I don’t know why I am deciding to post this, but I feeling God is calling me to share this with you. My home is not exactly the ideal Catholic home. You maybe say but what home really is? Sometimes I feel so alone, because unlike others in my home, my faith an integral part of my life. Sunday is not sunday without going to mass. I need to go to confess at least once a month. I enjoy Eucharistic adoration. These are not things I can really enjoy with my family. I knew giving my life to Christ would make me feel like an outcast with my friends, but it is my family who makes me feel like an outcast. My father would prefer that I was chasing women and have sex like he thinks every other boy my age is. My mother and sister think I am obsessed. I love my family so much and I wish we all had the same intensity when it came to our faith. I wish we could do things like go to mass together or pray a family rosary.
Last week, my dad busted into my room while I was praying a rosary. He looked at me and quickly left. The next day he came up to me pretty concerned and said to me “Why were you praying a rosary?” I looked at him with anger but quickly held back because he obviously didn’t know what he was saying. “Are you keeping some kind of novena?”, he asked me. “You are nineteen years and all you do is lock yourself in the room pray and read the Bible.” He continued to rant. “How come you can’t be like everyone else. How come you are not chasing girls, like others boys your age.” “I am religious”, he said. “I am religious to a degree. I go to church sometimes. I even have a devotion to the angels and saints.” He continued to talk but I slowly drifted off. How could he talking about the love he has for the saints in heaven, when he doesn’t even appreciate the saints in his home. I am not being proud, I don’t deserve to describe myself as a saint, because I am far from holy. I am trying though.
After he left, I took a deep breathe. I felt the tears coming, but I sucked them up. Then I remembered Luke 4:24 “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.” Why should I cry, If I am truly living the gospel, I will be rejected. Then I remembered this verse. “They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law (Luke 12:49-53).” WHOA!! Look my life reflected scripture. That gave me so much peace. I was doing the right thing.
Please pray for me and my family! Send me some feedback if you are going through something similar. Let us support each other.
St. Eustace, Patron Invoked in Times of Family Troubles, pray for us
