Endure your trials

There are always parents who desperately want to be “cool”. These self-styled “cool Moms” and “cool Dads” give free rein to the wayward activities of their children and their children’s friends.

Rules and discipline are considered uncool.

These “cool” parents and their “lucky” children are generally unprepared for the self-inflicted crises that inevitably come.

Today’s first reading (Hebrews 12:4-7, 11-15) reminds us that true parents discipline their children: which means teaching through the use of clear rules supported by appropriate punishments (it goes without saying that these punishments must always be proportionate and that corporal punishment is certainly not the only option).

Indeed, in one of the verses skipped over in today’s selection (verse 8), the writer argues in very blunt language that children who have not been raised with discipline have not been truly parented (“If you are without discipline, in which all have shared, you are not sons but bastards”).

The lack of good parenting, of course, is not itself the fault of the child and even the child raised by bad parents or even no parents can find strength as well as a loving guide in God the Father of us all.

All of this reminds us that God is disciplining us in the trials and tribulations of life.

This applies even to those trials that are the result of our own fault, the fault of others, or simply part of the natural condition. God can use the bad things of this life to teach us, to make us stronger, and to make us holier.

"My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord
or lose heart when reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;
he scourges every son he acknowledges."

Endure your trials as "discipline";
God treats you as sons.

For what "son" is there
whom his father does not discipline?

If you are without discipline,
in which all have shared,
you are not sons but bastards.

Besides this,
we have had our earthly fathers to discipline us,
and we respected them.
Should we not (then)
submit all the more to the Father of spirits and live?

They disciplined us for a short time
as seemed right to them,
but he does so for our benefit,
in order that we may share his holiness.

At the time,
all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,
yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness
to those who are trained by it.

No matter what trials we may endure, no matter what kind of parents we may have had or did not have, we have a loving God and Father who strengthens us and guides us so that we may be holy and truly happy.