The power of apologies

Have you ever stopped to wonder in awe at the power of an apology? So many supernatural things have to happen for an apology to be everything it has the potential to be. Apologies are kind of here-now miracles that can happen to everyday people every day. If only we cooperate.

First, there’s the part that seems to happen all too easily. There is an angry outburst, a betrayal of trust, an unkindness, an injury. We wound someone. Sometimes there are angry words on both sides. Sometimes we wound each other. And then, there is retreat. 

Time passes. It might be only a few minutes. It might be a long, sleepless night. Sometimes, it’s days that become weeks that become months and years. But in our here-now miracle scenario, only a short time passes. Grace moves in. Your head begins to speak sense to your heart. It tells you that somewhere along the way you inflicted pain — you sinned. And an apology is in order. 

This is where the battle is won. Not the battle with the person you hurt; this is where you win the battle with Satan. Our human interpersonal relationships are frequently confused because of our lack of understanding and/or underestimation of the very real demons who are determined to win our souls. And so, the demons step into our human interactions with distinct power and purpose. 

Christ defeated the devil on the cross, but Satan still prowls about the world seeking the ruin of souls. A favorite weapon in his battle is deception. He loves to get inside your head and fuel your anger and your self-righteousness. He loves to entice you to ignore the promptings of grace. He loves to confuse you so effectively that you refuse to make the repair attempt.

So, swallow your pride and pray for that glorious grace. Pray that your heart softens to the wisdom of your head. Pray for sincere regret and remorse. The miracle follows.

Repentance is put in motion. An apology is offered. With all your heart, you render a regretful acknowledgment of the offense or failure. Perhaps you offer restitution. You definitely resolve to amend your ways.

And then, against all impulses of the flesh, in an act of mercy, you are forgiven. Here too, supernatural power is exerted over the enemy. To forgive requires surrender to the impulse of tenderness. To forgive requires a refusal to listen to the lies of the one who would continue to stoke the fires of hurt and resentment. The demon is cast out when apology is received with mercy and grace. 

“What I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ, to keep Satan from gaining the advantage over us; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Cor 2:10-11).

There is reconciliation. There is reunification. 

And the devil is defeated. Again.

It’s straight-up miraculous. Apology and forgiveness defy Satan and claim victory for Christ. Mercy is no small thing. It’s big, and grand, and glorious. 

Learning together this summer

There’s something crazy happening out there in summer camp world. It’s as if everyone is making up for lost time. Camps are filled to overflowing with waiting lists for the waiting list. And parents are worried. How are we going to keep kids occupied this summer? After more than a year of being cooped up together at home, moms in particular seem to have fallen into despair. Never mind magical or manageable or meaningful, they are asking how will summer be mine? How will I navigate having all this time with my kids without losing my mind or my sense of self or my sanity? 

Maybe it’s time to reframe the question. Maybe instead of asking how we can keep them occupied and out of our hair, we need to ask what we can learn together this summer. Maybe instead of buying (literally) into the culture’s insistence that we have to go to great lengths to orchestrate a summer apart, we surrender to the idea that we are going to be together, whether it’s because camp is full or because we see a better vision than long afternoons playing Minecraft. What if instead of pushing them out of the way so we can pursue our own agendas, we ask ourselves what we can learn together this summer?

Have you always wanted to learn to make pasta? Maybe instead of hiring a sitter so you can go off to a class, you buy a simple pasta machine and you and your children watch YouTube videos and then practice together until you have something edible with which to celebrate? Setting a personal goal to run a 5K in the fall? Why not do that alongside your preteen daughter? Run together, working your way through each step on a training app. Kids too little to run alongside? Let them ride a scooter or bike or push them in the stroller. Take them along. You won’t lose your sense of self, and you won’t forgo the endorphins that come with exercise and fresh air. You’ll gain some things, though. And so will they.

The Lord sets us down in families so we can grow together in virtue. It’s up to us to seize the opportunities family life presents. Sure, we can acquiesce to the entirely secular assurance that screens make great babysitters and there’s no shame in the Blippi game. But let’s do that with our eyes wide open. For a moment, let’s not worry about what that screen time is doing for (or against) the child. Let’s just look at how it’s limiting you.

We are here for holiness. We are here to grow closer to Our Lord and to become more like him every day until we are reunited in heaven. Don’t let anyone distract you from that truth. Your whole purpose here on earth is to love the Lord, serve your people and get ready for heaven. Everything else is a distraction from that purpose. Our families are vehicles for growth — not just a child’s growth, but a parent’s growth, too. Maybe parents grow the most. 

The very thing God provided to teach you patience might be a loquacious 4-year-old who never stops asking questions and telling very long stories. The mom-coddlers are here to tell you that you matter most — not your soul: your temporal satisfaction. No need to delay your own gratification or stretch your ability to be compassionate, empathetic or attentive to another. The advice is to go plug in her iPad instead of patiently answering all her questions and listening to her story without picking up your phone to distract you.

Before you take that advice, ask yourself how it will help either of you become holier. Ask yourself how focusing on your wants (because truly, I’m not talking about "needs" here) will teach you to lay down your life. Ask yourself if you are missing the thing that is most needful for your salvation.

How can this summer be a beautiful, productive, glorious one for growth in virtue? By recognizing all the many opportunities life at home with children offers to become more virtuous. I know that sounds old-fashioned. What about a woman’s right to time and space and personal enjoyment and enrichment? Go for it. Spend as much time as you like by yourself. Just be sure you hold it up to this test: is this a good way to redeem this time on my way to eternity? Sometimes alone time is exactly what you need for holiness. But often, what you need is to lay down your life and pick up a child. 

Maybe that simple test question will yield more messes in the kitchen, walks in the park and fabulously long little girl stories.

Self-help and the Holy Spirit

I noticed it first in the bookstore. A brightly colored table full of self-help books interspersed with flip flops and beach blankets promised readers that this would be the summer they’d finally become the best version of themselves. If only they’d crack open the books and do the right things and change the wrong thoughts, all would be well. Later that day, as if to beat me over the head with the message, I saw it as a meme on social media. 

"Your self-image is the force that changes your life."

Our relativistic culture encourages us to decide for ourselves what our best self is. The quote above is a lie. It shuts out the Holy Spirit. It glorifies and magnifies the absolute power of self. It boldly asserts that you have to stop measuring yourself by external standards in order to heal, tempting us to make ourselves the measure of what is good. It tells us to rewrite the script in our heads so that we give ourselves unconditional positive praise and positive self-talk. If only we do that, the hype promises, we will be healed of those things that keep us from being the best version of ourselves. But that’s not true. It’s a lie that’s often cloaked in "church talk."

What we need to be the best version of ourselves is to see ourselves the way our Creator sees us and then become — through the power of the Holy Spirit — what God intended us to be all along. 

In Acts 2, St. Peter clearly delineates what we need. He tells the early church in Jerusalem, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." 

The sacrament of baptism instituted by Christ and conferred here by his apostles forgives our sins and brings us into the shared life of Christ by infusing us with sanctifying grace. Further, we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. That’s what we need.

Yet, certain temporal consequences of sin remain in the baptized, such as suffering, illness, death and such frailties inherent in life as weaknesses of character, and so on, as well as an inclination to sin that tradition calls concupiscence, or metaphorically, "the tinder for sin" ("fomes peccati"). Since concupiscence "is left for us to wrestle with, it cannot harm those who do not consent but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ." Indeed, "an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1264).

So, there we have it — precisely why we aren’t the best versions of ourselves. What to do to become our best selves? Well, simple positive self-talk isn’t really going to get it done. 

There is a root wound that makes us easily susceptible to the psychobabble that tells us that we are the force to change our lives. That wound is likely different for each of us. Hunker down in prayer; bring your Bible.  And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Eph 6:17). Armed with the knowledge of Scripture and the understanding of what God has been trying to convey for generations, ask the Holy Spirit to use the word of God to slice you open to see your root wound. No matter what the wound, Peter’s wisdom is for all of us.

If we buy into the culture’s notion, we miss the beauty of the glory of God's grace in forgiveness. Take care not to confuse relativism with graciousness. It sounds magnanimous to say that God simply wants to affirm our best visions of ourselves without commandments or expectations for holiness on his terms. But if that were so, there’d be no need for forgiveness. 

And we need forgiveness. We need the law and the standard of holiness that God clearly set forth in Scripture, and then we need that Scripture to slice us open and show us where to repent, to root out what festers in the wound and keeps us from being healthy. Then we need the healing power of grace poured over all those wounds. That is the force that changes our lives. 

We have crucified Christ. We are out of step with his character. We are living according to our own constructs of reality. And thank God, St. Peter didn’t simply affirm us for doing our best and loving ourselves well. We have offended God and we need to cry out for forgiveness, not talk hype to ourselves. Now, it’s not all up to us. What a relief.

The Work of a Lifetime

Yesterday, I expressed my dismay at the story of a 61-year-old widow who’d left her home and her family and live the rest of her life in a monastery. She died recently—at 92—and both the secular culture and the Catholic internet applauded her midlife decision. I was perplexed and dismayed and actually a little insulted by the celebration of her abandonment. And I expressed that online.

Maybe it’s me-the-midlife-mother feeling a little marginalized by people who think it’s no big deal to a family if a mother walks out of their lives forever. Or maybe it’s the child and young adult I was who knows exactly what it’s like to be abandoned. Likely, it is both, because the child has grown up to always endeavor to provide what she did not have.

Yesterday afternoon and last night, I spent a great deal of time in my Instagram message box. I read heartbreaking stories of abandonment—women who are still very wounded into their own middle age because they were left by their mothers (or their fathers, or both). I heard from several women who are the only practicing Catholics in large families where everyone turned away in the wake of a mother’s fanaticism. Their zeal for religion made them cold towards their families—and unforgiving. This isn’t the love we’re called to, friends. I read message after message from young women who wished they had practical support and encouragement from their mothers or mothers-in-law or really anyone a generation older who could shed some light and share some tasks. They wish someone would come alongside and help bear the burdens that they try to bear with joy every day. I cried and prayed with these women.

I heard from women who can’t imagine doing life without their moms very much in it. They told me how much the wisdom and the practical help and camaraderie of their mothers make their own lives richer and more joyful. Those were the happiest notes.

I heard from women who are at midlife and shared that these are the hardest and most exhausting parenting years. Much more than when they had lots of babies, now they wish they could pack up and be alone and sleep well and not be entangled. They’d never do it, but the strain is intense. They are grateful for the vocation to which they’ve been called. But they understand how hard it is and how theirs is a mostly unspoken season of hard.

I also heard from some women who surprised me. These are people who spend lots of time online championing traditional homemaking and motherhood. They write compellingly about how family and keeping a home are a woman’s path to holiness. They are frank about the struggles, and they offer one another genuine encouragement to keep on keeping on—because it’s worth it, because this work has eternal value. But these women applauded a meme about a middle-aged mother of many who left her family and her home. It’s as if they think that there is little value in the home of an older mother, no worth in the mothering she can do after her children are legally adults, no reason to work out her salvation in the place where she was first called. By their reasoning, if there is value, it is easily expendable if a woman is called away by a more noble cause.

It’s as if they haven’t thought about the work young homemakers and mothers are doing now and how in the blink of an eye no one will value it—not the popular secular culture or the culture of Catholic women they are cultivating. It will be the same work; they will actually be more skilled and accomplished at it. The people in whom she invested will still need her, though in very different ways. It astonished me to learn that both the secular culture and the traditional social media Catholic family culture think there is a higher calling for a mother at midlife. It’s as if some women can see that motherhood and homemaking are God’s call, but only if the home is filled with young children. After that, mothers who have invested in their homes are entirely dispensable, and not very valuable at all to the next generation. This sentiment surprised me, and it concerns me. These young women themselves are investing everything into home and family. Midlife is likely to be quite difficult for them if they don’t think that investment has true, irreplaceable, essential value after children are grown, if they don’t think there is still work to be done, countless conversations to have, and prayers to be prayed. They will look back upon these growing years—all the hard work they’re doing now—and wonder if it’s all wasted time, if nothing of worth remains. And of course, the secular culture will be on hand to say “I told you so.”

In the story behind the meme, the culture celebrated the woman’s choice to leave and to cloister away. Imagine that for a moment. Imagine investing your life in raising children for a couple of decades or more only to have everyone applaud when you walked away from it at midlife. Do you feel valued in that moment?

If you have been called to marriage and motherhood and homemaking—if you have devoted yourself wholeheartedly to these things and recognize them as your path to holiness—please be assured that there is immeasurable value there. You would be missed and mourned and irreplaceable if you walked away.

We were designed to live inter-generationally. We were intended to accompany one another along the path of holiness for a lifetime, each generation learning from and supporting the other. It’s much harder on everyone to go it alone. If you are a young mom, don’t hold back. Invest everything you have in your home and family. Lots of people will tell you it’s shortsighted. It’s not. It’s the holy work to which you’ve been called.

We are not the vine

Sometimes, especially as parents in times of trial, we can feel very much alone. We can feel as if the world — or at least our children’s small worlds — depends entirely upon us. We feel as if we are the vine and they are the branches and their very lifeblood runs through us and only through us. Of course, this isn’t true at all. 

As we approach Pentecost, the daily Mass readings speak truth into the frazzled, overstretched minds of mothers everywhere. You’re not the vine. You’re a branch and so are your kids. Your Father, the creator of the entire universe,  and your Savior is the vine. It is from him that you draw strength and grace, from him that you gain sustenance. Wait, there’s more.

He’s the vine for your children, too. The greatest thing you can do for them is to teach them where to draw strength. Parents can be the very best providers and encouragers for our children, but we can’t be their whole world. We can’t ever be everything they need. Because they — like us — need God. They need to see how the branches abide in the vine and the vine feeds them. 

Children grow up. They strike out on their own. They still touch base. If the relationship is a good one, they’ll always seek counsel and wisdom from their parents. But we do them a grave injustice if we don’t point to a truer source of strength and grace and joy. Further, we take on far more burden than we can bear if we behave as if we are the vine, the source of their strength.

At first, it seems like a good idea. If we can just control enough, contrive enough, we can guarantee their success and their happiness. Maybe even if we can abide closely enough in the Lord, we can be sure our children will, also, grafting them to us as we graft ourselves to him. But that’s not how this works.

Instead, as our children head out into the world, we take comfort in the words of Jesus, who left his disciples — and us — with far better than a human parent. 

"But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you" (Jn 16:7).

This promise is one that gets even better as we drill down on translations. An advocate will come to you (New American Bible). A counselor will come to you (Revised Standard Version). A friend (The Message). A helper (New International Version).

Rooted in the vine who is Jesus, we are given the Holy Spirit. He advocates for us. He counsels us with wisdom. He is a friend even when no other friends are around. And he is our greatest source of strength and help. The Holy Spirit infuses us with grace so that we can live here on earth in communion with God in heaven.

That means that we don’t parent alone. We don’t have to provide for our children what good parents do without the help of Our Lord. It also means that when we are gone or when our children are far from us, or even when we’re all trying to live together peacefully, the Holy Spirit can do the heavy lifting. He is here and he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment.

Take a deep breath; you don’t parent alone, not even close. Abide in the true vine and listen to the counsel of the Holy Spirit. God’s got this.