What our ancestors teach us about faith and liberty

We’ve all heard of generational curses, or generational sin. But what about generational grace? The country each human being is born in is not a coincidence. Our families past and present are gifts that can lead to opportunity. Providence allows for siblings to be the best mirrors of each other, to offer constant occasion for growth. And family history, used often to consider medical health and country of origin, is often overlooked as a place to look for grace.
The Jewish people do this well. Their celebrations are collective acts of memory that recount a miraculous way in which God saved them, and who they are and are supposed to be, based on those accounts.
In his book, “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times,” the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks discusses the difference between history and memory. “History is an answer to the question, ‘What happened?’ Memory is an answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ History is about facts, memory is about identity. … Memory is my story, the past that made me who I am, of whose legacy I am the guardian for the sake of generations yet to come.”
Each one of us was fashioned uniquely — our lives are an expression of love. Our physical bodies, the incarnate expression of our souls, are maps of that love: I have my great-great-grandmother’s nose. The miraculous meeting of a strong woman and a devout man, their marriage, eventual children, and continued legacy can be found on my face generations later.
Generational grace is the reason any individual with a history of persecution in their family feels the call to defend free speech, religious freedom, freedom of the press or any of the many freedoms we enjoy in the United States. My great-grandparents endured the persecution of religious freedom in Mexico.
“Viva Cristo Rey” (“Long Live Christ the King”) is the battle cry of a Jesuit priest, Father Miguel Agustin Pro, who was falsely accused of an assassination plot against the Mexican president nearly 100 years ago. He was in his 30s when the government turned on the Catholic foundations of the country and hanged priests on lampposts. At that time, the state perceived religious freedom as the greatest threat to government power.
The persecution against the church escalated around 1914, when Pro and his brother priests were told by their religious leaders to find their way to the United States. He went on to study in Spain, was sent on mission in Nicaragua, but returned to Mexico in 1926, where he was framed, charged and killed less than a year later amid the Cristero Rebellion.
How many times my great-grandparents must have prayed for the freedom to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their conscience — not in hiding, but in public, as a community, serving as a vigorous voice in civil society. Those prayers manifested themselves three generations later in a calling I could never have imagined, in a desire to defend freedoms that I often took for granted living in the United States.
The enemy my family prayed against — governments that put power and influence above the dignity of the human person — is the same enemy I confronted for 14 years at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and that I keep in check with the team I lead at EWTN, a global Catholic media company.
I remember sitting with my parents, asking about my ancestors in Mexico and what it was like for them during the rebellion. They told me of secret baptisms and secret weddings. I learned of the joyful gathering of family to celebrate a 25th or 50th wedding anniversary — the first public celebration of that sacrament many years after the underground blessing of that union took place.
The generational grace that came from my family enduring persecution and keeping the faith for those who would follow helps me appreciate the freedoms and rights I have in this country, and what is at stake every day as I exercise them. Especially as governments around the world veer toward autocracy, I thank God for my great-grandparents’ prayers and perseverance, and for the grace to keep fighting for these freedoms every day.
Let us reflect on what we can learn from the history of our family and country, the way we are, how to use and appreciate the freedom and prosperity of our present circumstances, and the duty to protect that for the next generation.
Montse Alvarado is president and chief operating officer of EWTN News Inc. and a past executive director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
This story appears in the October 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.