Jesus told His disciples that as they “receive” a child, they receive not just Him but He who sent Him. In the past I have written about Jesus’ words in light of Catholic teaching about parenthood and openness to life (article linked below). If we are to recognize children and, by extension, parenthood as gifts to be received generously and not as ingrates, then a lot of contemporary cultural assumptions about childbearing need to be challenged.

Let’s not forget the context of Jesus’ remarks about “receiving a child.” Peter had just confessed Jesus as Messiah at Caesarea Philippi and then earned the Lord’s rebuke for opposing the idea of a Suffering Messiah. With that, Jesus and His apostolic band continued back towards Galilee, Jesus expanding on His pronouncement that the Son of Man must suffer, die, and rise, and the Apostles jockeying among themselves for “most cool dude” in the pack. As Fr. Zinjin Iglesia puts it: Jesus’ awareness of the Apostles’ childish preoccupation is why he puts a child in front of them to differentiate childishness from child-like. He is talking about His Passion and connecting it (to the Apostles’ evident disregard) with Isaiah’s Suffering Servant.

Children and parenthood are gifts we should “receive” with gratitude from God. We should “receive” them not just because they are gifts but because our attitude towards them bespeaks our attitude towards the Giver, ultimately God. Receiving them is to receive God; rejecting them is to reject God. We have Jesus’ own word on that.

That said, however, it doesn’t mean children and parenthood are not connected with suffering. Just as Jesus’ messianic path necessarily involved suffering, so too does parenthood involve a Passion. The sufferings change from early sleepless nights to sick children to bad influences to wrong decisions to bad life choices whose consequences may very well reverberate down generations. Anybody who doesn’t think parenthood involves sacrifice has clearly not been one or even talked to a parent.

And while such statements once were as self-evident as “there are men and women (and nothing else),” the notion today that parenthood involves suffering is deemed less a natural given and more a “tradeoff” that makes parenthood a less appealing “choice” than regular vacations to exotic places. Perhaps we should not be surprised, given the reduction of the traditional marriage vow “for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health” to so much traditional poetry (if it’s not replaced by callow “self-written” marriage vows promising to make each other laugh).

Now marriage and parenthood are distinct, but they are usually interdependent. That also means that suffering affects both institutions, no matter where it is found. Modern parental rationalization about the “resilience” of kids in the midst of divorce ignores the suffering that marital breakup wreaks on children who learn — like in the contemporary woke classroom — what can and cannot be said to whom. It highlights the contrast between the “ideal” that “should be” (and, make no mistake about it, that kids want) versus the “real” that “is,” complete with all the crosses, compromises, and inconveniences it represents. And the Church does no one a favor when, instead of upholding that ideal, it babbles about “pastorally accompanying” those who insist on thrusting children into that less-than-ideal so that they, like the childish Apostles, can pursue their agendas.

But just as there’s not Jesus without the cross, neither is there parenthood without it. St. John Paul II reminded us of these truths 43 years ago: “The function of transmitting [and nurturing] life must be integrated into the overall mission of Christian life as a whole, which without the Cross cannot reach the Resurrection. In such a context it is understandable that sacrifice cannot be removed from family life…” (Familiaris consortio, no. 34). Our tendency to downplay these truths is probably largely responsible for no small part of our contemporary cultural confusions.

Sacrifice was not some ancient bloodlust beyond which we moderns have grown. Certain sacrifices will be a necessary part of your existence until Judgment Day because, until then, the wheat and tares will grow together, people will make bad choices (i.e., sin), and choices will have consequences, not just for the choosers but often more so for those around them. We can send Hallmark cards telling others that “love is patient, love is kind, love is not easily angered…” But talk to the abandoned spouse bearing witness to faithfulness amidst ongoing infidelity. Do you think Hosea was sitting at home “not easily angered” while Gomer was “doing her thing” with other men? Or that the loneliness might not have made him howl? No, sacrifice will be part of parenthood and marriage because it is part of the human condition. A certain smug religiosity smirks at an earlier generation that spoke about “offering up” one’s pains and sufferings, but those words did more to prepare people for real life in a fallen world than contemporary bromides.

In the end, though, sacrifice is not merely negative. As the Cross attests, sacrifice is also demanded by love, by the willingness to “give one’s life” for one’s beloved. It may entail three hours on a Roman wood or a lifetime accompanying another person hopefully to heaven, along a pot-holed road. And while it may at times entail suffering, it also demands that — in faith — we recognize that love reaches heights and dimensions the human heart cannot even imagine. The first Easter is evidence of that.

Receiving a child is receiving Christ and, ultimately, His Father. But receiving Christ also means taking up one’s cross. Jesus links both notions in the Gospel.

***This essay is dedicated to a friend facing the challenge of a cross.

(A link to my article about Jesus’ words in light of Catholic teaching about parenthood and openness to life is here.)