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Hallo again to all.
Our research into our forebears began before the internet was a useful tool for it, and before purpose-made software was available to organise the data we gathered. We still have in a box somewhere a sheaf of ahnentafel charts on large index cards, long since converted to records in a relational database on our laptop. We remember and do not miss long afternoons of eye-strain with microfilmed lists of ships' passengers, baptismal records, quitclaim deeds, marriage registers and the like. We also remember protracted correspondence and phone calls (in the days before email) to distant relations about obscure questions of identity: why did the same parents in colonial Connecticut appear to have a daughter named Sarah with three birth dates? Because there were three of them; each Sarah was born after her elder sister Sarah had died as an infant, and her parents re-used the given name not just twice but thrice. Today, we are avid users of advanced genealogical software like Reunion and Family Tree Maker, and we have at our fingertips the vast digital resources of many countries' census records. With a few keystrokes, we can tell you the names of our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents, where they were born, and where they are buried. Our software will tell us how many days they lived, how their lifespans fit in the average longevity for our wider family, and whether they and their descendants married within prohibited degrees of consanguinity. Computing has changed permanently the ways in which we can learn about and map the families through which God has welcomed us into the world. And, perhaps thankfully, none of our known relations seem to have fallen off the page of the Table of Kindred and Affinity.
We suspect that this important role—the careful keeping of sacramental registers—is not one in which clerics-to-be receive instruction during their theological training. But it is a good and joyful thing to feel across the pages and centuries the pastoral solicitude of those who ministered to those from whom we come. In thin moments, our genealogical inquiries become more than the discovery and assembly of dates and names, a simple recital of begats. They become times when we see a stable liturgical context for birth and death and everything in between, and chances to dwell on the earthly ratification of heavenly grace through prayer and sacrament. To all of you who continue this good work of sacramental record-keeping: thank you. Those who follow us will thank you, too. See you next week. |
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