It is said that today’s children is tomorrow’s hope. There is nothing new or profound about that. We all know that the future belongs to the children and the youth of today.
For those of us who have children, what would we have to say about them? The general feedback from parents will tell us this: children can be a joy, but at times they can be a pain.
They can be a joy especially when they come back from school and they tell us what they have learnt, and then they ask us all those funny corny questions like:
- Which bird wears a wig? – the bald eagle
- What do you call a fly without wings? – a walk
- What has four wheels and flies? – a garbage truck.
And when you try to teach them something, they can come up with something else. A father was trying to teach his young son about the evils of alcohol. He put one worm in a glass of water and another worm in a glass of whiskey. The worm in the water lived, while the one in the whiskey curled up and died. So the father asked his son, “Now what does that show you?” The son replied, “It shows that if you drink whiskey, you won’t have any worms!”
And children can be a pain because with each having their own rooms, they will close the door and you don’t know if they are in or not? Even knocking on the door might not get any response. But to find out, you just have to turn off the wi-fi, and they will appear suddenly.
But that is not as painful and hurting as the song of the vineyard in the 1st reading. The prophet Isaiah sings of a song of a man’s love for his vineyard: “My friend had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug the soil, cleared it of stones and planted choice vines in it. In the middle he built a tower, he dug a press there too. He expected it to yield grapes, but sour grapes were all that it gave.”
But it is not just about a man’s love for his vineyard and the sour grapes that it produced. It calls for the inhabitants of Jerusalem and the men of Judah to look at themselves as the People of God, and what kind of fruits they were producing.
And in case they were still wondering what it all meant, the final verses of the 1st reading says it all: Yes, the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the House of Israel, and the men of Judah that chosen plant. He expected justice, but found bloodshed, integrity, but only a cry of distress.
The 1st reading reveals the pain and hurt of God over His people. If that is a sad story, then the gospel parable is a rather violent one. It is also about a vineyard but it is a blood-soaked vineyard, as the bad and evil tenants maltreated and even killed the landowner’s servants and even the landowner’s son.
Jesus told this parable to the chief priests and the elders of the people and in case they didn’t get it, Jesus tells it straight to them: ‘I tell you, then, that the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.’
In both the 1st reading and the gospel parable, God expected from His people justice and integrity, but what He got was cries of distress and bloodshed.
God demands an accountability for the blessings He bestowed on His people, and after many warnings and in the time of reckoning, when instead of finding justice and integrity, He gets cries of distress and bloodshed, then God will punish, He will turn His hand against His people, though He will not turn His heart from them.
We are God’s people, His children. He expects from us justice and integrity, He expects from us an accountability.
But that is also what we expect from our children. We expect from them justice and integrity. We expect from them an accountability of the values and principles that we have taught them.
And we must teach them and correct them when they go wrong, just as God will correct us when we go wrong.
A little boy came up to his mother in the kitchen one evening while she was preparing dinner, and he handed her a piece of paper that he had been writing on. After his mom dried her hands on an apron, she read it, and this is what it said:
For cutting the grass: $5.00
For cleaning up my room this week: $1.00
For going to the store for you: $1.50
Baby-sitting my kid brother while you went shopping: $1.25
Taking out the garbage: $1.00
For getting a good report card: $5.00
For cleaning up the porch: $2.00
Total owed: $14.75
Well, his mother looked at him standing there, and the boy could see the memories flashing through her mind. She picked up the pen, turned over the paper he'd written on, and this is what she wrote:
For the nine months I carried you while you grew inside me: No Charge.
For all the nights that I've sat up with you, doctored and prayed for you: No Charge.
For all the trying times, and all the tears that you've caused through the years: No Charge.
For all the nights that were filled with dread, and for the worries I knew were ahead: No Charge.
For the toys, food, clothes, and even wiping your nose: No Charge.
When you add it up, my son, the cost of my love is: No Charge."
When the boy finished reading what his mother had written, he hung his head down and then he looked straight up at his mother and said, "Mommy, I love you."
And then he took the pen and in great big letters he wrote: "PAID IN FULL".
Children’s Day was celebrated last Friday. And when we think about it, children are living messages we send to a time we will not see.
And so what are we teaching them? What are we telling them?
Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. And since children are great imitators, then we must give them something great to imitate. Children may close their ears to advice but they open their eyes to example.
The month of October is called the Month of the Rosary and the call is to pray the rosary.
The spiritual crisis that the Church is facing is that families don’t pray the Rosary, and much less, pray at all. We have a duty to be examples of prayer and to pray the Rosary as a family at home. It is a duty that we will be held accountable for.
Our children are the Church’s most valuable resource and her best hope for the future.
We must teach them to pray and be examples of prayer for them, so that they will show the world what is justice and integrity, so as to put a stop to the distress and bloodshed we see now.
And if we think that the prayer of children doesn’t amount to much by worldly standards, then Psalm 8 has this to tell us: How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth! Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of babes you have found praise to foil your enemy, to silence the foe and the rebel.
That’s the power that children have, and may they always have that power as they grow into the future. That power flows from prayer. Let us pray and they will follow.