I am what my father thought; I am what my mother prayed for.
I am the labour of my forebears.
I am their hopes, their sicknesses, their healings.
I am their loves, their struggles, even their blasphemies and their sins.
I am their dawns and sunsets, their pitiless winters, their thrilling spring times, their blazing summers, their tranquil autumns.
I am their births and their deaths.
Scientists at one time used to speak, perhaps they still do, about heredity and, I think, about chromosomes and genes. I am no expert in that field. But I am quite sure that in me, in my life and in my actions, there is present everything that those who existed before me ever did: all their struggles, their failures, their successes.
My freedom is tinged with the colour of their freedom, whatever it was like: more or less bright, more or less sombre, more or less filled with laughter.
When I make a choice, it is the latest choice, the most recent act of millions of people who form a single chain from far distant Adam right down to me.
In the cradle of my freedom are hatched the countless eggs of the lives preceding mine.
No one is an island. No freedom is isolated.
Some things will pass away: some remain
I wish that every believer may rediscover that the thought and the witness of the Fathers is in his or her blood, as they are in the blood of the whole Church.
I wish that every believer may be referred by the Fathers back to the Bible. They are simply the shoulders of giants onto which we can climb to gain a deeper perception of the Old and New Testaments.
I wish that every believer may learn from the Fathers that the Bible is the book of life and that all life is discipleship in the school of the Word.
In the end, human words, even those of exegesis, will pass away, as will all our struggles to be an ‘Amen’, that is to be believers who live the faith in unconditional obedience to the will of the Father.
In the end, all that will remain in the sight of the Father will be the Eternal Word, the glorified Christ, and the ‘Amens’ transfigured into ‘Alleluias’.
~Adapted from Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
