The Sunday Sermon Archive

Dear Friends,

In celebration of the feast of the Holy Family, we read in the Gospel today the events of the finding of the Christ child in the Temple when He was twelve years old. St. Luke tells us: "And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject to them." St. Luke ends the life of Christ here at twelve years old and then does not say anything until the time when Christ is thirty and is about to be baptized by St. John.

Christ was subject to His parents. God subjected Himself to mere human beings! This is the thought that St. John leaves us with for the life of Christ for eighteen of His thirty-three years of life. This is the ideal family: the child is subject to his parents even unto adulthood. But, this ideal is seldom even considered, much less strived for, in today's society.

Here in the United States children are emancipated at the age of eighteen. Children cannot wait for the day when they will not have to obey their parents. And parents often can not wait for the day when they will no longer have to concern themselves with their children. How different this is from the life of Christ! He obeyed His mother for thirty years. And even after this we still see Him striving to fulfill her every desire.

Children no longer strive to love their parents. Their parents are now seen as obstacles that are holding them back from the happiness of fulfilling all their desires. The fourth commandment has lost all its meaning. Parents also lack the desire to teach their children to humbly obey. And where will this all lead us? It will lead us to the time when son will rise up against father, when a man's enemies will be those of his own household. (Matt 10, 36)

Parents, who neglect to teach their children the love of God and the love of their parents for God, have failed miserably in their vocations. God has placed the lives of these little children in their hands for one purpose and there will be Hell to pay for those who fail in this.

The catechism is quite clear and precise in explaining the whole reason for our existence. God has made us to share an eternal happiness with Him in Heaven. But, to attain this reward we must: know, love, and serve Him in this world. It is the duty of parents not only to instruct their children, but to lead them by example to reach this goal. It is not enough to shelter, clothe, feed, and nurse a child into adulthood. Parents also have the obligation to educate the child, so that he will be a beneficial member of society, but more importantly so that he will be eternally happy in the society of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Children are given everything they desire and parents deceive themselves into thinking that they are good parents for providing all these things for them. Children learn to be demanding self-centered abusers of other peoples' kindnesses. These material things are only secondary in importance, but they have taken over the first place in most people's minds. Parents who have thus provided all the material things they possibly could, soon find that their children are ungrateful, and cannot love because they have no concept of what love really is. Grown children are often the cause of much heartache and grief for parents. And parents (at least those who have somewhat of a conscience left) ask themselves, what did we do wrong? We gave them everything and demanded very little, and often nothing, from them in return. And now the children are miserable and the parents are miserable.

Children need to learn to give of themselves, they need to learn to sacrifice and it must begin as soon as possible. Once a plant reaches a certain stiffness you will break it before you will bend it in another direction. If you wish to change the direction a plant is growing in, you must do it while it is still young and green. And the sooner you begin the easier it will be. The same applies to children. The sooner they learn to give and sacrifice of themselves the sooner they will find real happiness, peace and contentment not only in this world, but also in eternity. St. Francis' Peace Prayer expresses this most beautifully: "It is in giving that we receive." The one who gives (sacrifices) of himself is not the one who looses or comes up short. On the contrary, he who gives is in reality the recipient of much better things. And when we give for the love of God, we receive not only the hundred-fold in this life but more importantly we will receive eternal life.

Let us not shy away from obedience to our parents or whoever God has placed over us. But let us wholeheartedly obey them for the love of God. And let us lead our children in the same direction by moderately refusing to give in to their every whim. Teaching them that obedience is not slavery, (Even slavery can be meritorious for those who truly love God.). Teach them that little sacrifices of self-denial have great rewards, not only in the immediate future but more so in eternity. But, most importantly let us show children by our example that there is happiness that comes from discipline, sacrifice and self-denial.

Franciscan Benefactor Seraph Subscription Electronic copy of the December Seraph ($2.00)in Adobe Acrabat format. Vocations Have you remembered God?