Honor parents with love, prayer, gratitude, obedience

Article 152 - Catechism of the Catholic Church Series

Paragraphs 2196-2220

 

The Fourth Commandment in Sacred Scripture found in Exodus 20:12 and Deuteronomy 5:16, which states: “Honor your father and your mother...”, is explained further in the Catechism as follows: “God has willed that, after him, we should honor our parents to whom we owe life and who have handed on to us the knowledge of God” (ccc 2197).

All good parents deserve the “honor” willed by God in this Commandment. In fact, those of us who have such “good parents” find it difficult to imagine the lives of those who do not. Over the years, I heard many stories of people who found it near impossible to fulfill the “honor” required of children in the Fourth Commandment. Why? Because some have experienced fathers or mothers with mental illness. Others have one or both parents who were neglectful. Still others have parents who were downright abusive. The challenge for any child with parents such as these (even grown children) is to find a way to reconcile the impact of the emotional or spiritual scars they experienced during their formative years.

The Catechism, expanding upon the Fourth Commandment, teaches us how parents ought to be. With reference to the nuclear or traditional family, it states: “The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society” (ccc 2207). A few paragraphs earlier, it states: “Marriage and the family are ordered to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of children” (ccc 2201).

Parents who enjoy their right of authority, also have special obligations. They must love their children as God loves all of us, His children. They must not only care for the reasonable material needs of their children, but must also provide for their education and guide them in the spiritual life. They have the duty, as well as the right, to exercise a wise and just control over the actions of their children, because they are responsible to God for their children’s well-being. This authority should be exercised mildly but firmly. While seeking to cultivate self-reliance in their children, parents should also train them in submission to other lawful authority.

The Fourth Commandment obliges children to respect and love their parents, to obey them in all that is not sinful, and to help them when they are in need. To our parents, after God, we owe our very existence. We depend on them, through our formative years, for food, clothing, and shelter. They furnish us our material needs with loving and unselfish care, and provide for our education and development of both body and soul. Our love for parents must not exist only in our hearts. We must demonstrate it by praying for them, by doing everything we can to ease their burdens, and by obeying their requests. “The family should live in such a way that its members learn to care and take responsibility for the young, the old, the sick, the handicapped, and the poor” (ccc 2208).

Constituting “one of the foundations of the social doctrine of the Church” (ccc 2198), the Fourth Commandment obliges us to not only obey our parents and all lawful superiors, but presupposes “honor, affection, and gratitude toward elders and ancestors...(as well as)...pupils to teachers, employees to employers, subordinates to leaders, citizens to their country, and to those who administer or govern” (ccc 2199).

Like all who exercise authority, parents derive their authority from God. Therefore, as St. Paul puts it: “Let everyone be subject to higher authorities, for there exists no authority except from God, and those who exist have been appointed by God...and they that resist, bring on themselves condemnation” (Rm 13:1-2).

“Where families cannot fulfill their responsibilities, other social                                                                                                   bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family” (ccc 2209). Further, “civil authority should consider it a grave duty to acknowledge the true nature of marriage and the family, to protect and foster them, to safeguard public morality, and promote domestic prosperity” (ccc 2210).

By honoring their parents, who stand in the place of God, children honor God Himself. The responsibility of proper respect by a son or daughter demands that they treat their parents with marked esteem in both word and action. Grown children are reminded of their special responsibilities, which include “material and moral support in old age and in times of illness, loneliness, or distress” (ccc 2218). Young and old are forbidden to strike their parents or to cause emotional or spiritual injury through insult, ridicule, cursing, or otherwise being ashamed of them. Children are to love their parents, because parents are representatives of God’s own majesty.

And, having filled their home with the light and warmth of Christ, parents see that light shine forth in their grown children. How blessed they are when they witness the Church’s blessing on the marriage of their children who then, following the example of their parents, have children of their own. No wonder the Catechism speaks of grandchildren as “the crown of the aged” (ccc 2019).

Gratitude is most appropriately directed to our parents from whom we received “the gift of faith, the grace of Baptism, and life in the Church” (ccc 2220). But, the Catechism includes others, such as “grandparents, other members of the family, pastors, catechists, and other teachers or friends” (ccc 2220). Finally, let us remember the sentiments of St. Paul, who writing about a multigenerational family, said: “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, dwells in you” (2 Tm 1:5).

Father Hillier serves as Director of the Office of the Pontifical Mission Societies, the Office for Persons with Disabilities and   Censor Librorum