When the Homily is about Immunology

Love, Parenthood, Sin, and and Advent of Investment

Tall order, huh? Let me try to be brief.

I've never been a very good parent, but I am working on it. I realize that nothing is going to assist me in becoming more Christ-like than being a better parent than I have been. Selfishness is the key ingredient that initially led me to NEVER want children and has in the last decade or so fueled my poor parenting. Kids are all different and mine have certainly dealt with my failings in different ways, and my youngest daughter (who perpetuates the red-headed temper "myth") has had the roughest go of it. She is, what some term an exceptionally strong-willed child. (Often "diagnosed" rightly or wrongly as ADD or ADHD)

The challeneges of family life lately has had Advent become for my wife and I, a time of serious reflection and struggle to change our parenting. For my part, I am endeavoring to start by becoming more invested as a person in the lives of my kids. In my experience in Youth Ministry we would often chant this mantra: "Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."

It's true. The Strong-Willed child needs to be made very much aware of how invested his or her parents are in their life. They need to know how much they are cared for, appreciated, and loved. Alas, in my children's cases, I can see that the majority of the attention they have received from me has been negative (stop that, don't do that, why did you do that etc) and I intend to make this an integral part of my Advent confession. It was profoundly wrong of me...sinful...a glaring example of my selfishness.

Why must children be so aware of their parent's investment? Well besides the obvious "rightness" of such a thing, more than anything - and this is particularly true of Strong-Willed Children - they will respond most postively to the disturbance of the invested relationship that occurs via disobedience and other negative behavior, than to ANY sort of punishment that could ever be leveled against them. Strong-Willed children will stand robust in the face of punishment often without emotionally flinching if they do not see that the suspect behavior has tweaked the invested and loving relationship between them and the parent. Caution is warranted though, because the child must never come to think that the investment, the love, the commitment is lost...quite the contrary. The bond, the union, the investment is that ground where behavior can be and ought to be beautifully regulated and trained.

Of course, I cannot allow to escape the analogy of all of this to God's investment in us, and our motivations for repentance being made on that same ground of untroubling the bond of love, commitment, and unity. We humans all seem to be strong-willed, and as such we must not ever forget that God's investment in us is never lost. Disturbed though it may be, it is always waiting to be soothed...healed...fully restored. How much more healthy will we be if we retain the understanding that sin is so much more than breaking a rule?

Nativity is such a profound and real example of God's investment in us. It ought to stagger us. May a microscopic fraction of that spirit of loving investment find its way into all of our hearts this Advent...to make Christmas with our families all the more INVESTED.

And what is the expected return of such investment? Don't you know?