The 10 Commandments in the Modern World Part 4 – Honor Your Mother and Father - New Evangelizers

With the general breakdown of the family, this commandment can be harder and harder to follow.

What does it mean to honor your parents? It of course means to respect them, but it also means that while they are raising us we must obey them. This is a very uncomfortable reality for many, especially teenagers. When I explain this part of the commandment, I usually get the question:

“So if my mom tells me to clean my room and I don’t, then it’s a sin?”

My response: “Yep.”

“So if my parents tell me to rob a liquor store, I have to?”

Of course not. We have an obligation to obey any authority over us. In general, when we disobey our parents, we sin. In the same way, we are under the authority of civil laws. In general, when we break the law we also sin.

There is, of course, an exception: when an authority commands us to disobey an even higher authority, then we are no longer obliged to obey.

But in ordinary circumstances, we must obey our parents as they raise us. Why? Because out of all eternity, God chose for each of us two specific people to be our mother and our father. That isn’t to say that they will be perfect. And it is no guarantee against human sinfulness manifesting in emotional or physical abuse. But in His Divine wisdom, these people were placed in our lives for some higher purpose.

And it must be understood that the command to honor the father and the mother goes beyond the obligation of children. We as a society must honor parents and the family.

Parents are charged not only with taking care of the physical and emotional needs of a child. If we were mere beasts, then this would be enough. But we are more than bodies. We are also spiritual and intellectual beings. And beings with minds and souls require education to guide their spiritual, intellectual, and moral needs.

The best way to do that is by modeling lives of virtue. I remember growing up with a friend of mine who constantly fought and rebelled against his very Catholic parents, but he never questioned his faith. One day I asked him why he never rebelled against his parents’ religion. He told me, “Because every week I saw my parents at Church being Eucharistic ministers with such faith and devotion that it never occurred to me that the faith wasn’t real.”

The family is meant to be the domestic Church. It is the place where children first learn about God and the Catholic faith. It is in the family that we often first encounter Christ. And it is in this family that we have a calling to be a community of faith, hope, and love. Families are called to be places of prayer. For some, this can seem strange. But weaving prayer into every day family life can have the effect of strengthening the spiritual life both parents and children.

The fundamental model is that of “A man and woman united in marriage, together with their children.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2202). We see this modeled in the Holy Family and it can come to include extended family.

Over the years, this model has often been replaced by single-parent families, blended families, and other non-traditional types. All families deserve compassion. Not every family is living in the ideal moral model. But we are called to reach out to these families with Christ-like compassion without compromising the truth.

After my parents were divorced, my father had a fiancee who moved into our home along with her teenage daughter. Our household was not living in the ideal way. Yet I can never remember anyone at our church shunning us or any of our neighboring families treating us unkindly. And during this time, my father paid for a Catholic education that helped shape who I am today. This does not justify his co-habitation, but the openness that the community had towards us allowed for my spiritual growth.

And when our parents get older, we have a moral obligation to take care of them. This can be difficult for some who deal with unresolved hurts from negative relationships with our parents. But that does not absolve us from offering our help.

I mentioned above how my father was not living an ideal moral life while I was growing up. And there were other sources of hurt and tension between us. But I guarantee that my dad was the best dad that he knew how to be. And I have on obligation to look after his needs the way he looked after mine.

God set up human society so that this family unit of parents and children would be the fundamental unit of human society. And as parents are the head of the family, we must honor them.

© w. L. Grayson, 2016

W.L. Grayson

I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.