TURNING OF THE HEARTS PART 2

 

The power of the Spirit of Elijah amazes me. It bridges time and space and unites families in miraculous ways. And in the process, it heals and changes us forever. I am a witness to this process.

It started with my father who gave me a priceless gift. He gave me the Gospel.

When he was just a youth growing up in a poor peasant household in the socialist republic of Croatia, my father rejected the expected role of the oldest son to remain on family land to inherit it along with the care of his parents.

He chose instead a trade at the expense of his father's displeasure and rejection....a trade which enabled him later to move our family to the city life when I was 3 years old. This heroic move led to another even a more heroic one which took our family to a land of more opportunity, Australia. I was 14 years old when we left our homeland.

We hailed from a strong Catholic community. I attended our local Church regularly but my parents and my sisters were not so committed. My father had never expressed any deep spiritual convictions and I had never seen him at Church.

Unbeknownst to him, my father had brought me to a country, by spiritual design, where I could receive the greatest opportunity of all: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I was 17 when I approached my parents with my desire to join the Church.

My father does not show emotion but this news outraged and scared him. We were immigrants of 3 years in a strange country and my father’s fear was that I was joining a polygamous cult. He gave me an ultimatum. If I insisted on joining the Church, I had to leave home.

I was driven. The spirit of conversion burned inside me. I left home and was cut off from my family. It was the most devastating event of my then young life which ripped the fabric of my family for many years.

My sister stepped in and reconciled me with my parents a year later. All seemed well but our rift was never addressed properly and the reconciliation was too little too late. My father had become disillusioned with Australia and took my mother back to Croatia.

We corresponded over the years and I visited just once, after my mission. Whilst there I showed great interest in my Croatian roots and with my father’s help I gathered a lot of our family history, which pleased him greatly. So you see he was my accomplice in the temple work I did for my family.

I didn’t see my parents for 20 years before they passed away. I had their temple work done…….except for one ordinance. I was never sealed to them. For some reason, I didn’t feel the spiritual connection with them and could not see my father as someone who would accept the Gospel. The temple work I did for them was perfunctory. I did it out of duty.

And then ‘the turning of my heart happened’….. 15 years later. Suddenly I started thinking about my father. I was his favourite child and the magnitude of the pain I caused him when I left home bore heavily on me. I cried day after day….and I would plead in my prayers that he be told how sorry I am that I hurt him. I could not understand why after all these years I was sorrowing over that experience of my young life.

Then one day I understood, I was not sealed to my parents. The thought came to me that all that pain was wasted for something I believed in and sacrificed for that would never be ours. It was as if my father was speaking to me. I felt I had dishonoured my parents and basically rejected them and I felt enormous guilt. I made a commitment to get the sealing done. As I did so, the sorrowing left and I was at peace. I knew I had been forgiven.

Sometimes in ‘turning our hearts to our fathers’, some resolutions need to happen and most often than not they involve some form of forgiveness. Some of us hail from dysfunctional families, some from abuse, some from abandonment but all come from flawed humanity.

If something is holding you back from the sealing ordinances, know that forgiveness is the key. It will free and change you and it will replace all the grief that is in your heart with unearthly love.

We cannot be saved without our dead. Elijah was not the only one to appear at the Kirtland Temple. The Saviour came too, in acceptance of it to impress upon us this truth. To Him our salvation is everything because this is His work and His glory.

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: The Lord's Appearance to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple by Theodore S. Gorka)

THE PROMISES

 

I often see a close and loving family outside the Church and wonder how they will feel after this life, unconnected with no ties throughout eternity. Some of them will never join the Church in this life.

Herein is the mercy of our God….

When angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith on 21 September 1823, he told him of an important part of the restoration that will take place 13 years later. He told Joseph that the sealing power of the Priesthood will be restored to the earth by the hand of Elijah the prophet who will ‘plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers, and the hearts of the children shall turn to their fathers’ (D&C 2:2)

This sealing power comes in two parts. The first part is the planting into our hearts the promises made to the fathers: “Who are the fathers? They are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom the promises were made. What are the promises? They are the promises of a continuation of the family unit in eternity” (Bruce R. McConkie, The Millenial Messiah: The Second Coming of the Son of Man [1982], 267l; see also D&C 27:10; Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual commentary for D&C 2:2).

The second part is the turning of our hearts to our own ancient fathers. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve said that not only has God made these promises to the ancient patriarchs but that we “undoubtedly made them to our own lineal fathers and mothers, those who came to earth before the gospel was restored but whom we promised to provide its saving ordinances” (Christ and the New Covenant 1977, p. 297)

So it is through this sealing power and the saving ordinances we provide for our kindred dead that we inherit the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant. If not, the creation of this earth would be utterly wasted “as a sealed, united, celestially saved family of God is the ultimate purpose of mortality”. (Jeffrey R. Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, p 297-98)

But the earth’s purpose will not be 'utterly wasted' at the Saviour's coming (D&C 2:3) because the sealing power of the priesthood was restored to the earth by Elijah in the Kirtland Temple in 1836 through Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery.

The spirit of Elijah whispers to Church members and non-members alike in the world today who are desperately seeking their roots. Even the ones who don’t know why, will one day give thanks to the God of this universe who made the family ties eternal and preserved the love that binds us together, now and forever…..

 

Your life has come and gone

But your footprints remain

And your blood courses through my veins.

Because of God’s eternal grace

We will once again embrace.

I weep not that we are now apart,

For I carry you with me,

I carry you in my heart.

 

-  CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Elijah Appearing in the Kirtland Temple by Dan Lewis)