Mary is a young looking and agile grandmother. She is a woman of great faith. She is a daily Mass goer. She is a daily communicant. She is a daily meditator. She has great devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Mary hurts deeply. She has sleepless nights over her adult children not going to church at all. She says they are not married in the church. She says the grandchildren have not received the sacraments of initiation.
Mary thinks her children have lost their faith. They do not seem to have any sense of God. There is no religious sense in their lives and in their homes. There is no awareness of a divine presence.
Mary thinks that her children seem to be de-evangelized by our popular culture. She sees them as having absorbed the false wisdom of our age. They seem to be lonely people. They seem to have little meaning and little purpose in their lives.
Mary is in great distress. She has a great sense of loss. She has a great sense of guilt. She has a great sense of failure. She has the conflicting emotions of anger and guilt. She has anxiety and tears. She self-downs and sees herself as a failure in her parenting.
Mary has become cautious about her church topics. She can no longer chat easily about happenings in her parish. She has given up talking about the importance of regular church attendance.
Mary is forbidden to bring up anything about the centrality of infant baptism in the life of the Christian. She is tired of being accused of preaching and proselytizing. At times, she experiences antagonism and hostility from her children.
Mary sees the children and grandchildren living lives that are totally foreign to their inherited faith. They are not living the way they had been raised. They are not following up on their childhood and adolescent Christian formation practices.
Mary does not feel comfortable and relaxed in the presence of her children and grandchildren. Consequently, she does not relate well to them. She sees them in a negative light. In her mind they are living sinful and immoral lives.
Mary is pained with their pagan living. She is wounded. She aches on the inside. It hinders caring communication. Yet, she does not want to be estranged from them. She does everything she can to love them. She tries desperately to “love the sinner and hate the sin.”
Mary knows that her adult children and grandchildren have “freedom of choice.” She knows that this is a God given gift. At the same time, she is conflicted. For she sees them as not respecting and giving due regard to their faith and the practice of their faith.
Mary always honors the family custom of having grace before and after Sunday brunch. She manages to get the children and grandchildren to remain at the table with a respectful silence at the appropriate times.
Mary is struggling to keep the lines of communication open. And this is important to her. She will always do whatever she can to reassure her children and grandchildren of her constant love. She does this even though her stomach hurts and she cannot accept their chosen lifestyles.
Mary, despite all her agony and inner turmoil, believes that the thirst for God never disappears. She believes that it is never eliminated. Now she prays that this “Year of Faith” will re-kindle the fire within the hearts of her children and grandchildren.
Mary finds much comfort and hope in the words of Saint Augustine:
“You all say times are troubled; times are hard; times are wretched.
‘Well, live good lives and you will change the times by living good lives.
“You will change the times and then you will have nothing to grumble about.”
Msgr. Thomas J. Morgan is a retired pastor.
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