The Brennans sent our Danny off to college again this week. It was a rough goodbye–and the fact that he is in grad school now, that this is our sixth “farewell,” and that we had to do the same thing for his older sisters over the years didn’t make the parting any easier. It’s just, I think, that we have learned to deal with it a little better.
In sending off our boy we have joined with thousands of other families who are doing–and going through–the same thing. My brother is, as I write, heading back from the College of the Holy Cross where he dropped off his son for the first time. Several members of our faculty and staff have taken personal days to do the same with their children. And many of our students are experiencing the strange blend of exhilaration and sadness as they look upon empty seats at their dinner tables.
It's a hard time for everyone involved.
The college send-off, after all, represents more than our children living away from home. It also–perhaps more importantly–represents yet another stage in our children’s growth and with it, another occasion of our having to let them go.
It started with leaving them at the door of their kindergarten classrooms and continued in the transition to middle school. It shows itself every summer when one can see the mixture of pride and apprehension on the faces of moms and dads as they walk their rising eighth graders to the doors of the Breen Center for the first day of SEP. It manifests in the welling eyes of more than a couple parents as they drive away from their freshmen on the first day of high school. Leaving a child at college is “merely” the capstone of a long–but inevitable and necessary–process.
Making this transition more difficult is the fear of the unknown, especially when we drop off our oldest children for the first time. Independence is a double-edged sword: one can never be an adult without it, but with it, the opportunities to do really stupid things grows exponentially. There is only so much comfort in knowing that the vast majority of kids who make mistakes, make relatively harmless ones as they grow in the wisdom that only being on their own can provide.
This year the school community is focusing on the Suscipe prayer of St Ignatius of Loyola and it is in this prayer that I have found some comfort as I’ve taken my kids to college over the years. Included as part of the “Contemplation to Attain God’s Love,” the Suscipe comes at the end of his Spiritual Exercises. It is a prayer of abandonment and trust, penned by a man who gave up all he knew for God, only to find that God would give him more than he could dream of in return.
It’s at once a beautifully simple but profound prayer:
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory,
my understanding, and my entire will.
All that I have and possess,
You have given all to me.
To You, O Lord, I return it.
All is yours.
Dispose of it wholly according to Your will.
Give me only Your love and Your grace,
for this is sufficient for me. Amen
Some translations render “all that I have and possess” as “all I have and call my own.” In the most important sense, both translations are accurate. Both speak to those gifts, talents, and relationships that God has given us. But I personally prefer the latter translation, because the idea that anything is solely “our own” is an illusion: the gifts God bestows are never just for us; they are given that we might give them away in love and service of Him and our neighbors. When it comes to our kids, we need to let them go–into the world–so that they can share their gifts as well. In the “Contemplation to Attain God’s Love,” in his lead-up to the Suscipe, Ignatius reminds us that love is “better shown in deeds than in words” and that love means “giving and communicating [gifts]” with the beloved.
Love is about giving ourselves–and our gifts–away.
Jesus Himself tells us as much in the parable of the talents (Lk. 19: 11-26). Our “talents” or gifts (whatever form they take) are meant to be shared with others. That includes our most treasured gifts: our children. In the Biblical account of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22: 1-18), we see Abraham asked by God to literally offer up his son. God was never going to let Abraham sacrifice his boy. The “sacrifice” was Abraham’s willingness in faith to say to the Lord “take and receive” what he held most dear, his child. In one way or another, it is the sacrifice every parent is asked to make as well.
This is not the risk that on first blush it appears to be: the God Who loves us, loves our children. In love He gave them to us and in love He will provide for them in ways we parents, try though we might, never can.
For those of us who are grieving a bit as we send our children off and let go of them–yet again–perhaps we can in faith make the Suscipe our own and say to our Heavenly Father: “We entrust our children to you. Take, Lord, and receive…
…and do with them what you will.”
A.M.D.G. / B.V.M.H.