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World at Prayer blog
Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
Some of us here are grandparents, parents, or even guardians. We have been or still are involved in the noble work of raising children into good, responsible, faith-filled adults. We give them all the parental love there is for a person to grow into a well-integrated individual. It is also possible that many of you have had situations where those being raised manifest behaviors that reflect stubbornness, rejecting the path you are trying to provide for them. Worse still, as teenagers, they retort, tell all kinds of lies, mock or ridicule you assuming that they are grown up, and they are free to chart their own course, making your life miserable. When in trouble then they call for help. As good parents, we always come back with love, care and forgiveness sometimes trying even to enable their dysfunctional behavior. Looking into our past, maybe we were not so different.
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There are two things in our lives as believers that are essential and yet complicated. That is; ambition verses divine calling. Ambition stems from individual desires to build a platform and achieve specific results. Calling stems from a form of surrender to God’s will to glorify God. Ambition often seeks control and personal legacy. Calling requires obedience and willingness to discern what the Lord is calling you for. Ambition often breeds anxiety and pressure “to climb the ladder”. Calling produces inner peace and contentment, even when the path is difficult.
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In one of the dialogues that we hold with our temporary professed members, this individual asked me a question that was quite challenging, and it threw me off a bit. He asked why or what makes us invite someone to leave the seminary when we read in the scriptures that Jesus gave second chance to people like Zaccheus and Peter, and even made Peter to become the foundation or the rock on which the Catholic church is built. After an extended period of silence and reflection, I responded something to the effect, that, for Peter he was more than willing to begin afresh, he was ready to engage in a loving, personal, relationship with Jesus after having denied him. Jesus asked him publicly three times as way of providing him with the opportunity to make a new beginning in his relationship with him. So, I told this gentleman that we ask people to leave if we see a persistent pattern coupled with unwillingness to work through transformation.
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In these past few days Jesus is presented in the gospel as giving last instructions before he departs from the disciples. Back at home, the schools that are run by Congregation of Holy Cross are private boarding schools. When parents drop off their children at the beginning of the term, you hear words like, take care of yourself, mind your behaviors, work hard, be careful, always talk to the warden if you need something from us. These are the kind of things people say when they are leaving or departing from school. Those words are always full of love for the child being left behind. What the parents are doing out of love is entrusting the future well-being of that child to himself or herself.
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In my many years doing marriage counseling, I have run into couples who have been together for twenty and plus years, now mentioning how complicated relationships are. Partners discover stuff about the other that make them conclude that they have been fooled all these years. Comments like; “this is not the person I married twenty some years back, I have been living with a stranger, a monster or a beast!” come up after betrayal, domestic violence, and dysfunctional behaviors that crushes marriage relationships. This goes on to tell us how limited our capacity to understand all there is about the other person's details of life. As human beings, we are constantly in the process of becoming aware, growing in understanding of situations in our lives.
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Mind the Gap. When you go to London, particularly on the London underground trains, there is a warning that comes on over the microphone, Mind the Gap. Here, train passengers are warned to be careful while stepping over the gap between the train and station platform. I want to relate that to our life as Christians or followers of Jesus. Mind the gap can also be an invitation for us to pay attention to the space between where we are standing and where we want to go. That means making choices that are aligned with our values as Christians, so that we are not disconnected or disengaged from where we are, who we are and what we want to become as true Christians.
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