Pastor’s Desk

Dear Fellow Parishioners,

This Sunday, September 7, the U.S. celebrates the secular holiday of Grandparents’ Day. Though it was relatively recently established in the U.S., it was long overdue. So many of our grandparents have played, and continue to play, an important role in our lives and fond memories.

Grandparents’ Day was first celebrated in Poland in 1965. In the U.S., the movement began when 9-year-old Russell Capper wrote to President Nixon in 1969. The White House responded, appreciating his suggestion, but indicated that the President issued such proclamations only in response to a Congressional resolution. It fell to Marian McQuade, an elder rights activist from West Virginia, to make the final push. She had 15 children and 43 grandchildren. She was long involved in elder issues, and organized a rally of octogenarians in her home state, which was the first state to declare a Grandparents’ Day in 1973. Her intention was to re-connect grandparents with their grandchildren. The base of her support was her church and local convalescent hospitals.

In 1978, President Carter established National Grandparents Day, to be celebrated on the Sunday after Labor Day. Ms. McQuade insisted that the day not be commercialized, that all gifts and cards exchanged should be homemade. She made good on this intention by refusing royalties on any manufactured Grandparents’ Day cards and other merchandise.

The grace of grandparenthood is that it is so often a matter of completely unambivalent love for grandchildren – affection and hope without the immediate burdens of enforcing the necessary disciplines of parenthood. “Spoil ‘em and send ‘em home” is the mantra for some. Some young parents are amazed (and sometimes annoyed) to see their own parents who, in earlier years, were strict disciplinarians, turn into year-round Santa Clauses and Ladies Bountiful when it comes to their grandchildren.

I have only the fondest memories of the three grandparents I knew. Two grandmothers were present at my ordination. In my childhood, I knew one great-grandfather who was born just after the American Civil War. While my grandparents seemed so old at the time, they were, in my childhood, far younger than I am now.

Some grandparents are now heroically assuming the full responsibilities of parenthood for a second generation. They drive their grandchildren to school, help with their tuition, care for them, worry about them and pray for their futures. Sadly, in the case of less-than-stable parents, grandparents are often the main stable influence in their grandchildren’s lives.

It’s altogether fitting that we offer prayers of gratitude for our grandparents, living and deceased, especially those who were involved in our own lives. May God grant them the reward of their goodness in this life.

Blessings, Fr. Bill Donahue