“We may say we are Franciscans or Carmelites or Salesians, but more truly we are products of our families.” This is something I repeatedly tell priests and religious in seminars. The participants, especially the older ones, nod in agreement.
If this is true for a group that receives many years of structured and well-thought-out formation, it is still truer for the rest of humankind. Our parents (and siblings) influence us the most, teach us the most, hurt or heal us the most.
Want proof? Look at what happens in counselling or psychotherapy.
I remember Raj (all names changed) looking depressed and unable to believe that anyone could love him. Reason: He had never experienced a father’s love.
Or Edwin, furiously angry with his father, who, he felt, had ruined his childhood and his family through uncontrolled drinking.
Or Tony, a brilliant professor of psychology, telling me that it was his mother who had built up his emotional security.
Or Jayaprakash, who attributes his success in business to his mother’s prayers and the sufferings she had undergone, thus meriting blessings for the whole family, he said.
In both our most beautiful experiences and in our deepest hurts, our families play a crucial role. Our parents have done more for us than we know; they have also hurt and disappointed us (for no human being can give another all that a person is thirsty for). Being a parent is one of the most demanding (and one of the most fulfilling) vocations in life. Its essence can be summarized in what a young mother told me once: “Having a child means that your own needs come last.”
We owe much (if not the most) to the two persons who put their own needs and wants last and raised us at greater cost than we will ever know.
In our turn, we—whether married or celibate—are called to be parents who build up, heal, inspire and challenge—persons our children can look up to (and pray to, after we are gone!).
This issue looks at the essentials of parenting, and the complex challenges this mission presents today. As always, we supplement theory with touching true stories. We learn best, after all, from how people live their lives, not what they say about it.
We dedicate this issue to these most influential, but largely unsung, heroes: Our parents. And we invite all of us—married couples and celibate “parents”—to look at what parenting means today.
Fr Joe Mannath SDB
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