What We Hand Down

When someone hands down to us a precious family artifact, it comes to us scored with dozens of memories, scratches, stories, scents. Maybe a quilt symbolizes the rarity of material in the Depression, or vinyl records record in minute channels a passion for music, or books were traded for labor when money was scarce, or photos reveal startled expressions from when our elders were young, in a time before we lavished ten photos in a click to make sure everyone’s eyes were open. These artifacts are, truly, irreplaceable, not only because of their material but because of the history etched into them. 

Melania the Elder was an artist who worked not in cloth or metal but in the medium of human lives, creating community and intellectuals and monks and better human beings. Widowed, she left Rome for Alexandria and then Palestine. There, she founded two different religious communities, who included within their mission hospitality for pilgrims and travelers. She served as spiritual director for many of the most important spiritual writers of the day, including Evagrius Ponticus. She deployed her wealth to build the community of Christians, studied and discussed the brightest theological minds, defended the vital role of asceticism in Christian life, and displayed a generous theological tolerance at a time of rising Christian infighting. 

By the end of her life, I suspect Melania had little to pass down in the form of quilts or records or even books. For all her wealth, she did not work in stone or gold or even business ledgers. She worked in the medium of lives, of people, and left her marks, scratches, and stories there. Not accidentally, her granddaughter took her name when she became a monastic in her own right.

Melania made spaces safe for travelers, for women, for pilgrims, for people to disagree about theology. Melania shaped people as she experienced Christ shaping her. What she left behind was far more precious than an heirloom. Echoes of this remain in the writings of those she affected, but we have to wonder if this woman, so influential, has colored the faith we have inherited in generous and powerful ways we could never separate from the whole gift of our inherited faith. 

In our era, we sometimes like to blame the distorted parts of our faith on individuals—Paul, or Augustine, or our childhood pastor. There is some truth to this, but we might also be helped to remember the flipside, that there are those individuals whose faith scratched love into the church and world.

We can cherish the best advice we received; that time we were really welcomed; the book we found at just the right time. These things don’t just happen—they happen because of people like Melania, whose art passes down only through people.

Melania, and those like her, labored to pass down a love of God in Jesus that healed them and is healing for the world. Their artifacts in the shaping of Christian life are harder to see, but are also, truly, irreplaceable.