1st. Children must love their parents truly and constantly. 2d. Many sin grievously against this obligation. — Preached on the third Sunday after Epiphany.

Dico hide, Vade, et vadit ; et alii, Veni, et venit ; et servo meo, Fac hoc, et facit. — Matth. viii. 9. ” And I say to this, Go, and he goeth ; and to another, Come, and he cometh ; and to my servant, Do this, and he doth it.”

All children should be to their fathers and mothers as this servant was to his master, and then so many parents would not have so much to suffer from the disobedience and obstinacy of their children, as we have seen in the last sermon. There is still another and a very serious obligation incumbent on children, which is the foundation of the other two, but which, alas ! is least of all considered and that is, that they should show their parents the honor of filial love. This will be the matter of today’s sermon.

Children must love their parents truly and constantly. Such will be the subject of the first part. Many children sin grievously against this obligation. The second part. The conclusion will be a resolution of amending all past faults in this respect.

And mayest Thou, oh, heavenly Father, grant us to fulfil it by Thy grace, through the merits of the Mother of Thy Son, and the intercession of the holy guardian angels.

Children are bound to love their parents! That is a strange subject, indeed! What is the meaning of bringing that forward? Who ever dreamed of doubting it? Why, we are bound by the law of nature to love our friends and relatives. The law of honor teaches us to love our benefactors; while the law of God tells us to love our neighbor, even if he be unknown and a stranger to us even if he be a Turk or a heathen; nay, more, the law of Jesus Christ commands us to love even the worst enemies who have injured us. And do I now exhort and persuade children to love their fathers and mothers! If man had lost the light of reason altogether; if he had only as much instinct left as God has given even to the most savage beast, he must still know that he ought to love his father and mother more than any one else in the world. Yes, my dear, Christian brethren, if we all were as we ought to be, and acted according to reason and knowledge, then I would confess that I have made a mistake to treat of such a subject, since it is one which stands in need of no preaching or exhortation, one which the very law of nature and humanity suggests to us. But, alas, for the times in which we live! There are,, in our days, children so undutiful as to act against the law of nature and reason in this respect; so that it becomes necessary to heap together proofs to show how just it is for children to love their parents, to preach often against the injustice of refusing them that love, and excite children to the fulfilment of this obligation by terrifying them with threats of punishment, and by encouraging them with hopes of great reward.

Therefore, children, I now ask you, if you must love your neighbor as yourselves, who are nearer to you than father and mother? If you must love your friends and relatives, who are more closely connected with you than those from whom you have received your flesh and blood, and whose blood still runs in your veins? If you are bound to love your benefactors, not to speak of those who injure you, where will you find a greater benefactor on earth than father or mother? You are cold and naked (so let each one imagine to himself), you are poor, hungry, thirsty, needy, and do not know where to turn. Some one takes pity on you and receives you into his house, clothes you from head to foot, provides you with money, keeps you for many years, gives you food and drink as good as he has himself, helps you in all dangers with the greatest care and readiness, waits on you day and night, and finally places you in a position suited to your birth, although he must rob himself in order to do so. What, I ask you, would such a benefactor deserve from you? Should not the bare recollection of him fill your heart with love for him? Would it be right for you, I will not say to hate or annoy him, but even to give him a cross look? Reason itself tells you that that would be wrong, for it would be intolerable ingratitude. But all these benefits, and countless others, you have received from your parents.

On your account your mother has had much discomfort, sickness, difficulty, and pain before you were born, in your birth, and after it. For some years she had to carry you about in her arms, until she was tired. For your sake she had to remain awake hours and hours during the night, in order to help you when you cried. For your sake she had often to take what she would much rather have done without, and to deny herself what she would willingly have eaten or drunk, so that you might suffer no harm while she was nursing you. On your account was she often anxious and uneasy, through fear of some accident happening you. On your account she was often disturbed and tormented, and shed bitter tears if any misfortune befell you, and she suffered, too, if anything disagreeable happened to you. For you has your father, as well as your mother, toiled and labored for so many years, in order to keep you respectably and to provide you with food and clothing. For you they have often taken the bit out of their own mouths and have deprived themselves of many conveniences and luxuries, and, perhaps, too, have lived sparingly and parsimoniously, in order that they might leave you something to set you up in life. For you have they made so many wearisome journeys to and fro. For you have their minds been filled with anxiety and apprehension lest any evil should befall your soul or your body. For you have they spent the hard-earned money, that they put together with so much trouble, that you might be educated, instructed, and provided for. All your troubles, illnesses, and difficulties have afflicted the hearts of your father and mother. How patiently, how courageously Job bore his great misfortunes, the loss of all his land, the theft of his cattle, the plundering of all his goods; but when word was brought to him that his children, too, were slain, his father’s heart could not conceal its sorrow any longer. The holy Scripture says: ” Then Job rose up and rent his garments, and having shaven his head, fell down upon the ground and worshipped! ” By which he shows us that there is nothing so capable of disturbing the heart of a father as the misfortune of his children. The mother, in the Gospel of St. Matthew, came weeping to Christ, crying: ” Have mercy on me, 0 Lord, Thou Son of David.” And why? What was the matter with her? ” My daughter is grievously troubled by a devil.” It is your daughter, then, who is troubled! Why did you not say: Have mercy on my daughter, oh, Son of David? If there is nothing the matter with yourself, why do you cry out: Have mercy on me? The glossary answers: ” She said, Have mercy on me, because the suffering of the daughter is also the suffering of the mother. ” 1 The children’s sorrow is their parents’ sorrow too. Such was the case, too, oh, child, with your father and mother, whenever the least mishap occurred to you. In a word, that you now exist, that you are alive, that you have not broken your leg, or your arm, or your neck, when you were a child, that you are now grown up, that you have some property, and a position in life, all these things you owe, under God, to no one but your father and mother. And what makes the benefit greater still, they did all this for you, for no other motive than the purest, most disinterested, most heartfelt, and tenderest love and affection for you.

Now, if you are an honorable man, I will leave it to yourself to say what they deserve, what they have earned from you, who have done all this for you. Are they worthy of comfort or sorrow, of help or neglect, of honor or contempt, of gratitude or ingratitude, of love or hatred? What do they deserve? The old Tobias will tell me, if no one else does: “Thou shalt honor thy mother all the days of her life.” Such was the advice he gave his son when he thought himself at the point of death. Why? “For thou must be mindful what and how great perils she suffered for thee?” What do parents deserve? The wise Ecclesiasticus tells us: “Honor thy father, and forget not the groanings of thy mother: remember that thou hadst not been born but through them: and make a return to them as they have done for thee.” What do they deserve? Ask St. Ambrose, who speaks thus to a certain son, who, indeed, maintained his mother, but was not so friendly and loving towards her as he ought to have been: “The love due to parents should not be injured even by a cross look.” “Although you maintain your mother and perform every service for her, do her all the good you can, yet you have not repaid all that she has done for you.” You have not yet given back the pain she suffered on your account, nor the services that she performed for you from your childhood; nor have you repaid her for the milk with which she suckled you, for the hunger and thirst she endured for you, for the restless nights and troubled days she passed on your account ; you have not yet wiped away the tears she shed for you, etc.; and so St. Ambrose goes on. What do parents deserve from their children? Even blind heathens tell us: “We can never show sufficient love and gratitude to God and to our parents,” these are the words of the philosopher Aristotle. All that we have and are worth belongs to them of whom we are born, and who brought us up. Reason alone taught even heathens that children owe all love and service to their parent; nay, that they cannot even love and serve them enough. The reason of this is evident: since the life that we receive from them is the foundation of all other goods, it is a benefit greater than any other. Therefore, if, by a rare chance, a child were in a position to save his father’s or mother’s life by giving up his own, he would not do more for them than they have done for him, nor give them more than he owes them. From which we may conclude, that the law commanding us to love our parents more than any one else in the world, no matter how near he may be to us, is a privileged law, and admits of no exception. I love my friend, and friendship requires of me to show this Jove . for him, but only as long as he is true to me; if I see and am convinced that he is false and deceitful tome, that he acts repeatedly against my interests, then it is in my power to show him that, love or not, just as I like, I am not obliged to have more love for him than I must have for all, even if they are strangers and unknown to me ; all special confidences, visiting, and affectionate intercourse may cease at once. But it is not so with the law commanding me to love my parents : if they act against my interests even repeatedly, if they occasion me annoyance, trouble, torment, and misery, still I am not allowed to show them less honor and love, nor to go against their interests, nor to occasion them annoyance ; unless, indeed, they try to prevent and hinder me from doing the holy will of God.

But, alas! What perversity even among Christian children. They all declare they love their parents, but in many cases their love consists in mere talk; their deeds are quite contrary to their words. It should be a true love, which, as the Apostle St. John writes, proves itself by works: a love which affects, not merely the heart, but the whole man, so that he endeavors to be the comfort and joy of his parents in every possible way. It must be a constant love, that lasts beyond the years of childhood, and is not changed by difficulties, but perseveres even unto death. It must be an active, beneficent love, by which one is always ready to assist one s parents with advice and work, with help and service, and to take more care of them in their illness or in old age than of one’s own children, and to maintain them, if they are poor, even by taking the bread out of one’s own mouth. But, I repeat, what perversity ! How rare this constant love is ! Would to God that there were not many children, who, in place of gratitude, show their parents only the greatest unthankfulness, and in place of loving, rather hate and occasion them annoyance. Yet, alas, that is the case only too often ; as you will see in the

Second Part

Diodorus Siculus tells a story of a father who had three putative sons, and who knew that only one of them was really his son; he left, in his will, all his property to him who should be afterwards acknowledged to be his lawful son. The three young men presented themselves before the judge, after the father’s death. Each one said that he was the lawful heir, and claimed the inheritance. The judge, not knowing how to settle the doubt, at length hit upon a plan, which all approved of. He caused the father’s dead body to be bound fast to a tree, as a mark for the sons to shoot their arrows at; he who hit the heart, or whose arrow went nearest to the heart, was to be the heir. The first son bent his bow and shot off his arrow, the second did the same, but neither of them hit the body near the heart. The third son, who had now the best chance, when he was told that it was his turn to shoot, grew pale and began to tremble all over, and let his bow and arrow fall from his hand. Ah, he cried, how can I aim at my father’s heart, and pierce that body which gave me my life, and which I loved, therefore, more than my own heart? It is impossible for me to do it; I do not want the inheritance; I would rather be a beggar. I cannot and will not do it! On hearing these words, all present acknowledged him to be the lawful son, and the inheritance was given to him. My dear brethren, this story may be true or false; it makes no matter in any case; would to God that in our days every one bore such a filial love to his parents as the son in the story did, even to his dead father! But could a child be found so hard-hearted, ungrateful, and cruel as to dare to pierce the heart of his father or mother? This seems to me so strange and unusual, that if I had only arrived in the world today and were told of such wickedness, I could not believe it, but should look upon it as a falsehood. And yet, oh, just Heaven, if the proofs, that really exist, were brought forward to support it, I should be forced, against my will, to acknowledge the truth of it.

There is no doubt that there are such wicked, godless children, who are not afraid of wounding most cruelly, and piercing the living hearts of their father or mother, as if it were a mark for them to aim at, not indeed with swords or arrows, but by disobedience, and by scandalous and unchristian lives, which wound far deeper than arrows. How many wound their parents’ hearts by irreverence, since they treat their father and mother with such little respect, and so contemptuously? How many wound and pierce their parents’ hearts by disobedience and obstinacy, since they will not do as they are told, as we have seen in a former sermon? How many (to keep to our present subject) wound and pierce their parents’ hearts by a want of filial love! for there are some children who, though they do not hate their parents, yet never show outwardly the love and affection they should have for them, because they are no longer in need of their parents’ care. There are some, too, who always look crossly at their parents, hardly ever have a friendly word for them, and always meet them in a sulky manner, so that it is hard to say whether it is a son or a daughter, or a mere stranger that accosts them. That such conduct causes much secret grief to parents, we can easily imagine. Other children, who have still something to expect from their parents, are like those of whom St. Peter Chrysologus speaks: “They are so eager to succeed to the inheritance, that the life of their father or mother is a torment to them;” they would rather see their parents carried out of the house dead, than see them coming into it alive and well. They act like birds of prey, that perch on a tree until they see some wild beast hunted down, when they swoop down upon the weak and wounded, or dead animal. Sometimes, even, they steal away their parents’ property, while the latter are still alive, under the pretense of doing them a service thereby. A fine love, surely, which regards not the person, but the property, and which is so greedy of gain that it is impatient for the parents’ death!

There are other children still worse, who refuse to help their parents in old age or feebleness; or who do not give them proper food and nourishment, or give it them only rarely, and do not help them as they ought, in poverty; although in such circumstances father and mother are most in want of help and comfort from their children, and children are bound then, more than ever, to show their love and gratitude to their parents when the latter are in want. For they have received nothing but benefits from their parents in the past, and the time of old age, or poverty, is almost the only one in which the latter expect their children to do something for them in return. This is the time in which a loving child should be to his parents, as the holy Scripture says of the younger Tobias, a light to their eyes, a staff and support of their weakness, a consolation in the decline of their days. But, alas, this is the very time in which most children forget their filial affection. The aged patriarch Jacob, when his sons wished to bring Benjamin to Egypt, began to weep and lament bitterly, saying: “You have made me to be without children: Joseph is not living, Simeon is kept in bonds, and Benjamin you will take away; all these evils are fallen upon me.” What? Had he not ten sons besides Joseph and Benjamin? Yes, but he had not the consolation in them that he had in the other two, and therefore it seemed to him that he had lost all his children. Many aged or impoverished parents may make the very same complaint to-day — I have been robbed of all my children! I have many sons and daughters alive, but I am here alone as if I had not one; they have abandoned me and they give me neither help nor comfort.

Oli, father, oh, mother, deserving of pity! By toiling and laboring for so many years, you have kept two, three, four, five, six children, you have brought them up respectably and given them a position in life ; and now — shame! that I should have to say it — three, four, or six children cannot manage to keep their old father, or their poor mother, respectably, for a short time! One throws the responsibility on the other. What is it to me? they say. I am not bound to do more than my brothers and sisters. Hardly has the son cast his eye on and given his heart to a stranger, hardly has the daughter given her affections to her future husband, when the father and mother are almost forgotten. And after the marriage of the children, their filial love often disappears altogether. They say: I must look after myself and my own family; my wife and children have the first claim on me; I have enough to do to keep them; I cannot provide for so many. And if they give anything to their parents, they look upon it as an alms, and expect that God will look upon it in the same light. Meanwhile, what a sad thing it is to see an aged father, or a poor mother, after having given themselves all sorts of trouble, spent their substance, and stripped themselves, so to speak, in order to help their children and give them a position in the world, what a sad thing to see these parents, now that their children are well off, suffering from poverty, so that they must beg a piece of bread, for God’s sake, and as an alms, from those to whom they gave all they had! Oh, earth, the common mother of all, how canst thou give bread to such heartless children! For they do not give bread, or not enough of it, at least, to those who gave them birth, who fed and brought them up. Oh, ye heavens, how can you cause the fruits of the earth to grow for those who do not maintain, as they ought, the parents who gave them being!

Oh, ingratitude of which heathens and even wild beasts are ashamed! AEneas was a heathen who, after the burning of Troy left all his money and property as a prey to the flames, that he might all the better be able to carry his idols and his aged father, whom he took upon his back to a place of safety outside the town, That daughter, too, who fed her father with her own milk when he was condemned to die of hunger in prison, was a heathen. The Chinese in the East are heathens, and yet, if their parents get sick, the children stand around the bed and tear the flesh off their arms, cook it, and give it to their sick father or mother ; thereby showing that they are willing to give up, not merely their money and property, but their flesh and blood, and even their lives, in order to preserve their parents in health and strength. I am ashamed to think that I must bring forward such examples of filial love, to make Christian children ashamed of their ingratitude. SS. Ambrose and Basil remind such thankless children of the conduct even of dumb animals, and especially of storks, crows, and ravens, who, when their parent birds are too old to fly, cover them with their wings, take them on their backs from place to place, and feed them carefully with the food they have collected. Even fierce lions share their prey with the old ones, when the latter are no longer capable of providing for themselves. So that children who refuse to serve or help their aged or poor parents, and who do not give them proper food, or care for them properly, are more ungrateful than beasts of prey and carrion birds.

You offer, as I have mentioned already, the heartless excuse: I have my own wife and children to keep; I must first provide for myself and my family; they have the first claim. But your distinction does not avail you! “In the first place/’ says St. Ambrose, and St. Thomas of Aquin agrees with him, “we must love God, then our parents, and then our children.” God says: “Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife;” but that text must be understood, according to the explanation of St. Thomas, to speak only of co-habitation ; in which certainly the wife has a prior claim to the parents; but not of support and maintenance, for in that the parents have the first claim when they are in want. Nay, those who are learned in the Holy Scriptures say with Abulensis, that in equal necessity I am more bound to support my father and mother, than I am to support myself; so that, if I had but one loaf of bread, it would not do merely to give half of it to my father or mother, when they are in want; I must even deprive myself of the last crumb, in order to preserve, as long as possible, the lives of those from whom I have received my life. Even the Almighty God Himself wills that, in certain circumstances, the love of parents be preferred to His; for instance, if one has made a vow to serve God in a religious order, and his father or mother fall into poverty, so that his help is required to support them, he cannot fulfil his vow, in accordance with the divine law, as long as his parents are in need of him.

Finally, what shall I say of those ungrateful children who act like the two sons that shot their arrows at their dead father’s body; that is to say, who not only fail in their duty of loving their parents during life, but neglect them also after their death ? Who, after having got their share of the inheritance, never think of the souls of their deceased parents, and are so avaricious that they hardly ever get a Mass said for their comfort and speedy release, but look upon it as a matter of indifference whether their parents are in purgatory or not? Who do not give to the poor, or for pious uses what their parents left by will for those purposes? Sometimes it happens that a father or mother leaves thousands to be divided amongst their children, and a few hundreds, perhaps, for a hospital or a church for the good of their own souls, and their children contest the latter part of the will, refuse to fulfil it, and disobey the last dying injunctions of their father or mother through avarice. So little do they think of the souls of their parents, as long as they can have their property.

0 wicked children, who in this, or in any other way whatsoever, wound the hearts of your parents by a want of affection for them! If it is ingratitude to make no return for a benefit received, what an enormity it is to forget it altogether and to act as if it had not been conferred at all! How intolerable is your conduct, then, who repay such great benefits by such black ingratitude! Who embitter and trouble the lives of those to whom you owe your own lives in so many ways! Have your good parents done and suffered so much for you, only that you might cause them still greater pain and suffering? Have they often taken the bread out of their own mouths fo* your sake, only that you might now refuse them the bread they require from you ? Have they brought you up with such care that they might now be abandoned by you in their helplessness? Have they shed so many tears for you, for fear of losing you and with the hope and consolation of having you as a support and staff in their old age, on which they might depend with certainty, and do you now treat them thus? Alas, what sort of a staff are you for them ? You are rather a rod to punish them, a nail in their coffins ! Have they given you life, that they might find in you a murderer who shortens or takes away their lives from them? What a fearful crime it is to kill one’s father or mother! Even barbarians abhor it!. Yet, wicked children, although they do not commit this crime with violence, yet they commit it by their ingratitude, by their bad behavior, by their disobedience, contempt, and want of filial love, for by all these things they make their parents suffer a bitter martyrdom. They might well say, as Rebecca said when she thought she was about to die in childbirth: ” If it were to be so with me, what need was there to conceive?” 1 Since my children cause me so much suffering, would it not have been better not to have brought them into the world ? 0 God of justice, where are Thy thunderbolts ? Where is the terrible curse Thou hast long ago spoken against those who cause sorrow to their parents ? Let it resound once more in the ears of all, so as to induce them to amend their lives: How dishonored is the child who abandons his father ; and cursed by God is he who provokes his mother. And is it not punishment enough, 0 my God, to be cursed by Thee ?

Christian children, is it not true that we do not wish to expose ourselves to such a punishment; and that, therefore, we shall always be true to the oft-quoted exhortation of St. Paul to the Ephesians: “Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest be long-lived upon earth.” Honor them with the honor of a willing obedience which is due to them, and with the honor of a true, constant, and filial love and helpfulness, which is also due to them, “that it may be well with thee.” What is the meaning, asks St. Augustine, of the words: ” That thou mayest be long-lived upon earth”? Oh, he says, that reward was promised to the Jews in the Old Law, it is too small for a Christian. ” See thou hast done thy duty,” he says to a good child who loves his parents as he ought; ” come here now and receive thy reward.” ” What reward?” “A resurrection to eternal life.” Happy children! What greater honor could you have, before God and man, than to be able to say with truth: From my earliest years I have honored my father and mother, 1 have never done anything in the least disrespectful to them, I never did anything against their will, I have never caused them sorrow of heart either by word or deed, I never omitted doing what I thought would please them ! Ah, would that I too could say that ! 0 my God, whom I have additional reason for choosing as my Father, since the death of my parents, I am sorry from the bottom of my heart for having ever failed in my duty as a child ! And you, my parents, pardon me if I have caused you sorrow by my disobedience and bad behaviour, and if I am, perchance, the cause of your now having to suffer in purgatory! I will atone for it by earnest prayer. And do Thou, 0 God, forgive this sin to me and to all those whose parents are still alive! They all promise, without exception, to fulfil their duty more faithfully in future, and to be a comfort to their parents till death, by being truly obedient, respectful, and loving towards them. Do Thou help all children to do this by Thy powerful grace, so that they may see Thee, their heavenly Father, along with their parents, in eternal joys. Amen.

Taken from ~Hunolt’s Sermons Volume 01: The Christian State Of Life; or, Sermons on the principal duties of Christians in general, and of different states in particular … In seventy-six sermons, adapted to all the Sundays and holy days of the year, Vol. 1 ~by Hunolt, Franz, 1691-1746