~by Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ

Parents are not the problem; they are just parents. And so, often enough, men discerning a call to the Jesuits find themselves at odds with the desires of their families. This is natural enough. Parents want their children to be happy and successful; a condition often defined by choices the parents themselves made in order to be happy and successful. And since very few parents found happiness and success as Jesuits . . . well, you get the picture. Fully evolved parents are able to see their children as separate beings with desires and a future of their own. Not all of us start with those kinds of parents.

Jesuit history is filled with men famous and obscure who joined the Society despite of and sometimes in spite of their parents. Not just St. Aloysius Gonzaga, but also countless other young men who after getting a full Jesuit education decide to “throw it all away” and become a poor Jesuit rather than the successful lawyer or doctor the parents had in mind when the tuition was paid. Men who are finding out they are called to religious life bring the tensions of one relationship into the next, parents and God get on the same list. Let me explain.

We can often see God as a parent figure and praying the “Our Father” does nothing to challenge this view. God as parent can be helpful if it allows us to understand God as close to us, interested in us, and always ready to love us. If, however, we mistake God for a disapproving parent whose love is conditional then we are sunk. This is especially fatal around the vocational moment. We are headed down the wrong road if we are trying to get our life right, or to guess what God wants, or become paralyzed until we are completely sure we know what God demands of us. We can get stuck because of our incomplete understanding of God not because of God’s incompleteness.

God creates us to be fully alive. This creating is not out of nothing but uses our context, our talents, our history, creating us for use in our specific time and place. God is a parent intensely interested in our flourishing which happens over time and in a manner unique to us. So perhaps our parents were good models of this or we might have to allow God to teach us a new way of being parented. Either way we are invited to seek a God who is like the best parent we can imagine and then some. And like a good parent God wants us to risk taking new steps, seeing what is next, sure of God’s love for us at the end of every imperfect day.