A child speaks of family

The love we display--especially in difficult moments--is critical for children

Another week, and another conversation with children on the playground during lunch and recess duty.

Last week I didn’t post here but on my Facebook. That week was a beautiful but relatively short story about desiring sainthood which I’ll include below.

This week, I confess, I was more struck by my conversations, both in wonder and in some measure of sorrow. I was on duty for the little ones, kindergarten and first grade. A magnificent and wild age, but already these children are seeing, hearing, and learning at an incredible rate.

I was speaking to one child as he followed me around the playground. Out of the blue he decides to tell me “I have two houses. My mom and dad aren’t married. That’s why I don’t have one house.”

As an aside, I do not know this child’s parents and I am not interested in pursuing judgment. Divorce and separations in our society and church today are messy and painful affairs for many and pastorally quite treacherous. They require the gentleness and wisdom of Jesus and a long-standing relationship of accompaniment with those involved. And so if I speak insensitively or poorly in attempting to process this experience, I ask your forgiveness.

But I was curious how this child felt and how he experienced this separation.

I asked: “How does that make you feel? Do you like having two homes?”

He replied: “I’m sad. I’m always sad. I don’t like it.”

I could hear a few pieces of my heart break at those words. That a child so young should have this experience—and know somehow that this situation is not the ideal—is a tragedy.

But then I asked another question, and perhaps the far more important question.

“Do your mom and dad love you?”

He replied, without missing a beat: “Yeah! My mom and dad love me a lot.”

I ask another question, “Do you love them?”

And with the confidence of a small child, “Yeah! They’re my mom and dad, I love them.”

Why do I present this small story to all of you? Simply to say that our children see, they know, and they love.

They see us. They see us at our best and our worst. They see us in our frustration and our occasional outbursts and anger. They see us in our laughter and joy.

They know when their parents love them and they can understand—at various levels—when there are challenges or tensions in a relationship.

And they love you. Parents, your children love you. And I know that you love them and your children hopefully know themselves loved by all of you.

In the midst of life, and in the midst of our imperfect participation in the life of the Church and the Body of Christ, love endures.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. -1 Cor 13:7

And if our love endures and indeed hopes—especially in regards to our children—than even in the midst of non-ideal situations and our own imperfections we can say that we are not far from the Kingdom of Heaven though indeed there is much yet to be done.

At the same time, we must make concentrated efforts to insure that when we fall short of these ideals and expectations—and we do and will, whether we are married couples, religious, priests, or single—that we cling to love.

There are several couples I know who have gone through both divorce and annulment.

These families have experienced hurt and pain and yet I see in them so much nobility, so much magnificent self-sacrifice as they struggle to raise their children and to give them that foundation of love and faith which makes our Christian life possible.

And their children! Their children are women and men of such remarkable strength and sensitivity, they often bear within them a remarkable capacity to encourage and strengthen others in the journey of faith and life.

Is it easy to contact an ex or a separated spouse about your children’s schedule, their struggles with romance, or arrange when the children will be at your house or hers? No. These are in so many ways, little deaths.

And somehow you are also united to the death of Christ, the Paschal Mystery, because in that small death, you give life to your children. You show them, that love can endure somehow through life’s trials and challenges, you show them that you can sacrifice and and have courage in the midst of a terrible moment. You become—even in this—somehow another Christ, an alter Christus.

Pope Francis writes beautifully in Amoris Laetitia about the family and also these very sitautions. He says first that “the experience of love in families is a perennial source of strength for the life of the Church” (AL # 88).

The Church is born, in a certain sense, through and in the family first. In the domestic Church, the universal Church finds her life enlivened and renewed.

Thus, it is the special role of that universal Church to safeguard, console, and comfort all families who form her very heart, and this includes those who have experienced some break or trial.

Pope Francis is clear that the divorced or the separated who have not remarried bear witness still to marital fidelity and “ought to be encouraged to find in the Eucharist the nourishment they need to sustain them in their present state of life” (AL #242).

Families which have experienced a break or a trial often can fear judgement, they fear condemnation. Or perhaps they did not find the Church to be intimately concerned for them when they were first struggling. Especially to the latter group but also to all who have felt this fear or bitterness, I can only offer my sincere apologies as a religious. I am sorry. I am sorry that we fail you so often.

For it is the role of the Church—both universally and in the local community—to “accompany these people with solicitude, particularly when children are involved or when they are in serious financial difficulty” (AL #242).

And so especially to the parents of this child whom I spoke with at recess, I say even in the midst of an imperfect situation: bravo. Your young child knows he is loved. He knows he can speak to a religious, someone who often is associated with the institutional Church, and share some feeling, emotion, or sentiment about what he is going through. Bravo, I say.

And know that the Church stands eager and ready to assist, to comfort, to console, and indeed to invite.

To invite you and your child deeper into the fold of Christ where true healing, love, and reconciliation can be found.

The fold of Christ where sadness—even the sadness of a small child—can be wiped away by the God and Father of us all.

Already you display such a depth of love, and so let us proceed ever deeper into love. Together.

As a final aside, there are separations, divorces, and annulments which occur often in response to abuse—physical or emotion—and in such situations we must have even greater care and concern for those involved and not place upon them burdens too heavy for them to bear, while calling them into the healing presence of Jesus Christ and the communion of faith.

In such situations, much of what I have said may be difficult or impossible and this is why accompaniment is essential to this task. Pope Francis speaks precisely of this reality in Amoris Laetitia when he writes that:

“In some cases, respect for one’s own dignity and the good of the children requires not giving in to excessive demands or preventing a grave injustice, violence or chronic ill-treatment. In such cases, “separation becomes inevitable. At times it even becomes morally necessary, precisely when it is a matter of removing the more vulnerable spouse or young children from serious injury due to abuse and violence, from humiliation and exploitation, and from disregard and indifference” (AL #241)

This is recognized as a last resort but as a legitimate means of protecting the vulnerable. But again the response of pastors and communities is the same. The deepest solicitude, care, and love must be given. A relationship must be formed and a process of accompaniment authentically engaged in on the part of those involved.