(Whether you want it to or not, as Catherine Doherty says, "parents’ faith penetrates their children by example...")
CHRIST IS AT THE DOOR!
by Catherine Doherty
The following is excerpted from talks Catherine gave at Cana Colony, our summer apostolate to families.
I understand that you come from all parts of the world, yet fundamentally you’re all the same. You are parents; you all have families. Yet what really binds us together is the Lord, and our love for him.
There’s another thing you have in common, something deep within you that’s not getting an outlet because of the secularism and atheism of the society that surrounds us.
I’m not talking about communistic atheism. I’m talking of simple apathy, disregard for God, even non-belief in God.
It hits you hard. I know it hits me hard. We live and move in a sea of apathy, of selfishness, of greed. We say to ourselves: "But I’m baptized! Something has got to be different for me. This is not the kind of life I want to lead."
The difficult situation for Christians is that the world has become more and more secular. We modern people simply don’t know where we are going in life. We’re at sixes and sevens over this tragic situation, and we’re not alone.
If you were a single person, it wouldn’t matter so much; but here you are, with children. Look at this little one here—he’s an absolutely perfect child. What kind of a world are we making for him? Is it his destiny to die of an exploded bomb? Or to go begging like a hobo? What will it be?
We must face up to the fact that this little fellow is going to grow up and be a big fellow someday. It’s worth laying down your life for this child. So it’s time to reappraise our values and to change the way we live our lives.
Let’s face it: we have to change our lifestyle. We Christians have to stop wanting so many material things. We have to stop worshiping things and start loving as Christ loves.
Do people in New York or Chicago or anywhere clap their hands and say, "Oh, look how those Catholics love one another"? Do they?
Do we love one another, deeply and sincerely? With grave humility and infinite meekness, in the way of Jesus Christ? Think about it. Do we?
These days there’s trouble everywhere. I just returned from one American city; at the airport, the man in charge of the luggage said, "Don’t go out after 11:30 p.m., because they’re apt to slit your pocket or slit your belly."
I said to myself, what barbarism have we come to? You have to acknowledge that we’re in a state of barbarism today, with violence born of anger. It’s a terrible thing, this desire to kill without reason. But it has become a part of life. We have to face that there’s an awful lot of anger in America and Canada. We’re facing the end of an era, like the Romans.
There’s only one thing that’s going to help us, and that is prayer. It’s time to turn to God. Don’t be afraid; just begin to pray. Don’t go and say a lot of prayers. Just pray in a very simple way, perhaps for the first time in your lives.
Maybe for you it’s different, but for so many people, God seems very distant. But he’s really right there, with you. I always invite him for a cup of coffee. Do you know that God never drank a cup of coffee while he lived on earth? They had no coffee.
Mentally, I invite him for coffee. I take the Bible and put it between us, saying: "Lord, you sit there and I’ll sit here. Here’s your cup of coffee, and here’s mine. Now we’re going to have a dialogue from your own book called the Gospel. So now I’ll be the apostles and you be yourself."
You’ll be surprised what happens when you do that. Just have a simple discussion with God over the Gospel. If I can do it, so can you.
It changes your whole life when you do that. You start to look at things differently. Yes, life changes when you start to have faith and live the Gospel. It’s hard to put it into words—there’s a kind of joy. Do you feel what I feel? For example, when I have a surplus of something, it’s such a joy to give it to others.
I learned what a joy it was to serve the poor from my parents. Let me tell you a story to show what I mean.
When I was growing up in Russia, my father was a diplomat. One time he and my mother gave a big, fancy tea party at our home for several hundred ambassadors and dignitaries.
We were in the middle of a formal tea, with everyone using nice china and so forth. I was about nine years old and was allowed to be there, all dressed up and carrying little cakes and being polite.
Suddenly, the butler entered the room and announced to my father, "Christ is at the door." Well, the French ambassador’s wife dropped her expensive teacup on the rug. She wasn’t used to such interruptions!
Father excused himself, mother excused herself, and off they went. And whom did they welcome? A hobo who had come to the door begging. And what did they do? My parents served him themselves, even though we had 14 servants in the house. My mother laid out the best linen, the most expensive silver, our best china and so forth, and she and my father served the hobo.
I saw all of this and I wanted to serve too, but mother said: "Oh no. You weren’t obedient last week; you cannot serve Christ unless you are obedient." So in my little mind, to serve the poor was a great honor and a great joy.
Now that’s Christianity. You don’t have to have catechism lessons when you see that sort of thing.
Of course, I was like any other kid too. I’d say, "Well, do we live in a monastery or something?" And my parents would reply: "No. We live in a family, of which Christ is the head."
In the end, it seemed quite natural to me to serve the poor. Christ was in them and we must serve him.
The parents’ faith penetrates their children by example, you see. Now look at yourselves. Here you are with children of your own. What do your children learn? They learn only what you can give them. So I implore you, put your Catholicity on the table for your children to see. Let them see it clearly. Let them read it in big, clear letters. This requires faith—and you get faith by praying for it.
I learned all this from my parents and part of the reason I learned it so well was that I grew up in a Christian environment. But for you today, life is different. You don’t have a Christian environment as we had. You have to re-Christianize society, because you are Christians. Re-Christianize it! Change it!
Now how do we do that, the way things are today? We are so busy these days that it’s as if we’re enmeshed in a merry-go-round or roller coaster. Faster, faster, faster—that’s us. And we don’t know if we’re going forward, backward or which way.
Christ said, I have come to serve (Matt 20:28); and so should we. Christ said, Pray always (Luke 18:1): and so we should.
Here we are, well-indoctrinated in our religion, presumably. But the world goes round about us—more selfish, more greedy, more horrible than before. Faster, faster, faster it goes. And what should we do? How should we live in the world today? How should we serve?
Well, the answer that I’ve come to see, after 50 years in the lay apostolate, is to do the duty of the moment. I will discuss this with you next time we meet. to be continued
Adapted from Dear Parents, pages 56-61 (available from Madonna House Publications). (Link on site to learn more about Dear Parents.)
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