Children, A Gift of God

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

This meditation is about children, a gift of God. There's a phrase in Scripture that says, in Latin, Si scires donum Dei–“If you knew the gift of God” (John 4:10).

Gifts that come from God are very special. We have to try and appreciate the gift, possibly seeing it from a supernatural perspective, with all of the consequences.

There was a fellow in a class I used to teach many years ago in another country who was a very average fellow, but he did extremely well.

He had three sisters; he was an only son. His father was very close to him. He got into an Ivy League university in the States.

I'd often heard St. Josemaría saying we should be very good friends of our children (Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations, Point 100). An easy thing to say, but in my experience, not such an easy thing to achieve.

But this man had achieved it very well, and he was a very successful professional businessman. I asked him, What was his secret?

He said, “I have given up the cocktail circuit and I try to be home by six in the evening. I spend an hour with my son every day. We chitchat, we're buddy buddies.”

Then I asked him, “But what gave you that orientation or that motivation to conduct yourself like that?”

He said, “I was working in New York at one stage, and I knew a Jew on Wall Street who was very successful. One time he invited me to his home in upstate New York for a weekend.

“We got to the house, and it took us five minutes to get from the gate to the house—and that's not because the car was breaking down. It was a huge mansion.

“Then he showed me around this incredible mansion, room by room. When we got to his own bedroom, there was a big sign above the bed that said, ‘The greatest failure of a man is to fail as a father.’”

This fellow says, “I was a bit perplexed. He was this man who was so successful on Wall Street, and yet hanging over his bed was a sign, a message, all about failure. I asked him to explain.

“He said, ‘You see, my kids were growing up. I was on the up on Wall Street and I put them into boarding schools. Christmas time came and I was very busy, so I just left them there. And summertime came and I was also very busy, and I just left them there. That went on for a couple of years. And now one of them is on drugs and another one is something else, the third one is something else.’ He painted a pretty dismal picture.

“This man said, “‘I came home to my own home, and I made out my own sign and I hung it above my own bed, saying that the greatest failure of a man is to fail as a father.’”

Fatherhood and parenthood is a vocation—something we have to respond to. There's a grace for it.

There are graces for the battles of every day in that vocation, something that we have to live out on a daily basis, maybe on an hourly basis, to take care of that gift—to look at it from a supernatural perspective, which means to look at it from the point of view of faith and of hope and of charity.

God has great plans for our marriage, for our parenthood, for our children. Our correspondence to that vocation comes to be something very important.

I was living in a university residence in Spain at one time. After lunch each day there was supposed to be a get-together for everybody.

There were about 100 male students in the university residence. But the get-together competed with the siesta. So generally, there was about a 30 percent attendance. If there was an invited guest, that attendance might rise to about 50 percent.

Then one time in the year, a lady was invited. All the guests were men, and this time a lady was invited. Suddenly there was 100 percent attendance. It was the event of the year. Nobody wanted to miss this historic occasion.

Now this lady was a professor of psychology. She was a mother of eight children. She was a member of Opus Dei.

She came into the get-together, and she started to talk about what it meant to be a mother. I was a bit surprised. I was thinking, ‘I wonder if she got her topic wrong. These guys are never going to be mothers.’

But then I looked around the room and all the jaws were hanging open. They were all fascinated.

They all knew what a mother was. But it never crossed their mind for a moment to think of what it meant to be a mother.

This lady talked about some very domestic little anecdotes from her home: how she and her husband were both in academics; they were a bit disordered by nature—one shoe here and another shoe there, clothes on the back of the chair.

She said, “As our children grew, we saw how they were imitating our example of disorder. And so, our battle in the home was to hang up our clothes properly and to put our two shoes together.” She told some very homey little stories.

But then she said that a mother has to be different things to her growing children at different stages of their development.

To the two-year-old, she has to be the diaper changer, one of the crucial services that she provides. To the six-year-old, she has to be the Mum that gets down on the floor and plays with a doll's house or the toy car or something.

To the ten-year-old, she has to be the good-looking Mum who puts on a bit of makeup and gets her hair done so that when she comes to collect her ten-year-old son from school he can dig the other guys in the ribs and say, ‘That's my Mum over there, the good-looking one.’

To the sixteen-year-old, she has to be the intellectual Mum who knows what's going on in the world, keeps abreast of current affairs, maybe has a book going, and can engage her budding intellectual child in an intellectual conversation, and doesn't give the impression that the last time that an idea went through her head was before she got married.

This lady painted a picture reminiscent of St. Paul who says, “We have to be all things to all men” (cf. 1 Cor. 9:22).

Just as a mother has to try and be different things to her growing children at different stages of their development, so also, a father has to be something similar.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Children are the supreme gift of marriage and contribute greatly to the good of the parents themselves” (Catechism, Point 1652).

They contribute greatly. Children are not just a burden or a problem or a challenge. They are a pathway to holiness.

We have a special grace to grow in that pathway to holiness. There's a grace there for all the challenges and the difficulties and the ups and downs.

God wants us to become good at this business of parenting—good at taking care of these gifts, the different ways that they express themselves.

There was a man in Ireland many years ago—he was very successful actually—one of the most prominent actuaries in the country. Very prestigious profession there.

He began to attend recollections of Opus Dei. Little by little he sort of went on to change. He said afterward, “You know, I always thought that the most important thing in my life was my work.”

He had eight children, and through the formation that he received, he said, “I began to see that my work is not the most important thing in my life. The most important thing in my life is my family.”

The professional man that he was, he decided to make a paradigm shift—to start to look at his family with the same seriousness with which he looked at his work.

He installed a filing cabinet in his home. He opened a file on each one of his children. He had weekly board meetings with his wife, planning sessions, quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals for each of the children. He had five to ten-minute reporting sessions with each one of the children.

He organized his family along the same lines as he organized his office. He took that whole enterprise very seriously.

Pope St. John Paul II liked to say that “the family is the school of deeper humanity” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, Point 21, November 22, 1981; Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, Point 52, December 7, 1965).

Pope John Paul was full of very pithy, short little phrases that were so instructive.

He talked about the “civilization of love” (John Paul II, Letter to Families, February 2, 1994); the “culture of life” and “the womb is the sanctuary of life” (John Paul II, Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, March 25, 1995).

The family is the school of love, the school of virtue, the school of piety, the school of the soul. He said, “The future of humanity passes through the family” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation, Familiaris consortio, Point 86, November 22, 1981).

We can get a lot of mileage out of thinking that Christ spent thirty years—not thirty days, but thirty years—living out a humble presence in the family.

“He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them. And his mother kept all these sayings carefully in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and grace before God and men” (Luke 2:51-52).

We have to try and create a family atmosphere in our home. Create the home. The tables and the chairs and the furniture and the material things don't really create the tone of the home. They help a little bit.

But the tone is created by us, with our self-giving, in the fact that we give importance to family life. We dedicate time to it, and thought and energy and prayer. We try to be there.

Christ gives great dignity to family life. Part of that creating of family atmosphere is family fun. Our best moments should be at home and with the family.

Hopefully, our children feel the same way. They enjoy family life. Maybe they don't enjoy their chores or their homework, but there's something else there that they enjoy, something deeper.

We have to try and be available to our children, to play with them, to do their thing, to talk to them. To listen to them. To attend their sports matches, soccer or hockey or basketball, wherever it may be.

In a regular way, try to check their homework, partly because you want to see how they're doing, but also to let them see that you're interested. It's their work. Let them see that you value it, what they spend their time doing, and the way they do it. With that, you communicate to them that ‘your work is important to me.’

In all families, there may be moments of the cross: possibly sickness, or contradictions, or pain, or failure, or the loss of a child, miscarriages.

From your approach to all of these things, your children learn a lot about life, to approach these realities with faith, aware that ‘I'm a child of God. I'm carried in the palm of a God who loves me.’

God is speaking to us through the cross, helping us to grow in virtue.

Often those situations can be opportunities for heroic Christian witness. You show children what real faith is, and what real detachment or poverty is, or what real humility is.

If ever you lose your temper, try to apologize. If you lose your temper and you shout and roar, the children learn that ‘it's okay to lose my temper and to shout and roar.’

But if you apologize, they learn. ‘I have to be humble; Dad also makes mistakes, and he makes up for it.’

Try to raise your children to be a good son or daughter-in-law, to raise “great men and women” (James Stenson, Conference Talk, Educating in Virtue, May 1996) who are not just successful materially, but who are successful people of character.

Somebody once defined character as “that which you have left when you've lost everything else” (Evan Esar). Some people in life lose everything they ever had. But if they're people of character, they can still be strong.

Raising children well doesn't mean to raise them to make a lot of money, but rather, to be children of whom you're proud throughout their lives.

God gives us a vocation to be a family man. Family values mean family priorities.

I was talking to a man once who was not a philosopher, but he had an interest in philosophy, and he realized there were a lot of bad philosophical ideas traveling around the world.

He'd heard of some conference that was taking place in New York, and he was thinking of traveling all the way to New York to say something and to communicate certain ideas; to try and correct some of these wrong ideas.

In the course of the conversation, he happened to mention how he had a seven-year-old son, and the seven-year-old son liked to play basketball. The son was always asking him, “Hey, Dad, why don't you come and play basketball with me for a while?” He was always really busy.

I had to tell him, “Look, rather than jumping on a plane and going to New York and talking at this great conference, maybe you do more good in the world by just staying home and playing basketball with your son.”

Often God doesn't ask us to do extraordinary things. But he does ask us to do the ordinary things extraordinarily well.

And that's the apostolate within the family. You have to be there. Be there in the key moments of the lives of your children. What's going on in their lives? What are they thinking?

That's what being good friends with your children is. That's what it means. Friends are people who let down the drawbridge of their heart, and let other people see what's in their heart. They communicate.

This business of building friendships with your children has to be done before a certain age. Ten, eleven, twelve are key ages.

You have to work on things before that, because once the child gets into the teenage years, as somebody said once, they enter the stone age.

They become monosyllabic. “Where are you going?” “Out.” “When will you be back?” “Later.”

If you haven't built the bridges in the years of nine, ten, eleven, twelve, you won't be able to walk along those bridges later when you need to in the teenage years.

Our Lord wants us to be generous cooperators with the plans of God.

It’s very important to pray for your children. Pray for God's plans for them, and to pray with them, so that they hear you saying the Morning Offering, or your prayer to your guardian angel, or your Memorares. They see that piety in the home is a real thing.

If ever your children are receiving any of the sacraments, try and make that a big occasion: First Communion, Confirmation.

On my First Communion Day, my father told me he would allow me to do something today that he would never allow me to do for the rest of my life. I was really excited to know what this great thing was going to be.

He said, “I will allow you to sit at my place at the dining room table.” At breakfast that day, I sat in his place at the dining room table. I felt like a king. But then he kept his promise: never again.

Sometimes there are little things we can do that don't cost any money, but yet which conveys an important message about what is important in our life.

Children are a gift of God, and that gift in particular is the gift of their soul.

We spend an awful lot of time thinking about the bodies of your children—clothes, food, all the material necessities, education. But the spiritual realities are much greater.

One of the greatest truths of our faith is the immortality of the soul. We don't think enough about the soul. If you think for a moment, when was the last time in a newspaper article, a magazine, or a movie that I heard anybody mentioning the soul?

All the great religions of the world believe in the spiritual nature of man—Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity. Only modern materialism says that man has no soul; he's just a thing.

Yet when God creates a soul and infuses that soul into a body at the moment of conception, that soul is destined to live forever and forever and forever.

There was a Protestant theologian once who was musing about the immortality of the soul. He thought that the purpose of the soul is to give God glory in this world, and then go to heaven, and give God glory forever and forever and forever.

He was thinking, if that's the purpose of the soul, one of the greatest things that any human person could do in this world is to bring souls into the world to give God glory forever and forever and forever.

“And if that's the case,” he said, “contraception must be wrong.” So, he changed his religion and became a Catholic.

Be affectionate with your children because everyone has a heart. And every day, that heart needs a bit of affection, a bit of encouragement.

Try to be easy to live with. Parenting experts talk about how parents and fathers should try to live as great men and women. Great men and women don't demand more of their children than they do from themselves.

Children imitate people they admire, even unconsciously. Virtue means power. If you're a man of virtue, you'll be a man of power. Leaders don't just have followers; they have joiners.

A parent who goes to Mass every day, or practices some particular virtue in a special way, leaves a great legacy, a great legacy or example to children, an example they can't argue with.

Good example attracts. God wants you to feel proud and privileged to be a parent, to have that vocation. It's a calling to a great mission. It's a weight, but it's an honor.

Pray that your children someday will become masterpieces. It's your pride and honor to see that happen.

One parenting expert says that the role of parents is to turn a gorilla into an adult, because every baby that comes into the world comes into the world like a self-satisfying hedonistic gorilla. ‘I want my milk and I want it now. And I'm going to scream and scream and scream until I get it, even if it's three in the morning. You'll jolly well get up out of bed and give me my milk because I'm the most important person in the world.’

The role of parents is to turn this little gorilla into an adult. An adult is not somebody who can take care of themselves, because a hothouse plant or a goat or a cow or a cat or a dog can take care of themselves.

An adult is somebody who can take care of others, someone who can forget about themselves.

God wants us to take a barbarian and turn him into a civilized man, or a little daughter into a civilized and great woman, on whom every society depends. Kids grow up when they can take care of others.

We try and value our children. Build up their self-esteem and confidence. Above your work, we value you. Is this the best you can do? Then, it's okay with us. Kids need praise.

Be aware that often they're confronted with great pessimism in society, particularly in the area of sexual morality. ‘Don't fight against your passions. You can't win. Give in. Here's a condom and it's free.’

Try to avoid corporal punishment. When you correct them, you're impounding the lessons of moral life—that we must treat others with respect.

You try to turn grabbers into givers. They don't come into the world saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ They need to be conscious of other people's needs. They grow up when they finally do the right thing without being told.

James Stenson, that same parenting expert, says that parents have to repeat things 500 times for their children, and they only get them on the five hundred and first. A lot of your sanctity may be tied up in that repetition of 500 times.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, a famous German philosopher, said, “Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they're capable of being.”

Teenagers are young adults. Treat them like that and they really respond. Invest in their freedom and responsibility and you get a responsible adult.

Great parents know that “no” is also a loving word. Children have to hear words of loving denial from time to time.

The preparation of your children for marriage begins in their early formation in virtue—in primary school, in secondary school. It doesn't begin at the pre-marriage course. Your kids' future marriages, to a large extent, will depend on how they treat their brothers and sisters.

We can ask the Holy Spirit for grace to see what we need to encourage in our children. Responsibility. Courageous perseverance. Self-control.

They might be great test takers, very skilled. But sooner or later they run into trouble if they've little character.

Unity in the home is very important. Children grow to be confident men and women when there's unity in the home, when they live in a safe, loving environment. Confident people go very far in life.

The enemy of parents is not the future unemployment of children. The goal is not just to make them technically skilled.

But the enemy of parents is not boredom. We're not just here to keep them busy and active.

The goal, rather, is to raise children to become competent, responsible, generous, considerate men and women who are committed to living by principles all their lives, no matter what the cost. The goal is to raise adults, not children.

When we look at the home in Nazareth, that place where Christ wanted to spend so much time, where He grew and became strong, full of wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him, we can derive a lot of inspiration on how to take care and form and grow with the gifts that God has given to us.

We can ask Our Lady, Mother of the family and of the domestic Church, to help us to grow in this area.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MML