Monday, June 30, 2014
Who Forms Whom?
I'm
blessed to be writing this week's article from a Formation Leader's Training
Course in sunny (and maybe a little muggy) Georgia. As I've sat and
listened to some of the most illustrious names in the Montessori and Catechesis
of the Good Shepherd worlds, I am struck by the mysterious and simultaneous
gift that the child is for us: he is both our student and our teacher.
We are always thinking
of how we can better form our children, raising them up in the faith we love.
Parents spend much time learning how to care for their child, and preparing
for the work of teaching them all they must know to be happy, healthy, and wise
when they are grown. But which of us could completely become who we
were made to be without the influence of a child?
Who else but the child
can teach his parents to forget themselves and to pour themselves out for love?
Who can teach us patience in the way a child can? Who can teach us wonder
like a child who discovers a little bug or a violet in the middle of a grassy
yard? Who can teach us to slow down like the child who cannot hurry? Who
can teach us joy like the child who lives fully in the moment, and gleefully
enjoys every touch and smile and look of love from her parents? Who else
can show us what it is to choose to forgive and love without limits those who
are poor, those who are rich, those who are old or young? Who can teach us
about true beauty except the child who sees to the heart and finds beauty in
everyone who loves him? Who can teach us to love without limits or
conditions like the child who is love?
Our Lord said,
"Unless you turn and become as little children, you shall not enter the
Kingdom of Heaven." Learning to meet the needs and honoring the values of
the children in our lives are a built-in exchange of formation between the
child and the adult. Without the children in our lives, we may never discover
who we are made to be. But we must listen to them, and we must be humble enough
to learn what it is they are teaching us.
"I give praise to
you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these
things from the wise and learned, you have revealed them to childlike. Yes,
Father, such has been your gracious will." Matthew 11:25-26
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