A Father's Love | Faith is Like a Muscle

by Thomas

Disciple of Christ | Son of the Church

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us."

Saint Anthony of Egypt

To my children:

It’s important to spend time in the Classroom of Silence each day conversing with God. Even if it’s just 5 minutes in quiet. Even if it’s starting each day making the Sign of the Cross before you get out of bed and saying, “God, thank you for this day. Thank you for the gift of life. Help me to do your will today.”

Even if it’s then later in the day finding 30 seconds of quiet to say one Our Father and one Hail Mary.

Your faith is like a muscle that must be exercised to strengthen it - every day.

If you let your faith atrophy then you run the risk of being overpowered by the devil and by evil forces. We must remember, a strong faith can withstand any force against it, even the most violent forces of evil because our muscles have the strength of God supporting us.

Don’t lose the habit of spiritual exercises like daily prayer. And if you have lost it then you must get it back right away. Right now. Close your eyes and say, “Come, Holy Spirit. Be with me today and always.”

Repeat that every day of your life. God will do the rest.

To say that God turns away from the sinful is like saying that the sun hides from the blind.

Saint Anthony of Egypt

To my fellow Parents:

Raising children today is a challenge, a challenge not for the faint of heart. It’s especially so when children are coming of age; and the challenge deepens when children are adult and the choices they make are fully their own.

While, no doubt, it’s always been this way, children growing up in this technological era of social media face an unprecedented cultural onslaught of images, messages, and ideologies intent on pulling them away from God. Some of these are subtle, others not. The secular culture is perhaps as emboldened as ever in proclaiming happiness can be a creation of the self; that one can be happy apart from one’s Creator. As parents we must be prepared for this spiritual warfare. The battle begins within.

As parents who desire for our children to come to know God, to love him, to serve him, and to do his will, we must enter into the desert ourselves. As the early Desert Father, Saint Anthony of Egypt, the father of the monastic life taught us, purifying our own lives of all the disordered attachments we’ve collected in a lifetime is the essential ingredient for us to fulfilling our vocation as Christians - as Christian parents. It is then, with clarity of thought, clarity of purpose, and with a clarity of love that can come only through the purgative process that we can return to our families and exercise our position as servant-leader. After we’ve done so we can then follow St Thomas Aquinas’ wise counsel: “To convert someone go and take them by the hand and guide them.”

To convert someone go and take them by the hand and guide them.

Saint Thomas Aquinas

But the purgative process is both a process and a repetitive one. We must not ever think we’ve arrived. The purgative process lasts a lifetime. It is a daily abandonment of self and one of throwing ourselves into the arms of God asking for his mercy to help us begin again.

Perhaps, as a parent, you’ve been on such a journey with your children. Perhaps, like we have, you’ve encountered twists and turns on this road that are not what you may have expected because you find yourself at a place you couldn’t have imagined with your child.

No matter. Life is a journey, and every journey has a beginning and an end. Our beginning and our end is in God’s hands. What we can do as parents is to illumine our family’s path for the journey with the light of faith that comes from Jesus Christ: God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.

We can never know, not in this world anyway, what we might say or do, or what we might not say or not do, that may be that spark that leads our child to Christ. Any conversion of heart is the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, do not be afraid. The Holy Spirit is at work and we are his luminaries who are but waypoints meeting souls where they are and pointing them to where God means them to be.

My wife and I take great comfort in knowing our children are listening, are observing, are taking it all in. Even when they are adolescents, young adults, remember they are children - and, as every parent knows, children are watching us every moment. They pay attention much more than we think they do.

So, again: Be not afraid! Enter into the desert. Ask God to remove the disordered attachments of your life. Exercise your faith each day with prayer. Enter into silence. Lead your family to Jesus Christ. Begin within yourself.

Saint Anthony of the Desert, pray for us.

Peace be with you!