Self-deterministic "grown-ups"

As adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus, we pray to his Father who is now our Father. 


There is the objection that such prayer is infantalizing, a regression to the dependencies of childhood. Grown ups, it is said, do not need the crutch of a "parent figure" to lean on. Good for them.  I once asked an old priest, a famous spiritual director, what he had learned from hearing thousands of confessions.  He had a ready answer: "There are no grown-ups."  There are grown-ups who pretend, and then there are those who have grown up to know the "second naiveté" of our utter dependence.  The Child who was utterly faithful in his utter dependence was given not a crutch to lean on, but a cross to die on. To those whom he calls to be his brothers and sisters he says, "Take up your cross and follow me." Pretending to be grown-up is easier.  One might be well-advised to keep it up, were it not for the truth that the darkness we feared as a child is real; the darkness we feared is but a slight premonition of the darkness from which he cried, and we cry with him, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus - Death on a Friday Afternoon


I struggle along with everyone else to not be so grown up.  Responsible, certainly, but being grown-up implies a self-sufficiency that will simply never be true for me.  The benefit that comes with it is being able to determine for ourselves what is right and what is wrong, to do what I want, to be able to convince myself that what I want is really what's best, against all evidence to the contrary.   It is this self-determinism for which we long as children.  We're eager for the day when we no longer have homework, when we don't have to heed our parents, when we can do as we wish, when we're grown-ups.

Does anyone have the kind of life they imagined when they were kids?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm trapped in a life in which I don't get to make my own choices.  But I've also seen the results of making choices in ways that aren't bound appropriately, or are limited by my own vision.  It isn't just a matter of considering the effects my decisions have on others; our decisions have effects we can't foresee.


This is why we so need the utter dependence on God which we scorn in our rationalism.  Yes, many have misinterpreted this to imply a license to impose their will on others.  But applied properly, it is rather a way to set appropriate boundaries in my own life, to draw me out of my selfishness and more fully into a life of love.  When I commend my life into my Father's perfectly loving hands, I am freed to give myself fully, without fear of what I may experience in the process.  Though it may be the cross, beyond it lies a resurrection beyond my imagining.