There is no scholarly consensus on when the Epistles to Timothy were written but the author (Paul?) makes clear that we are dealing with a third generation of Christians. I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and that I am confident lives also in you. It used to be the being a Catholic almost seemed like something you inherited like brown eyes. You went to Catholic school, got married in the Catholic Church, had your children baptized and the cycle repeated. Those days are gone. According to research more than half of U.S. adults who were raised Catholic have left the church at some point in their lives. That is why a great 20th century theologian, Karl Rahner, SJ, said that “The Christian of the future will either be a mytic or nothing.” No longer is the faith something like a family heirloom you can hand on but it develops because of one’s own individual experience of God. Being a mystic in Rahner’s sense means that you have an I-Thou relationship with God, a direct encounter. What we can hand on is how God has impacted our lives and invite others into a similar life of charity, mercy, forgiveness, compassion.
