The Corporeal and Spiritual Requirements of Parenting

Last updated on: January 2, 2025 at 8:55 pm by Sherry Antonetti

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The Corporeal and Spiritual Requirements of Parenting 2025-01-02T20:55:47-05:00 Sherry Antonetti

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Being a parent of older children, I must relearn what I knew when they were little. Saint Therese of Lisieux’s famous saying, “Do little things with great love,” holds, it’s just the little things you do change.

As a young mom, I understood, when I got them dressed, I’d clothed the naked. When we served them three meals a day plus miscelaneous snacks, we fed the hungry. Evening trips to deliver cups of water meant giving drink to the thirsty. Young motherhood involved a lot of the corporeal acts of mercy, like caring for the sick, managing those in time out, and providing not just shelter, but a home. All these daily acts were the baseline, the minimum, but necessary and reflective of love, not merely duty.
Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay
Practice and decades made me a willing servant, who almost did much of it without thought –it was habit. Two decades plus of diaper changing meant I did dwell more on the body than the spirit.
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya: https://www.pexels.com/photo/clear-hour-glass-on-concrete-surface-10994725/
With teens and up, I find myself focused more on the spiritual acts. It is both right and necessary –and I would submit, harder because it involves much more sublimation of the self than the physical acts of providing did. The push seems to be more, pray without ceasing, and all the little things must be still infused with great love. Love is based on sacrifice, and the sacrifice of sleep deprivation of ten, twelve, fifteen years ago, is now based on surrendering the car, the wallet, the time.

A refresher for those who may have forgotten what those spiritual acts of mercy are.

Instructing the ignorant –part of the issue is teens and up, don’t recognize a lack of knowledge. Cell phones ape knowledge. We know, but we do not own the reality of that knowledge. I spend a lot of time applying wisdom, and trying to prompt them to do the same. To understand that understanding requires depth, not merely breadth.

Counseling the doubtful –by faith, witness, and words when possible, this is a constant. The world encourages supsicion of everything that is not self created, which is the opposite of how a person of faith responds to the world. We are created, and we spend our life times learning that the selves we were created to be are intended to likewise be servants to others, to the world, and ultimately, to God. Sublimation of self is a difficult thing to grasp, always made more difficult by the distractions and detractions the world persists in telling each and every soul.

Forgiving offenses –also a regular opportunity born of trying to help people grow up.

Bearing wrongs patiently –a casualty of trying to help people with growing up. Forbearance is needed –but if we chafe at that, we do not understand the forgiveness of the cross, from the cross –and so embracing this act is a form of embracing the cross, welcoming it.

Comforting the afflicted –middle school, opportunties to practice this spiritual act of mercy abound. It’s part of why I don’t teach middle school.

Praying for the living and the dead…this is a daily thing now.

So what I’ve come to know is, if we follow God, if we are disciples, we must live out all the spiritual and corporeal acts by our lives.

Faith without works is dead, and parenting means you will be given the chance to live out that faith for the rest of your life. There isn’t an off day or an off season when you stop being a minister to your children and their lives, it’s just the how of being a servant that changes as your children grow up. Our lives are a love letter from God to the world.

My goal, is to keep writing. Happy New Year!

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