This must be the image of the Prodigal Father looking afar and scanning the horizon while waiting to lavish his prodigal love on the prodigal son who has squandered his inheritance in a lavish and prodigal lifestyle. I have tried to be a good father, lavishing love on my sons, guiding them to be good persons and molding in them a strong and upright character. Often, I ask if I have been successful and done enough. Sometimes, I wonder if I had done too much.
There has always been a streak of the fire-brand activist in me. I love the prophetic role of being a Christian, who, like a fool, will speak the truth as he sees it. I was brimming with pride when Martin, in all of his tender age of four or five years, told the aide-de-camp of then President Marcos: “Your president is a bad person. He has killed a lot of people.” Today, he still speaks his mind and the truth as he sees it, ready to support his view with facts, figures and deep insights. I worry sometimes that he will end up losing friends because of his extreme honesty and integrity. But wasn’t that why I was so proud of him as a child.
As a child, Mickey loved going with his Mama to her prayer meetings. Growing up, we were so proud of him playing the peacemaker among his playmates, teaching them to forgive so they can keep their games going. Today, he teaches young people how to pray and come closer to the Lord. And he lives forgiveness, willing and able to forgive people who have hurt him deeply and move on. I worry sometimes if the wounds from his hurts will ever heal or will they lead to him bleeding to death. But weren’t his prayer-fulness and forgiving nature what endeared him to us as a child?
Of our three sons, Macky has been under our daily care the longest. But even as he was growing up, he was aware of the various community services I and Anabelle were involved in. I have seen in him a generosity of spirit that gives without expecting anything in return nor counting the cost. Children have always been naturally attracted to him because of his giving nature. Today, he serves as a Pediatric resident in PGH, not counting the long hours he puts in, not minding the pay he has yet to see and ever ready to spend even his last peso for a patient who needs it. I worry sometimes if there would be enough left for him as he is about to start his own family. But is this generosity and unstinting sense of service not what we would have dearly loved for him to learn as a child?
I guess in the end I can only do so much for them. I prepare them for life – hopefully sufficiently. And they strike out on their own. I pray I have helped them grow strong wings and strike deep roots for a meaningful and happy flight and journey.
But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.
Luke 15:1-32
Thank you, Verne, for your Sunday sharings.
No, we are never sure if we have raised our children the right way. Sometimes they cross us too much, and we do not know either if they love us at all. Sometimes, like your Martin, they speak their minds too freely that you wonder whether this is for their own good. You even feel that perhaps you might have unwittingly passed on to them a dark side in our character.
All these gaps in confidence in us parents are exploited by the devil who subtly instills in us the painful suspicion that God has not been with us through those many years when we were forming our children in the best lights we knew. But we turn the table on the tempter by acknowledging that our efforts alone in rearing our children are and will forever be inadequate and that we need God all the time to complete those efforts.
In fact we need to pray for precisely that Divine intervention every day for ALL our actions and endeavors. In this constant call for God’s completing action can be found, I believe, the meaning of the prayer, “give us this day our daily bread.”
Thanks Raoul.
Such wonderful insights could only have come from one who has taken his job as a father in all earnestness and who has loved his children deeply and truly. Parenting is indeed taking part in God’s ongoing creation.