The following is a sermon given on the Feast of the Holy Family regarding the effect of divorce on children:
We celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family; Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. And we celebrate our own family because it is holy as well, and God lives in our family. I hate to think what my parents would have said if I had been lost for three days, but then, I suspect that I got into more trouble in my youth than the child Jesus did.
I am cautioned by a liturgical guide for this day not to idealize family life. Families really do need support but it is not done by giving the family a false rosy image. The feast of the Holy Family is not a celebration of an ideal. Today we hear that Jesus lived in a family with troubles and mysteries and joys. I am directed to be sensitive to the real households in the parish and the mysteries that they live.
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=ve been helping my mother with our family tree and it=s interesting to note that all seemed quite orderly until the 1960's when step children, and step mother or fathers appeared. Yes, our family is holy, but it has changed. Divorce has brought an insecurity and a disorder to family life that is like no other time. Divorce has taken on the social proportions of the Great Depression, World War II, or Vietnam.It shows how broken we are and how much we need healing, how much we need redemption. Two recently published books: The Love they Lost: Living with the Legacy of our Parent
=s Divorce, by Stephanie Staal, and The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, by Judith Wallerstein, tells that the greatest casualty of this tragedy, as it is in war, is our children.One adult who grew up as a child of divorced parents says:
AI have built up walls, rarely letting anyone in. I have trouble living in the moment, and often find myself wondering how things will end, even as they start. I feel like the rug could be pulled out from underneath me at any time. I constantly set up tests, forcing people to prove their love to me. I have a hard time trusting. I am so scared of being abandoned.@(Staal. P.6)Wallerstein says:
AThe first upheaval occurs at the breakup. Children are frightened and angry, terrified of being abandoned by both parents, and they feel responsible for the divorce. Most children are taken by surprise; few are relieved. As adults, they remember with sorrow and anger how little support they got from their parents when it happened. They recall how they were expected to adjust overnight to a terrifying number of changes that confounded them. Even children who had seen or heard violence at home made no connection between that violence and the decision to divorce. The children concluded early on, silently and sadly, that family relationships are fragile and that the tie between a man and woman can break capriciously, without warning. They worried ever after that parent-child relationships are also unreliable and can break at any time. These early experiences colored their later expectations.@ (p. 298)A
But it=s in adulthood that children of divorce suffer the most. The impact of divorce hits them most cruelly as they go in search of love, sexual intimacy, and commitment. Their lack of inner images of a man and a woman in a stable relationship and their memories of their parents= failure to sustain the marriage badly hobbles their search, leading them to heartbreak and even despair. They cried, ANo one taught me.@ They complain bitterly that they feel unprepared for adult relationships and that they have never seen a Aman and woman on the same beam,@ that they have no good models on which to build their hopes. And indeed they have a very hard time formulating even simple ideas about the kind of person they=re looking for. Many end up with unsuitable or very troubled partners in relationships that were doomed from the start.@ (p. 299)There is no question that we need healing and we need redemption. I am alarmed at the number of well-meaning people who support divorce. Parents and grandparents see their children struggle and they succumb to the culture of death mentality to give up. At the very moment a family needs support to reach out, they hear the voice of divorce from their family, friends, and TV. I sense a strong reluctance on the part of struggling families to make use of the many resources that are available. We must realize that no one can do it alone. We need God, and we need each other. Retrouvaille is one example of a powerful and positive support for families who are in pain. Prayer in the home such as the enthronement of the Sacred Heart, Catholic Social Services, St. Vincent de Paul center in Marshfield and others are available. Take an active role on your family life committee in our parishes, or at the Deanery level.
God bless our families, God bless us all, and let us give thanks for the way God works in our families to give us our first experiences of life, love and of God.