Loving parents

A child is a precious gift and parents, both father and mother, cherish and care for the child with a tender, unconditional love on a daily basis.

In an ideal world, that would be how parental love is, however, we live in the real world and in the real world, parents are not perfect people but probably broken or dysfunctional individuals who have been hurt, deprived, manipulated, lied to and abused.

They were once children who either did not experience a life-giving love or perceive that they were loved in a nurturing fashion by parents and significant others.

And so they are now adults who try their best as parents, but often fall short, and in a very human way, foster relationships with their own children that are filled with tension, resentment and laden with baggage of past hurts.

It is therefore no surprise that we are reminded by God in the Decalogue to "Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you."

That it is the first commandment that advises on behaviour to others, apart from God, is significant.

The CCC* states that we should honour our parents as it is to them "whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God". It also states that:

"The fourth commandment is addressed expressly to children in their relationship to their father and mother, because this relationship is the most universal. It likewise concerns the ties of kinship between members of the extended family. It requires honour, affection, and gratitude toward elders and ancestors. Finally, it extends to the duties of pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern it.

"This commandment includes and presupposes the duties of parents, instructors, teachers, leaders, magistrates, those who govern, all who exercise authority over others or over a community of persons." (2199)

So what are the rewards of observing the fourth commandment?

The CCC says "spiritual fruits, temporal fruits of peace and prosperity", otherwise it "brings great harm to communities and to individuals".

Now those of us who have had bad childhood experiences and still continue to have rocky relationships with our parents may struggle to keep this commandment.

However, if we have an experience of God's love and believe in Him, then we are obliged to try and find a way to fulfil this commandment for this is one of the first and very basic ways we are able to express our love for God.

So how do we accomplish this nigh impossible feat of honouring and loving our parents when they can drive us up the wall and round the bend with just a few choice words?

We must first come to terms with the past. To invite Jesus to be there with us when we revisit painful and hurtful memories, and to release those bad times to Him and ask for a healing of those memories.

As P. brought up last Friday evening, empathy is a great tool in the healing process.

We may never understand fully why our parents did what they did to us as children, or continue to behave in ways that still can be life-destroying, but we can try to be open to who they are as people, to walk a mile in their shoes and then perhaps get a glimmer of understanding of what it means to be them.

I harboured great anger towards my father for a very long time but realized that it was me that I was hurting ultimately. So I came to a decision to let go of the anger and to live my life in a more positive way.

The first realization I arrived at was that I had to accept my father was who he was and that I could never change him as a person. (In other words, I had to love him unconditionally.)

Instead I needed to change how I looked at him, not through the eyes of a hurt child, but through the eyes of an understanding adult who saw him as another human being who had been hurt and disappointed many times in his life, and who did not judge him.

Even though that made a huge difference to our relationship and we both came to know that we loved each other dearly, the relationship was not one that was ever easy or light. But it was one filled with patience, forgiveness, caring, understanding, compassion and fidelity.

The flip side of a "difficult' relationship is that loving such a person ultimately makes you a better person for you are called to draw on the reserves of grace that love (that is a choice and not an emotion) engenders.

I just finished a fab book by Gary Chapman called Love as a Way of  Life and I found it very insightful.

He enumerates the ways we can express love to make it a "successful" experience: kindness, patience, forgiveness, courtesy, humility, generosity and honesty.

If we are able to give love in the way we would like to receive love, an authentic, selfless, self-giving love, then we will indeed live long in the land that God has given us - one filled with peace and a prosperity that is beyond measure.

In this season of Advent, there is no better time to practise the fourth commandment so try honouring your father and your mother today.

* Catechism of the Catholic Church