Recently I had a chat with a very nice couple. Among several of the different things we were talking about was one sensitive topic that surfaces time after time: that of their grown up children having little or no contact with the Church. The parents’ feelings seem to be of disappointment mixed with guilt. It’s particularly painful for parents who have been practising their faith all their family lives and who keep the faith. Sometimes this question is expressed in a direct way: ‘What have we done wrong?’
When we listen to today’s gospel, telling us the story of St John the Baptist’s nativity, we can have the impression that everything was prepared in advance. His parents had been given a kind of instruction manual, guaranteeing full success if followed faithfully. In some ways they appeared to have the task of raising their child simplified – they knew his future role, his future destiny, and they knew the way to attain it.
As parents you didn’t or don’t have such a well-defined situation and clear vision concerning your kids. The consequences and results of every single decision you make are unknown. You can try to anticipate how these will turn out, but they are all but certain. This question from today’s gospel: ‘What will this child turn out to be?’ – spins your head on a regular basis. Your hopes alternate with your anxieties. Your children’s uncertain future gives you many sleepless nights.
It is actually misleading to latch onto the perceived certainty of the parents of John the Baptist. We have to remember that their son’s story was written with the benefit of hindsight, as it is with anyone else’s. When we look back to the past, we see it in different way than when those things were actually happening. We interpret the past in the light of the consequences of which we are now aware. John the Baptist’s parents knew as little about their son’s future as you do about your children’s. Would they really have been happy to have had advance knowledge of the fate of their only son? I doubt it. Quite likely Zechariah saw John continuing in the family tradition as a priest. But John chose a different way of life and eventually he lost his head. Literally.
Children are not computers to be programmed in order to produce predictable results every time. They are not meals, produced simply by following a recipe. Children are human beings with their own personalities and their own minds and their own ability to make decisions. I have no doubts that you as parents have given or give your kids the very best of which you are capable. But eventually your children take full responsibility for their own lives. They’ve got the right to live their lives as they wish – including the chance to make mistakes.
So stop wondering what you’ve done or what you haven’t done. You cannot change the past. But you can always be forward-thinking – and give your children as much support as you are capable of, helping them to live their lives to the full. Their happiness will be yours as well.