For the Parent Still Praying

One of the more difficult sorrows in the Christian life is the woe of parents who have tried to raise their children in the faith, only to watch them grow older and leave it behind. Some drift away slowly, while others become dismissive or openly hostile. For parents, this pain is all too real as they remember the baptisms, the prayers at bedtime, the Sundays when the family went to Mass together, the effort to form conscience, the attempt to build a home in which God was not peripheral but central. They did not do everything perfectly, of course, but they did what they could, often with real sacrifice and sincerity.

And now, instead of seeing fruit, they find themselves praying for return, for hearts to be soften, for spiritual awakening, and sometimes for years there seems to be no visible answer. That kind of waiting can become its own trial of faith. It is not only grief over a child’s choices, but grief before God, intensified by the haunting question of why the Lord seems to delay his miraculous work in their children's lives.

This past Sunday, as I listened to the Gospel story of Lazarus (John 11:1-45), I was struck with the reality of the sisters' pain in waiting for the Lord to come and rescue their brother. The message sent to Jesus is full of tenderness and urgency: “Master, the one you love is ill.” The Gospel then immediately tells us that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. And yet, after telling us that he loved them, the text says that he remained where he was for two days.

The sequence is noticeable because we can infer that the delay is not set against his love, as though one cancelled the other. The Gospel places them together: he loved them, and he waited. He loved them, and he did not move according to the urgency that grief would have expected. He loved them, and still he remained where he was. There is difficult wisdom here that is hard to face. We often assume that love proves itself by acting at once, but the Gospel teaches us that Divine love is not measured by our timetable. Christ’s delay can seem to us like indifference and his patience can be interpreted as neglect. Yet, the one who waits is still the one who loves.

That truth is especially difficult for parents praying for sons and daughters who have wandered from the faith. They keep sending the same message to the Lord: Master, the one you love is in trouble; Master, the one you love has gone far from you; Master, the one you love no longer believes; Master, the one you love resists the very grace that once shaped his life.

And then they wait. They wait through years of awkward conversations, strained family gatherings, unanswered questions, and the prolonged ache of seeing no change. They wait while wondering why heaven is silent, whether grace is working anywhere beneath the surface, and how the seeds planted in childhood have simply died. For many parents, this is one of the most hidden forms of suffering, because it often cannot be fixed, explained, or hurried. It can only be carried.

The Church has known this kind of waiting for a very long time, and one person who knew this waiting all too well was St. Monica. She prayed for her son, Augustine, across many years in which his life seemed to move everywhere except toward God. By one traditional account, his resistance lasted seventeen years before his conversion. And through those years, she continues to love as she grieved, pleaded, and persisted. She did not receive the consolation of quick results; instead, she lived the long obedience of maternal love stretched across many years. Her witness is valuable because she gives a human face to persevering hope. She reminds us that visible fruit is not the only measure of grace, and that God may be at work in a soul long before anyone can name what he is doing. What looks like silence may already conceal the slow labor of God's mercy.

The Lazarus story teaches something similar in that Martha and Mary did what any loving heart would do by reaching out to Jesus with urgency. Yet, by the time he arrives, Lazarus has already been in the tomb for four days. Martha meets him with wounded words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” This is not unbelief in the crude sense, but an expression of disappointed faith. It is the pain of those who still turn toward Jesus, but doing so through tears and bewilderment.

Many parents know that exact prayer, even if in another form: Lord, if you had acted sooner, this would not have happened; Lord, if you had intervened, my child would not be so far away; or, Lord, if you had answered when I first asked, things would be different now. The Gospel does not rebuke Martha and Mary for speaking from sorrow but allows for their grief to stand in the open.

Yet, there is another consoling truth that appears in the passage: The Lord who delayed is also the Lord who wept. Jesus does not arrive with a cold explanation and stand above their sorrow as though providential wisdom made tears unnecessary. He asks where Lazarus has been laid and weeps for the one he loved. In other words, his delay was never emotional distance, and neither was his timing a sign that he cared less. The one who did not come when they wanted is still the one who loved them enough to grieve with them. This is important for anyone praying over a child who has left the faith. God is not unmoved by those prayers. He is attentive to the hidden tears, to the rosaries offered over many years, to the long interior burden of wanting someone you love to come home to Christ. Divine delay should not be mistaken for divine indifference.

Still, the hard part remains because we want resolution quickly and some sign that prayer is working. But we must remind ourselves that the Lazarus story asks for a more difficult confidence: much may be happening while Jesus appears to be doing nothing. His delay is not empty, but part of a providence larger than Martha and Mary can see, and so too for parents carrying this sorrow. God may be working in hidden ways through memory, restlessness, disappointment, or some private grief a child has never spoken aloud.

Indeed, parents do not cease loving, speaking wisely, or praying; but they must surrender the illusion that love can force conversion on their own schedule. Beyond the limit of what they can do lies this prayer:

Lord, I have tried to hand on the faith; what I cannot do, you must do.

And that is not a prayer of resignation, but one prayed in hope purified of control. In the end, this Gospel story offers a response to that prayer in consolation: the one who waits two days is still the one who loves, who weeps, and who calls the dead from the tomb.