Train Your Children to See Christ in Others

by Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children

This detachment in respect to nature offers no very big problem. It’s in the complicated relations with humans that problems arise. And if we teach the way to detachment in relation to nature by helping children see all things against a background of God, we teach them detachment in relation to people by helping them see all men as other Christs.

It need not, indeed should not, be a matter of preaching a sermon every hour on the hour, but it’s good to remember that these problems have to be treated some way, and if not this way, some way that is less good.

The alternative is a far vaguer conception of goodness for the sake of being nice. And don’t tell me this formless niceness that people hold up to one another as the measure for behavior is more convincing than Christ.

At times it may be easier to live with, but the easier it is to live with, the less effect it usually has, and it’s apt to end up being mightily confusing and meaning nothing.

Some people think that birth control is nice. And some think euthanasia is nice.

We can start children off on the lifelong struggle to live reverently with their fellowman by teaching them how to see Christ in one another. This is not hard, because our Lord explained it so simply Himself: “Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”

It is also very evident in the story of St. Paul thrown from his horse on the way to Damascus. Our Lord had ascended into Heaven. Paul had never known Him. And yet, when he lay there whimpering in the dust, blind and frightened, the voice he heard said to him: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”

What else can it mean than that we are to see Christ in all men? He wasn’t personally hiding in Damascus. Paul had no confusion in his mind about whom he was after.

We can explain this to our children, and they’re delighted to discover it. But the process of getting it straight in their heads leads into some strange and winding ways.

For instance, there was the time John was helping Peter get into his sneakers. As it happened, Peter was fresh from a long talk with his mother about seeing Christ in his brothers. What with the fat feet and the limp sneakers, the red hair and the bad temper, they were getting nowhere fast.

Finally John yelled, “Get your feet in!”

And Peter said, smiling smugly, “Remember, I’m Baby Jesus.”

Providentially his mother was within earshot, or I shudder to think of Peter growing up identifying himself so intimately with deity.

So we had to get it explained again; and after a deep breath and a good try, John helped Peter into his sneakers as though he were helping Baby Jesus, and Peter cooperated the way Baby Jesus would have cooperated.

But these things are really ironed out very easily, and children do get it straight. Although, like everything else, they need constant reminding, it’s a far more direct way to go after kind, patient, loving ministrations between brother and brother, brother and sister, our children and the neighbors’, than the old worn-out, “Now, be nice.”

Then there are hurt feelings, which can be much more effectively handled through Christ than with mere purring sympathy.

For instance, one day Monica was getting off the bus with a group of children, when one of them kicked her scuffed shoes and sneered, “Ugh! What shoes!” To be publicly scorned by the neighborhood fashion plate was a bitter blow. She came home close to tears and poured out her woe over the bread and butter.

So we got to talking about our Lord, and how He had walked many miles either barefoot or in dusty, and probably badly scuffed, sandals. One has that to share with Him when she has to wear beat-up shoes until it’s time for her to have new ones, and it will help her understand a bit how things were with Him — because, of course, people made fun of Him, too.

There was the time the soldiers scourged Him and then put the crown of thorns on His head and the purple robe over His shoulders, handed Him a reed for a scepter, and then mocked Him, bowing and scraping and saluting Him as king.

It was all a joke; they never realized that all the time He was their King, silent and loving them, and offering His suffering for them in the hope that one day grace would help them understand, and be sorry.

“Instead of hating someone who makes fun of you, you can remember what you learned: ‘Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my brethren, you do unto me.’ And then you see that they hurt our Lord even more than you by their unkindness.

And here’s a thought: perhaps God permitted it to happen because this child doesn’t know how to love, and it will remind you to pray for her and ask Him to teach her how to love Him, too.”

Sooner or later it occurs to them to ask, “But how can you see Christ in really bad people?” And this, it’s true, is very hard.

But we can see the price Christ puts on bad people right there on the crucifix hanging on the kitchen wall. So we cannot hate them, even when we fear them and hate the things they do.

Our Lord took particular pains to teach from the Cross how we are to feel about the “bad people”:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Now and then, children will bring this up when they see some news broadcast or headline concerning people who have acted wickedly. Because they have no firsthand knowledge of these people, they accept quite easily the explanation that they must pray for them with love because they are precious to God and, as long as they are alive, might still one day be saints. It has happened to men just as bad.

But when it is someone real, someone who, perhaps, has humiliated them in front of the schoolroom, or has bullied them cruelly in neighborhood play, there is the challenge. With such a one, they cannot drum up any emotion of loving, any very real pity, or even much understanding, and the only wholesome way to go about healing a fear or a hurt of that sort is by remembering the price Christ paid for these “bad ones.”

He loves them, so He can help us to learn to love them too, and if we can help our children forgive them by even the driest act of the will, and pray for the grace to love, it will come — even though it will be long and hard and seem to be impossible.

The end of all this, one day, is that death to self which our Lord said must take place if we are to live in Him, and He in us. In the meantime, it’s the preparation of a soul that can look around itself at the world and the people in it and evaluate it all with God as the measure.

It’s the key to all the tense relationships within households where too many live in too small a space, where older people must bear the difficult noise and distraction of youngsters, and where youngsters must bear the carping and irritation of the much older.

It can be a lifeline for a child suffering at the hands of a sarcastic teacher, a persecuting neighbor, or a difficult bus driver.

A little boy we know learned to conquer his fear of teasing by each day accepting it silently as Christ did His tormentors’, praying for those who teased him. To help him endure, he marked each day’s victory over fear and self-pity with a counter in a jar.

One day he put no counter in the jar. When his mother asked him why, he said, somewhat surprised, “But they don’t tease me anymore.”

Working at his problem spiritually, he had leveled the valley of his fear and, ceasing to react to the teasing, he had removed the motive for it. When the others found they could no longer irritate him, it was no fun to try.

This is the most practical approach to all sorts of trying problems in human relations. It’s the beginning of the end of self-pity, frustration, pessimism, and all the things we must rid ourselves of if we’re going to try to be saints.

There are heavy burdens for children to bear if they are to take part in restoring the world to Christ, burdens that demand great faith and charity.

They will have to practice fortitude, patience, chastity, kindness, justice, mercy — all the virtues carried to a heroic degree. Only if they lose themselves in God will they ever be able to do it, and losing oneself in God is detachment.

The family should wield its influence and give a good example as a unit, particularly within its parish. This will be possible only if all the members have practiced the humbler virtues within the sanctuary of the home. – Fr. Lovasik, The Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2vDp3jp (afflink)

At the tender age of twenty, the Rosary and the Consecration to Our Lady (St. Louis de Montfort style) was what set my feet on solid ground in a world that spun around me with all sorts of “answers” to life’s problems. And I wanted answers….

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