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22 CATHOLIC NEWS HERALD
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Deacon Matthew Newsome
On being a middle-aged parent
Parenting is hard. I feel well qualified to make that assessment. My wife and I started our family when we were in our early 20s. Now in our 40s (when did that happen?), we’ve arrived at the point where our older children are leaving home. Determined not to let us be empty-nesters until we’re ready for retirement, God blessed us with a new child just over a year ago.
We now find ourselves experiencing a broad spectrum of parenting all at once. Between our eldest daughter, who works for an insurance firm and pays her own bills, and our youngest son, who is still trying to figure out how his legs work, we have a Star Wars-loving 7-year-old, a 12-year-old just entering adolescence, two teenagers living at home and one away at college. That makes seven altogether (unless I lost count).
Someone asked us recently if having a baby at our age has been good for us. As anyone with children knows, infants are hard work. They demand your full attention day and night and there are no days off. When you become a parent, there is a monumental paradigm shift. You are no longer the most important person in your own life. From that moment forward, someone else’s needs always come before your own.
With infants, that need is immediate. They need feeding. They need changing. They need holding. They need rocking. They need, they need, they need, and you give and give and give. They have no respect for your schedule. They don’t care that you are exhausted. A day you manage to get four hours of sleep and a shower is considered a good day. Parenting an infant is like running a marathon you never trained for – while holding a screaming baby.
It’s one thing to endure all this in the vigor of your 20s. It’s quite another to do it in your 40s. You don’t weather sleepless nights quite as well. You are a bit more set in your ways. And you were so looking forward to the freedom that having older, more independent children allows.
One thing that comes from being older parents is the knowledge that this age of utter dependence is mercifully, if also heartbreakingly, brief. As children grow, certain things get easier. They learn to walk so you don’t have to carry them. They learn to talk so they can better communicate their needs. They learn to feed themselves, bathe themselves and dress themselves. Each step toward independence means a little more freedom for mom and dad. But it also breaks your heart a little.
Parenting requires sacrifice. We don’t put that on the cover of the brochure, but it needs to be acknowledged. Children make your life harder. If you are not ready to accept that, then you are not ready to be a parent and, frankly, you are not ready to be in an adult relationship. Spouses also make your life harder. Friends make your life harder. Any loving relationship will make your life harder because love means making sacrifices for the good of others. Jesus shows us this from the cross: God is love, and this is what love looks like.
Babies make your life harder, but so do teenagers. So do adult children. Your older kids don’t need you as much, and that’s hard in a different way. Small children rely on you to fix all their problems, but their problems are generally fixable. Older children have problems you can’t fix, though you desperately want to. The day they move out, they are just as much your baby as the day you brought them home from the hospital, only loving them now is more complicated than keeping them clean and fed. You still have sleepless nights.
Why subject yourself to all this? Because children make your life unfathomably richer. With each new child I realize my heart has a greater capacity for love than I previously imagined. Each child allows me to experience the wonder of creation through another set of eyes. With each child my world is expanded. I learn something different about who I am and who my wife is. Each child is a unique blend of the two of us, whose very existence is an eternal testimony of our love. Perhaps this is why God, who lacks nothing in Himself, decided to create so many children.
Looking only at the difficult aspects of parenting, it is easy to see how some might say it’s not worth it. But that would be like ending the gospel at the Passion; no one would call it good news. We have to look beyond the sacrifice to the new life that flows from it.
Parenting extends your existence beyond yourself in a way that forces you to be less selfish. It teaches you to consider the good of others, especially the vulnerable, and to prioritize others’ needs ahead of your own. It allows you to discover strength that you never knew you had. It teaches you patience and gentleness and shows you that it is possible to carry your cross with joy. To parent well is to discover what it means to love like God, who is both Father and Son.
Is it good for you? You bet. But it’s not easy. Nothing worthwhile ever is. catholicnewsherald.com | December 23, 2022
St. Augustine on why we celebrate Christmas
Awake, mankind! For your sake, God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: For your sake, God became man.
You would have suffered eternal death had He not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh had He not taken on Himself the likeness of sinful flesh. You would have suffered everlasting unhappiness had it not been for this mercy. You would never have returned to life had He not shared your death. You would have been lost if He had not hastened to your aid. You would have perished had He not come.
Let us then joyfully celebrate the coming of our salvation and redemption. Let us celebrate the festive day on which He who is the great and eternal day came from the great and endless day of eternity into our own short day of time.
He has become our justice, our sanctification, our redemption, so that, as it is written: Let him who glories glory in the Lord.
Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ, who said “I am the Truth,” born of the Virgin. And justice looked down from heaven because, believing in this newborn child, man is justified not by himself but by God.
Truth has arisen from the earth: the Word made flesh. And justice looked down from heaven because every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.
Truth has arisen from the earth: flesh from Mary. And justice looked down from heaven, for man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.
Justified by faith, let us be at peace with God, for justice and peace have embraced one another. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, for Truth has arisen from the earth. Through whom we have access to that grace in which we stand, and our boast is in our hope of God’s glory. He does not say our glory, but God’s glory, for justice has not come out of us but has looked down from heaven. Therefore he who glories, let him glory, not in himself, but in the Lord.
For this reason, when our Lord was born of the Virgin, the message of the angelic voices was: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men of good will.
For how could there be peace on earth unless Truth has arisen from the earth, that is, unless Christ were born of our flesh? And He is our peace who made the two into one that we might be men of good will, sweetly linked by the bond of unity.
Let us then rejoice in this grace, so that our glorying may bear witness to our good conscience by which we glory, not in ourselves, but in the Lord. That is why Scripture says: He is my glory, the one who lifts up my head. For what greater grace could God have made to dawn on us than to make His only Son become the son of man, so that a son of man might in his turn become son of God?
Ask if this were merited; ask for its reason, for its justification, and see whether you will find any other answer but sheer grace. — Word on Fire
Amanda Johnson
Do you use the gifts God has given you?
As we approach the season of Christmas, many of us find ourselves busy with shopping for family and friends. We may spend hours searching the internet and advertisements, striving to find the perfect gift for the best price. We seem to have a deep sense that it is better to give than to receive.
I remember giving my dad a book for Christmas almost every year since I was on my own. I loved seeing how excited he was, how he would ask me if I had read the work before, my opinion on it, and then he would usually spend Christmas morning working his way through several chapters. Not only did that give me joy at the time,
but it continues to give me a sense of joy as I remember him.
How very similar it is to Our Heavenly Father, who delights in His creation and showers gifts and blessings upon us. But what can we give Him? It doesn’t seem possible that we can offer much to Him who is all perfect and infinite. However, we can give honor to Him by receiving and using the gifts and blessings He so generously gives us. In my own personal experience teaching confirmation preparation or preparing couples for the sacrament of marriage, I have noticed a need to refocus our gaze on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are given in the sacrament of confirmation.
We must not only turn our attention to these gifts, but we must also understand how they operate. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, for example, are similar to the gifts we receive at Christmas. At the time of confirmation, the bishop (or his delegate) prays over the confirmandi, calling down the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety and fear of the Lord.
At the moment of confirmation, an indelible mark is placed upon our souls. The gifts will never leave us, even if we fall away from following Our Lord.
However, if they go unused, the gifts collect spiritual dust, if you will. The books I gave my dad never went unused. Had he received those books and left them to collect dust, they would not have served their purpose: being read.
The gifts of the Holy Spirit operate in similar ways. Each of these gifts enable us to live a virtuous life. They build upon the natural virtues, such as the cardinal virtues (prudence, temperance, justice and courage). They help us to become the saints God has intended us to be. Anyone who has tried practicing virtue for a day knows that our fallen human nature needs help. God, as a wise and loving Father, does not abandon us. He gives us His strength through the sacraments. We need only to know what they are and actually use them. Just as it is not enough to simply look at a nicely wrapped Christmas gift and admire it from afar, we must take those gifts we receive at confirmation, learn more about them, and strive to put them into practice through the grace of God. The most perfect example of participation in this grace was the Blessed Virgin Mary. Our Lady had the free will to participate in God’s plan at the Annunciation. God did not force His will upon her. She freely offered the “gift” of her “fiat” to God the Father, saying, “Let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). Though Our Lady did not experience the draw to sin which we face in concupiscence, God never ceases to give us His grace. As we approach Christmas, let us remember the greatest gift God has given us in Our Lord’s Incarnation and as a result, the sacraments – especially those gifts of the Holy Spirit we have received in confirmation (or are looking forward to receiving in the Easter season).
It is time to make the resolutions to act thankful for the gifts that God has given us. We can engage those gifts by going to confession frequently (our pastor recommends at least once a month), attending Mass every Sunday (more frequently, if possible), and keeping a regular prayer life. (If that seems overwhelming, talk to your priest about coming up with a plan in spiritual direction.) Ask Our Lady to help you grow in those gifts which she so perfectly lived through her fiat!
‘As we approach Christmas, let us remember the greatest gift God has given us in Our Lord’s Incarnation and as a result, the sacraments, especially those gifts of the Holy Spirit...’ AMANDA JOHNSON is the director of religious education at Our Lady of Grace Parish in Greensboro, where she and her husband enjoy developing catechesis opportunities at their parish.
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