestant reading this passage, I cannot remember having felt a connection or affection for my great grandparents; maybe it’s because I’m older now, but I don’t think its merely years that provoked the experience. Reading it tonight as a Catholic convert, I realized the full weight of what my father had said, “It’s like God just reached in, and pulled us out…” and realizing that God had done it again with me and my family when we became Catholic.
After reading the opening verses, I opened up my commentary and read the paragraph below. It made me realize how tightly connected my conversion to Catholicism, the fullness of Christianity, was to my great grandmother’s conversion to mere Christianity, an imperfect form of it to be sure, but Christianity none the less. This realization was brought on by the following quote,
Timothy received this faith not from Paul but from his “grandma” and his mother. Is Paul referring to their pre-Christian Jewish faith, in which Timothy was raised or simply to their becoming Christian before Timothy? Because Paul speaks of the faith that lived in these women rather than their forming Timothy from his youth…it seems more likely that they became Christians shortly before him. But if they had taught Timothy the Jewish Scriptures from his infancy…then their decision to embrace the gospel of Christ would have had great influence upon his own.
— Montague, First and Second Timothy, Titus 2008, pg. 140. emphasis mine1
In the same way that all Christians are ultimately Christian because of the first Christians who embraced the Gospel, so my grandparents, aunts, uncles, parents, and siblings are Christian today because a little old lady who, when she was younger, woke up from a dream and said “Let’s go to Church.”
Just as Timothy’s grandmother was Jewish, and her example ultimately led to Timothy having a great faith in the fullness of Christianity, so my grandmother’s devout Protestantism led to generations of devout, Bible believing protestants. This family tradition, rooted in scripture, provided me with the foundation and example of following Christ, no matter what. If it weren’t for my family of Protestants, it would have taken an even greater miracle for my wife and I to become Catholic; if it weren’t for my great grandmother’s faithfulness, who knows, I might not even be alive, let alone a practicing Catholic.
Her life and testimony paved the way to ensure that I had ears that could hear the call of the Christ in the Church, and see its testimony with the pages of scripture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says it this way,
The Church’s faith precedes the faith of the believer who is invited to adhere to it.
— CCC, 11242
My grandmother’s faith preceded mine, and at the same time, the Church call was working through my family line. When my grandmother converted to Christianity, the Catholic Church was always there. Just like my family is grounded in both tradition and scripture, so the Church is grounded in tradition and scriptures, and these two combined provided the lenses necessary to know when God is moving in your life and calling you to leave your old life behind. Like faith and reason are both necessary for the Christian life, so tradition and scripture are necessary for the relationship that God is calling us to.
Montague, G. T. (2008). First and Second Timothy, Titus (Ser. Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture). Baker Academic.
Catechism of the Catholic Church: Second edition. (2003). Doubleday Religion.