Monsters and Messiahs: Unmasking the Holy Family
Author: Andrew Comiskey and Annette Comiskey
December 31, 2023
Please.
We love the Holy Family: Joseph, Mary, Jesus. As the embodiment of binary
goodness, we need their witness more than ever.
Think
Joseph: most excellent of men who shielded Mother with Child from social shame;
from his dream on, he ensured both thrived under fire. Joseph was all but
immaculate, next to Mary who was, well, immaculate. Ditching his folks and dazzling
his elders in the temple appeared to be pre-teen Jesus’ sole temptation (Lk 2:42-50).
All this did was manifest His messianic brilliance and frustrate His parents. Any
forgiveness they extended was for their freedom, not His.
Here’s
the rub. We risk making the holy trio idols, not icons––mirrors of perfection
that pierce neither our real families nor our need for greater holiness. We can
start by owning good intentions and big gaps. Then we as parents can ask Jesus
and His friends to strengthen and purify the gifts we want to be for our
children. Some brief suggestions:
Model
real faith to
your kids. Emulate how you live from His mercy and like it. Yeah, life is hard,
but He makes it worth living. Don’t separate Jesus from Church. That gives kids
the weird view that we as family go at it alone cause the Body is bad.
The Comiskeys
have suffered a little from not-so-good leadership, but we always show up. We
draw from Jesus to forgive the Church so we can be faithful to Her. And we make
our kids go with us and tolerate the pretty good experience of corporate
worship.
Don’t
treat kids like messiahs. They can become monsters. We have all been held captive by
monstrous messiahs in restaurants, stores, airplanes, and churches. Parents who allow ‘a little child to lead
them’ do a disservice to the child. And all of us. I wince for the kid who
slaps a parent or tells him or her off or flings applesauce against the wall because
he wanted ice cream.
What
we may be witnessing is a parent trying so hard to validate the kid’s every
emotion that mom or dad foregoes apt expectations and setting necessary limits.
Rules become ‘suggestions.’ Unable to know the difference, the child ‘negotiates’
with a scream and a fling and gets the ice cream. Or the cell phone. Or
whatever he wants.
Kids
need limits; solid
lines help secure a child in love. When set firmly and consistently, boundaries
become a part of the child’s capacity to make good choices.
Combine
authority with attunement. Annette (says Andrew) does
this super well. She stands strong as the one in charge but with remarkable
attunement: responding to the child with appropriate language and behavior
based on a deep knowing of who the child is. As a result, she has no trouble expressing:
‘You can’t do that here,’ or ‘Please don’t talk to me like that,’ or ‘Cell
phone time is up’ etc. Her authority lies in loving presence: plenty of affirmation
and firm and consistent no’s.
Inviolability. Your child is not your own,
not wholly. (That helps when he flings the applesauce.) He belongs to God; you
are just an under-parent. Related to this is a child’s inviolability. That
means he possesses a core that even a parent cannot wholly know. It’s the space
reserved for his deepest self and union with the One who made him. Respect
that. Mind the gap. Don’t think you know all about him. What you know is limited
by the mystery of God and your child’s unrepeatable self.
Let
the child’s inviolability free you from over-functioning. What we can do is help lay a
firm foundation. We then trust God and the child to launch well into the world
and learn how to make more good choices than bad ones.
And
if you are in a crowded city and the kid wanders off, call the police, scare
him, and set strong boundaries. He wasn’t wowing them in the temple.
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