Images Of Life...
I recently perused 30 years of photo albums to scan pictures for our son’s upcoming wedding. Those who know me recognize that I love to capture memories with photographs. The digital processes in technology make images instantly available. We can take a photo and send it through cyberspace to a location in another country with the touch of an icon. But why does it seem that the more manageable things are, the easier it is to procrastinate? When I began storing photos in my computer or my phone – gone were the organized, hard-copy photo albums.
We are visual beings, and the images we contemplate affect our emotions and our attitudes. Enjoying life, and memory-making with still images, captures moments that may never be repeated or future connections you would never have dreamed of. It is nice to have a picture at your fingertips in a phone, but having an album of pictures to view in chronological order to pass down for generations is a gift. As I viewed more than 30 albums, I cried and laughed – and realized just how blessed our life has been. If we had not been such fanatics about taking pictures and putting them in albums, we would not have the great family history to share with our growing family.
There is a common theme among the photos we took over the years, and it certainly represents “gratitude for the gift of faith.” Our extended family is our parish family who witnessed and shared all the sacraments we were blessed to receive. Pictures of the priests and bishops, who anoint us in baptism and confirmation, cleanse our sins, and provide us with Holy Mass, so we can receive the Eucharist. The grace of God is there for us through the hands of the priest. From weddings to baptisms, anointing the sick, or funerals for our loved ones, this blessing is something we must never take for granted!
This summer we planned a cookout for the future bride and groom. We wanted the two families to get acquainted before the wedding day. Parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles all gathered, and a remarkable connection was made during one of the introductions. A cousin from the groom’s family asked where the bride was from, the cousin commented that she knew a nice couple from that area who had traveled with her on a couple of overseas trips in the 1980’s. The bride smiled and said, “Those nice people are my grandparents, and they are sitting in the other room.” It was a wonderful reunion of friends who had not seen one another for many years. We pulled out one of our old photo albums and found the cousin’s wedding pictures. There in the pictures, with the groom as a young altar server, were his future bride’s grandparents. We all decided that God had been working on this connection for a while.
If only we could be fully aware of God’s presence in our lives and understand that he guides us in ways that we may never know about. When the image of his love is captured in our hearts, we are open to receive his gifts. Please thank your priests for making your family life so complete. And take lots of photos to archive the goodness God offers to us!
“Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate" (Mark 10:9). May God continue to strengthen the vocation of marriage! Amen!
