Father’s Corner:

Dear Loving Parishioners,

Love and Peace of Christ!

ARE YOU THE REAL PARENTS?

The challenge is more obvious. If we accept this, we will

be less inclined to act as “owners” of our children and we

will be less prone to manipulate our children for our own

ends and more inclined to love, cajole, challenge, and

correct, even while giving them their freedom.

The consolation is not as obvious, but it is my focus here:

When we realize, in the healthy sense, that our children

are not really ours, we also realize that we are not alone in

raising and caring for them. We are, in a manner of

speaking, only foster parents. God is the real parent and

God’s love, care, aid, and presence to our children is

always more than our own.

Ultimately, you are never a single parent, even when you

don’t have a human spouse to help you. God, like you, is

also worrying, struggling, involved, crying tears of

solicitousness, trying to awaken love.

Your children cannot, ultimately, turn their backs on God.

They can refuse to listen to you, walk away from you, spit

on your values, but there is still another parent from whom

they can never walk away, whom they carry inside.

Realizing this can do more than a little to bring some

peace and joy into the hearts of those who have lost

children tragically – to accidents, but especially to suicide,

drug and alcohol related deaths, and other such things that

make parents second-guess, worry about their failures and

betrayals, and worry about all the things they should have

done.

Again, we are being asked to not forget that we are not the

only parents here. When this child died, in whatever

circumstance, he or she was received by hands far gentler

than our own. They left our foster care and our

powerlessness to fully embrace them to live with a parent

who can fully embrace them and bring them to joy and

wholeness that we could never quite give.

You’re only a foster parent. God is the real parent.

“Your children are not your children: Ultimately they

belong to God” ~Galil

May God bless you,

Father Peter