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| Walker Evans |
Their Progeny Will Endure
Piety
And for all time, their progeny will endure, their glory will
never be blotted out; Their bodies are peacefully laid away, but their name
lives on and on. At gatherings, their wisdom is retold, and the assembly
proclaims their praise. Sirach 44:13-15
Jesus said to his disciples: "Blessed are your eyes because
they see, and your ears because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets
and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear
what you hear but did not hear it." Matthew 13:16-17
Study
In our first reading, we encounter how God reveals his glory
through the lives of their ancestors, prophets, priests, and rulers. Looking
back, Joachim and Anne become a part of this march of history. Some are known
to use through books like Chronicles and Kings, yet many are nameless faces
long since returned to dust.
Visualize, hard as it may be, the lives led by Joachim and Anne
when they became pregnant with the child who would become their daughter Mary.
Little did they know the impact that this act of creation would have on sacred
history and human traditions. As they
held their infant daughter, could they even begin to fathom that they were
holding the baby who would bear the baby who would be God's son?
Joachim
and Anne—whether these are their real names or not—represent that entire quiet
series of generations who faithfully perform their duties, practice their
faith, and establish an atmosphere for the coming of the Messiah, but remain
obscure.[i]
Action
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| Walker Evans |
"Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" is a 1941 book written by
James Agee with pictures by Walker Evans. They document the lives of
impoverished tenant farmers during the Great Depression. Although Evans' was
working with the Farm Security Administration, the assignment came from Fortune
(ironically!) magazine. The title derives from a passage in the Wisdom of
Sirach (44:1) that begins, "Let us now praise famous men and our fathers
that begat us." This passage comes
from today's first reading.
Their assignment sought to detail the conditions among
sharecropper families in the American South during the "Dust Bowl."
It coincided with the administration of President Franklin Roosevelt and the
"New Deal" programs designed to help the poorest in our society. Agee
and Evans spent eight weeks that summer researching their assignment, mainly
among three white sharecropping families mired in desperate poverty. They
returned with Evans' portfolio of stark images.
Peruse the book at your library, and you will find families with gaunt
faces, adults, and children huddled in bare shacks before dusty yards in the
Depression-era nowhere of the deep South.[ii]
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| Walker Evans |
The pseudonyms used in the book correspond to some genuine
families living in Alabama in conditions of abject poverty. How ironic that this assignment came from
Fortune magazine and not (more appropriately?) in photo essays on the pages of
the now-defunct magazines "Life" or "Look." Without the prying eyes of Evans and Agee,
these actual families (Burroughs, Tengle, and Fields) would have remained as
obscure as Joachim and Anne's contemporaries from ancient Israel.
Contemplating the anonymous families who are poor reminds me also
of the words Jesus speaks near the end of Matthew's Gospel. "The poor you will always have with you;
but you will not always have me." (26:11)
How true this remains today.
Despite much more elaborate government and church social programs, you
don't have to look beyond page one of today's newspaper to see how low-income
families are wracked by poverty, drug abuse, and more.
How can our piety toward Jesus's long-distant grandparents help us
grow sympathy in our hearts for today's parents and grandparents leading
low-income families? These families may
live in the rural South or the lands that made up ancient Palestine, or
anywhere in the world.
How can a study of and commitment to the Sustainable Development
Goals help improve the lives of all? Not only the poor but "their children
after them." Consider using these goals to plan and target your charitable
giving and volunteer service toward the goals in which you would like to make
an impact.
[ii] Let
Us Now Praise Famous Men - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Us_Now_Praise_Famous_Men
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