Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher

Let’s try to see family life from a new perspective during this Lent

Colin, who is 12 and is my youngest son, loves to draw. He has several sketchbooks filled with all kinds of incredible drawings. He and a school friend even have a hobby of creating their own small comic books and selling some of them to their classmates.

Once last fall, when he and his classmates spent time in eucharistic adoration, Colin was allowed to take a sketchbook with him. As he gazed upon our Lord present on the altar, the eye of his heart and mind took him up and out of the pew in which he was sitting.

The result was a pencil drawing that took my breath away when I saw it.

The view of the monstrance he created was as if the viewer was inches from and slightly above the sanctuary candle held in an ornate brass holder attached to the left wall of the sanctuary about 10 feet above the floor in the church where Colin and his classmates were praying.

Colin had drawn the candle holder, in all its fine details, very large in the foreground. But the beautiful altar and monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament were still seen, if smaller in perspective, in the background.

An amazed and proud father, I saw Colin’s own budding love for our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament in the great care with which he created his drawing.

And I was grateful that he gave me a perspective on the Eucharist in my own parish church of many years that I had never even imagined.

But that is what God calls parents and children to do for each other. In the midst of the ordinary ins and outs of daily family life, with all its crosses and blessings, parents and children can and should help each other see various aspects of life from many perspectives.

We can recognize the value of learning to see life from different points of view from a human perspective alone, apart from anything supernatural.

But when you add faith into the equation, we can recognize that parents and children, husbands, wives and siblings all coming to see aspects of their shared life from the perspectives of others in the house can be a channel of grace.

It can lead the members of a family to be more understanding of the shortcomings that all of us have and which can so often be the source of daily (or hourly) irritation for parents and children alike.

You might have noticed that in those observations, I put the emphasis on “can.” Seeing life from different points of view can be a channel of grace in a family, but it’s not always that way. We may want to see life from the perspective of our annoying teenager, our grumpy parent or our crazy brother or sister. And sometimes, thanks be to God, we do and are able to show mercy to each other.

But, just like so many other things in life, we’re inconsistent about it. Sometimes—all right, maybe a lot of times—we get locked into viewing life from our own perspective alone, and anyone who doesn’t see things the way I do—especially those I live with—is wrong.

Colin helped me see the Eucharist in my parish church from a beautiful perspective that I had never imagined.

Maybe during this Lent, we parents and children, spouses and siblings can open ourselves more to God’s grace that will help us see life from the point of view of those who bother us the most. Then maybe we can start to die to ourselves in showing them mercy, the mercy that flowed from Christ’s pierced side as he died for us on the cross. †