Monday, May 02, 2011

Gospel of Luke, chapter 2:51

The child Jesus was no different to any other child as for as the need for family is concerned. He was a member of a family, and he was subject to them.

The expression “charity begins at home” becomes a thoroughly Christian expression when it recognizes that home is the first and best place for children to respond to the needs of others as Christ taught us.

Homes are the natural incubators where children’s attitudes and values are formed for better or for worse. This means that if you want to raise caring kids, you have to cultivate an attitude of service within the home. The family is the perfect place to learn this because loving one another and serving one another begins in the home.

Children are naturally focused on their own needs and must be weaned away from self-centeredness. On a deeper level, human beings are attracted to the ideal of self-giving because God created us to love and serve one another. This spiritual instinct is in our genes. When we help others, it feels good. It gives us purpose. Jesus extends this calling to the way we treat our enemies: we need to love them also.

The first and most obvious way to inculcate in children love for one another, even their enemies, is by example. Are parents demonstrating their love for all members of their family? Answering this question requires taking a deeper look into your spiritual lives to see if you embrace love rather than dread it. It is not only children who experience deep-seated selfish tendencies. Adults also have these tendencies, and they need to fight this enemy within—laziness; apathy; inattention to the needs of others; greed; anger; and irresponsibility. Children who witness self-sacrifice in the home are more inclined to practice it than children who have not witnessed it in the home.

A genuine spirit of love and self-sacrifice springs from following the example of Christ. It wells up within us as the Holy Spirit leads us to care more deeply about other people and their joys and sufferings. This is the kind of love and sacrifice that Jesus praised in the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).

Although you can require your children in the home to be responsible, you cannot force them to serve lovingly. You can only hope that as they grow, they will want to serve others. As they mature, they will be more inclined, because of the example of the home, to meet the needs of others in a just and Christian manner.

Some years ago, I was visiting Hawaii with friends. I met a man, a cousin of one of my friends, who was a police captain. I learned that he was removed from one part of the island to the furthest corner of the island because he had busted a drug operation. My friends told me that he put his career at risk by exposing this corruption because the perpetrators of the crime were politically connected. I asked him, rhetorically:
“Did you know the risk you were taking?”
Yes,” he replied.
Then why did you do it?”
He replied: “I’ve often asked myself the same question, and the only answer I can come up with is my family upbringing. I was raised to do the right thing.”

This man did the right thing at great personal sacrifice because of his family upbringing. It was in the home that he learned the meaning of true service.

Fr. Hugh Duffy