Today
someone told me about a woman who has recently had a baby.
She . . . is living in hell—her “partner” is a womanizer and he
drinks. The person who told me about this said that he would not wish for
anybody to live such a life. I replied: “All the sinfulness and hell
she lives in can not outweigh the fact that she is blessed with a child.
All the holiness and life in perfection is worth nothing compared to the
gift of having her own child. Even if the child and the mother both suffer
to hell and back.” I told him also: “You see, I don’t suffer
anything like that, but my empty life, filled with religion, is pitiful misery,
compared to what she has been given—despite her suffering.” But
I bet, you would disagree with me. If you bring a child into this world,
you love God more than if you don’t. Children are the gift from God
and are not born to their parents solely, but are given this life to praise
God and to partake in this earthly drama, no matter how tragic existence
may be. Can you imagine that your mum & dad had such abortive mentality
and attitude as you do, and never gave you the chance to live on earth. .
. . And you say that you are a bit of a mystic at heart?!
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 agree that children are a gift
from God. And I know, from my clinical work, that many parents treat their
“gifts” with such indifference and ingratitude that the children
grow up filled with bitterness and
anger, even to the point of
hating God. A fine way of praising God that
is! But this is not the point of your message.
I also know that those persons
who were not raised by their parents to love and to fear God can, through
the hard work of spiritual healing, resolve their
anger and bitterness and learn to love God. But this
is not the point of your message either.
I also know that if I had not
been born, God would have raised up someone else to do the work I’m
doing. The mere fact that I was born does not mean that I
had to have been born. But this is not
the point of your message either.
Anyone can tell, from what you
say, that you are desperate to have a child. Even with all the resources
of the Catholic Church —even with the
Eucharist itself—you feel miserable
because you do not have a child. And that’s sad, because it misses the
point about Christianity. And this is the point of your
message.
Getting to the Point
Taking the vows of Holy Matrimony
and having children to raise them to love and to
fear God is one way to praise God. But it’s not the only way.
We praise God primarily by
recognizing that, however we came into this world, and despite any pain or
suffering that ever happened to us, we are ultimately God’s creation
and that God calls us continually into holiness and away from
our sins.
Furthermore, we praise God by
living out this holiness as an example to others,
so that they might see us and, desiring to share in our great
peace and joy, they might be saved from slavery
to their sins as well.
Missing the Point
Now, if instead of showing others
your inner peace you show them how miserable you are because you can’t
have what you think you want, you aren’t living your
faith. In fact, you are showing others that you
lack faith. If you had real faith you would accept everything that God
gives you or does not give you. You would accept it all gratefully, and you would
accept it with the understanding that it is given to you precisely for the
sake of your spiritual purification, to polish out from
your soul all the various stains left in you by your past emotional injuries.
Cooperation With God
So, it is important to accept the
fact that God knows exactly what you need and that He will give you what you need
and will lead you where He knows you need to go. If you resist, you will be miserable.
And what pitiful misery it is, to be miserable even in the presence of all
God’s gifts. But if you cooperate, you will be plunged into the fullness
of the gift of love.
Recommended
Reading
A treasure of a resource for psychological and spiritual healing. Information
gathered from my websites (including this webpage) is now available at your fingertips
in book form.
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Falling Families, Fallen Children by Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D. Do
our children see a mother and a father both living in contemplative love for
God with a constant awareness of His presence and engaged in an all-out battle
with the evil of the world? More often than not our children don’t see living
faith. They don’t see protection from evil. They don’t see genuine, fruitful
devotion. They don’t see genuine love for God. Instead, they see our external
acts of devotion as meaningless because they see all the other things we do that
contradict the true faith. Thus we lose credibility—and when parents lose credibility,
children become cynical and angry and turn to the social world around them for
identity and acceptance. They are children who have more concern for social approval
than for loving God. They are fallen children. Let’s bring them back.
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