“God couldn’t be everywhere, and so he made grandparents” is a popular saying that can be found on postcards and T-Shirts. And most people have fond memories of grandparents! Mine had time to go for long walks, play in the garden, bake cakes and cookies, tell stories … and pray together!
For Lupita and Lee Alvarado, being a grandparent is a vocation they both greatly appreciate. Their 7-year-old grandson Sebastian lives with them, “he is our biggest blessing,” and Lupita wants him to remember the “faith and love” of his grandparents. “I want to show him how much I love him, but I can do that best by showing him my love for my faith and the Church,” she shares. God is Love; that is what she wants her grandson to understand.
Lupita is a teacher and director of religious education at Holy Family Parish; her husband, Lee, serves the parish as a deacon. Saying grace before meals and praying together at night are essential to their daily lives. Both are active at their parish on weekends, and the grandson knows that Grandpa is “Deacon Lee” in Church. Right now, Sebastian cannot wait until he finally will be able to receive communion in May 2024.
For Lupita, the main difference between raising her two daughters and now being with her grandson is her growth in faith: “I wish I would have been where I am now with my faith,” she says. As grandparents, their faith is stronger than before.
In 2021, Pope Francis proclaimed the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly to be celebrated on the fourth Sunday in July each year – this year, it falls on July 23. This is close to the Feast of the Saints Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus (July 26).
He wrote, “The elderly are those who transmit history to us, who transmit doctrine, who transmit the faith and give it to us as an inheritance.” The bond between generations is necessary; the future requires the encounter between young and old, so Pope Francis, who himself has fond memories of his grandmother Rosa: “The words that my grandmother gave me in writing the day of my priestly ordination, I still carry with me always, in the breviary.”