"When Loved Ones Leave the Church" – Roxane Salonen | 2025 Discipleship Conference

A parent’s cry opens the door to a deeper question: how do you keep loving when your child walks away from the faith you built your life around? We trace that ache to its roots and then move, step by step, toward hope that holds under real pressure—hope shaped by prayer, honest boundaries, and a resilient kind of hospitality we call “preparing the table.”

Roxane shares her story as a mother, writer, and advocate, drawing strength from Saint Monica, Elizabeth Leseur, and the wisdom of Dr. David Anders. We unpack why estrangement is accelerating—pandemic fallout, ideological capture, and a social media economy that rewards grievance—and how families can respond without surrendering truth. Instead of chasing one more debate, we practice presence: making home a sanctuary where joy, beauty, and quiet fidelity speak louder than arguments. We talk about setting clear boundaries with toxic dynamics, inverting conflict with love, and collecting “breadcrumbs” of grace that signal an unseen return path forming beneath the surface.

Along the way, we contrast foundational hope with fragile quick fixes, and we remember that waiting is not passive—it’s work backed by heaven. From thanking God in advance to small acts of mercy that steady a household, we explore ways to keep doors open and hearts soft. If you’ve ever felt “zero for five” and still dared to light the porch lamp, this conversation is a companion for the long road back. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review with the one breadcrumb of hope you’re watching for right now.

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Chapters

• 0:00 A Lament and a Plea
• 2:08 Meet Roxane: Story and Mission
• 4:40 Prodigals, Monica, and Hope
• 8:55 Why This Book and For Whom
• 11:06 Waiting With Weight: Prayer as Action
• 13:19 Prepare the Table: Practical Hope
• 17:06 Estrangement in a Fractured Culture
• 22:05 Boundaries, Love, and Reversals
• 25:20 Witness Over Winning Arguments
• 28:05 Foundational Hope vs. False Hopes
• 31:20 Breadcrumbs, Wounds, and Mercy
• 35:15 Perseverance and Final Prayer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Once they knelt beside me in prayer, now they roll their eyes at your holy name. Once they whispered the rosary with innocent lips, now they shout the slogans of another creed. I fed them on truth, taught them to love what is good, warned them of wolves in scholars' robes, but they smiled, walked on, and gave their hearts to the wolves. They call light darkness and darkness light. They scorn the church that gave them life. They mock the saints as fools, and your cross as cruelty. What gospel did they hear in those lecture halls? What spirit breathed into their minds that now they pity knee for believing what they once held dear? They were not reasoned into this rebellion, they were pre-washed, pre-formed, taught to question everything but the lie. Now they evangelize for a gospel of power, of grievance, of self-made truths. They see love as control, truth as violence, and faith as a prison. Oh Lord, have mercy on my broken heart. They were yours before they were mine. Send them a sign, a voice, a wound, whatever it takes to bring them home. Let them remember the scent of incense, the hush of holy silence, the peace that paths all understanding. If I cannot reach them with tears or truth, send another, a stranger, a priest or beggar, someone they will not resist. Let the prodigal see the pig sty, let them hunger again for bread. Until that day I will weep, I will pray, and I will wait at the gate with arms stretched wide and heart burning with hope. Amen. Well, on that cheery note, good afternoon. And thanks for being so willing to power through a 3 p.m. breakout session. No easy feat, believe me. I'm ready for a nap right now. But it's also, and as you pointed out too, it's divine mercy hours. So there's that, right? So I hope to make it worth your while. I know it's been a long day, but hopefully a blessed day for you all. As she said, my name is Roxanne Salonin. I'm a Catholic wife and mother of five from Fargo, North Dakota, a speaker, author, and podcaster, and co-author of the award-winning What Would Monica Do? Consolation, Hope, and Inspiration in the Spirit of St. Monica for those bearing the cross of a loved one who is away from the faith. I also write for my state's largest daily newspaper about faith for a largely secular readership, along with other publications, including the Natural National Catholic Register and the Spargo Diocesan magazine New Earth, for which I write a monthly column recounting my powerful experiences as a sidewalk advocate at our area's only abortion facility. I met my husband in concert choir in college, and after marrying in November of 1991, we welcomed three sons and two daughters who range now from age 20 to 29. And now we wait and pray for grandchildren, recalling the biblical reference, May We Live to See Our Children's Children from Psalm 128.6. So my connection to your area comes mainly from Maria Ruriz Scaperwanda, whom I befriended many years ago. I think she might be there. I'm not sure. But anyway, um, I stayed with her uh the other night. She welcomed me to your lovely state of Oklahoma. And she was a mentor to me and other Catholic writers years ago when I was just um getting my feet wet in the world of Catholic writing. And um, and she had an email list that we all stayed in touch with and encouraged each other and supported each other. That was the years before Facebook. Believe it or not, there was a time before Facebook. So and then ultimately she introduced me to Father Stanley Rother. And I was authored when she asked me to write an endorsement for that book, uh, detailing his life. And so she greeted me at the airport the other night, like I said, and it was a joy to experience Father Rother's shrine firsthand. So um I'm just very enamored with his beautiful story of martyrdom. So now back to the poem I just read. Can anyone else here relate? Raise your hand. Doesn't want to be a child, it could be anyone, anyone that's left the faith and that you're greeting over. So on Christmas morning, um, this was my husband and I. Uh, we were um, it's just hours after we were learned that one of our pulled-out children had joined his siblings and mostly reseating from the shores of the Catholic faith. The faith we'd so hoped our children would embrace. My dear mother-in-law had just passed away a few weeks prior, so as we attended Mass together alone, despite three of our children and two spouses being just a few blocks away, our grief felt especially heavy. Losing a mother is hard. But watching children leave the faith one by one is perhaps just as hard. And in sad resignation, my husband said, Well, I guess we're zero for zero now. Zero for five now. Despite our sorrow, though, we know that their stories aren't over yet. And we live in the perpetual hope that someday it'll be five before five. Apologist Steve Ray employs the visual of the church as the mothership and its defectors hanging out on small rafts below, not realizing the magnitude of what they've abandoned. Here we are, blessed in this beautiful faith, the very church that Jesus left us when he left the earth for the sanctification of the world. And by a God-given miracle, we were allotted this magnificent heritage. Was it too much to want our loved ones to see and fold this great gift? Instead, it feels like they've handed it back, partially unopened. It is, in essence, the story of the prodigal son leaving the abundant land of his inheritance for an intoxicating world of false promises and elusive pursuits. And we are left like Saint Monica with tears in our eyes. However, Monica's tears did not last forever. God promises that someday our tears will turn into dancing, as they were for Monica when St. Augustine returned to the faith after 17 years. So despite everything we see on the surface, we must focus on the hidden workings of God in our children, who are baptized and confirmed in the one true faith, and whose very names are written in the book of life in heaven. And yet, for now, we do carry a great and heavy cross. Loving those who are in a distant country, a place often of estrangement and disconnect. We do not carry it alone. Full disclosure about what would Monica do? This is the last book that my co-author Patty and I would have ever wanted to write. Who wants to write a book about your children leaving the faith? I don't know. It took a lot of prayer and discernment to even approach the topic. And initially we were fearful of publicly exposing this deep and tender hurt, but through our shared commiseration with and prayer for one another, we began to see this component of our friendship as something very precious. We came to realize that in this veil, we need others to help us hold up this great suffering. And we wanted more than anything else to let others in this situation know that you are not alone, and God never meant for you to carry this burden alone. Anyone remember this dates me? We all Wendy's commercial, Where's the Beep? Well, I'd like to suggest an edit here to Where's the Break, which better exemplifies our need here. Perhaps even more have heard this beautiful phrase, which relates to today's theme of discipleship. Evangelization is one beggar telling another where to find bread. I love that. Though often used in reference to the Eucharist, we can apply it here and now. For by sharing our bread, our stories, heartaches, and hope with another, we feed each other. And as God brings us hope and consolation, it is only right and just that we turn to our neighbor and feed him this same bread. So I hope by feeding you a bit of bread or hope today, you'll be inspired to turn around and offer the same to others who share this burden. Truly, our Lord wants to set the captives free. And that is my aim today as well. Let me be clear though, I'm not some expert up here to lay out the five essential steps to getting your child to heaven, not to mention back to mass. If I had those five steps at my disposal and they were guaranteed, I would offer that, and I but they don't exist. That does not mean, however, that we are left empty-handed. Don't think for a moment. While we wait for our loved ones to come back to God and the church, we can hope and pray and fast for the return. No, some people will say, but that's not enough. Some will declare that indignantly. We need real action. Ah contraire, I say, for if we approach it rightly, waiting in prayer and hope has all the weight of heaven behind it. In writing, what would Monica do? Patty and I learned quickly that this book was less about our children leaving the faith and more about our own faith journey. Surprise, surprise. And how the prodigal events in our children's lives have been a conduit for us to grow closer to God. Kind of beautiful takeaway. If leaving the Bark of Peter is not an option, I presume anyone here at this conference today agrees, we're not going to abandon ship. We have no choice but to make an appeal to our great and mighty God to live in a radical dependence on Him and His promises. And guess what happens when our kids leave the faith? We are radically dependent on God. So for those thinking that uh the waiting and fraying approach is too weak, let me help expand what that might mean. One of my best recommendations for how to go about it: prepare the table. Now there's an action word for you. I co-opted this phrase from a recent interview between Lila Rose and her guest, Noelle Maring, author of Awake, Not Woke, a Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology, and a forthcoming work on the phenomenon of estrangement, something sadly becoming all too common today. Toward the end of that interview, Noelle uses the prodigal son analogy to suggest that despite these divisions and departures in our families, we need to set our tables and begin preparing for our loved ones' return. That said, any other melancholics in the room, right here. I find myself preparing often for the worst. I once confided in my spiritual director that I feared that our children would not return until I was on my deathbed or dead. But later it occurred to me that my own father's prodigal reroute took 35 years, but return he did. While I don't wish decades of detachment from the sacraments for our children, I did live to see my father's conversion, reminding me to let God work and not live in the scary what-ifs. Another help here, blessed Solanus Casey, he offers help in his propensity to thank God in advance. We can all apply this tier. It's a radical way to pray, but a game changer as well. We can, with confidence in our good God, thank him in advance for the blessings he's already planning for our lives, such as thank you, Lord, for all you are doing even now to help level the path for our children's eventual return home. I know you love them more than I do. Help me be ready for the day to open wide my arms to welcome them back. And remember this. I can't, but can. And yet, it would be negligent to put on those rose-colored glasses and deny our grief, which is real. Not being able to share the deepest, most carnival, beautiful part of our lives with our children and other loved ones is a deep sadness. But we have help here. Let's return to our shining star for a minute. Monica. Saint Monica, that is. But wait, how did she become a saint? By living an easy life without trials? Hardly. Her husband was a hot-headed pagan who was mostly unkind to her until the end of his life when he converted to Christianity because of the undeserved charity Monica demonstrated toward him. Her brilliant son, oldest son, was far from her heart, as you know, squandering his inheritance of intellect and faith in the most sordid and scandalous ways. Her mother-in-law openly despised her. Monica struggled mightily, but it was because of these sufferings, along with her steadfast commitment to God, that we dare to call her Saint Monica today. Yes, her son Augustine's dramatic conversion and writings helped catapult her into the light of the church's greatest. But before that, Monica was simply a parent who prayed and persevered and through her love helps draw her son back into God's heart. And if not for that, we'd likely not know of this incredible man, Augusta of Hippo, at all. Surely it is not the ease of light, but a brave response to trial that makes us saints. This means the bad news I'm about to reveal, the state of the world right now, is the best kind of backdrop for saint making. Think about it. What if this trial that you carry of a wayward loved one, or any kind of trial for that matter, which keeps you up at night and on your knees, is the very thing bringing you closer to God's heart. Indeed. If we can stay focused on the Lord and what He can do in this trial, this soul-creshing burden, can be what leads us to heaven, along with all the holy men and women through time who have suffered and persevered to the end. Now I'm going to come back to this podcast because there were so many nuggets of truth in it. The harsh reality of this life for a bit, let's go into that, as we were writing what would Monica Do, something seismic was happening, a worldwide pandemic. And as you all know, this moment prompted an unprecedented division within families and communities. Let's take a little time to acknowledge the reality of it. For this, I'm going to borrow again from Lila's interview with Noelle addressing estrangement. Because while this was not a new occurrence prior to the pandemic, it has accelerated since 2022 when our books released. Noelle pointed to the pandemic along with political unrest, a resurgence of Marxist ideologies, and the phenomenon of gender confusion as key factors that increase the chasm between religious and non-religious or non-practicing family members. Estrangement makes a brief appearance in our book, too, notably through the story of Sarah, who expressed the grief she experienced when her adult daughters became estranged in this way. Simply, they've left the church and they've left me. Those are hard words to hear. And some in this room today might understand them. Even if we're not completely estranged from our children, their leaving the church does often feel like they've left our hearts as well. And in many ways, they haven't. In their young, tender years, we could never have imagined how hard it would become, how strained our conversations would be, and how we'd have to tiptoe around the truth in order to preserve relationships. As that poem indicated, we carry a burden that sometimes spills beyond our strength. But remember, God is never especially near to the brokenhearted and to us in this. We have not been forgotten by him. If you need a reminder of his ability to understand, take a moment to gaze upon the cross. God experienced unfathomable rejection, persecution, and abandonment by those who supposedly loved him. Some of his closest friends stabbed him in the back. Just had to be the worst pain, even worse emotionally than the physical scourging he underwent. A spiritual director once helped me see through God's eyes when one of our children began to join the refrain of his older siblings and heavily questioning the church. We'd already watched three walk away, and I didn't know if my heart could handle another, and not him of all people. He'd once talked to becoming a priest, and he's the easiest child to raise and just a kind individual. But now I sensed him slipping away too. One evening after we'd been talking, and he expressed his new disillusionment for the church, as I left the dining room and turned the corner into the kitchen, I tried holding back the hot tears that were forming in my eyes. And a few days later, sharing this moment of what it felt like yet another defeat, my spiritual director reminded me and redirected me. You should not be sad for yourself, Roxanne, since you still have the gift of faith, he said. Rather, we need to pray for him because he will be worse off if he continues along this path and his life will become much harder. I try to keep this in mind when I'm tempted to despair by turning my thoughts to prayer, to whatever child seemed to abandon God and me in the process. I bring the burden to where it can be better absorbed. God's shoulders. They're much wider than mine, and He can handle the grief more easily. Remember, we need to stay strong and save our energy for the day they come home. We need to prepare the tape. This is a picture of my mother-in-law and my two daughters. My mother-in-law is the one that died in December, and we miss her greatly. So we return to Sarah's estrangement story in the chapter when the debate is over. Sarah shares that despite the ongoing trial of separation from her daughters, she tries to remember to count her blessings, focusing on the vibrant relationships she's maintained with her three sons and their spouses and children, recalling how she stays active in her grandchildren's lives, cooking and baking with them and teaching them how to sew. They also enjoy hearing stories from when I was a little girl, she shared, especially the times I got into trouble. Our moments together are so precious. So even in that small little shift, going from despair to focusing on the positives and the relationships that we're still strong, even that small shift can get us through the hard moments. We have not lost all, even though sometimes it feels like it. Still, it can be shocking at times, facing the culture in which our children are immersed and we are trying to, they are trying to live through as are we. As Noelle said in the above-mentioned interview, in these days, apostasy, apostasy is happening less at the end of a gun and more from the mouths of the ones we're most beholden to. Our own children, who are saying in so many words, choose me or your faith. What has happened? Well, as mentioned already, many factors coming together, creating a perfect storm. Let's just take the gender identity issue that surfaced quickly and prominently. As Christian parents, Noelle said, we pose an existential threat to the identities of affected individuals, given the canon of memory that we keep, which means we are a constant reminder of an identity that just won't die. Whether it's gender identity or any other kind of identity, identity in Christ, we're the reminders. They look at our face and myself God. And I'll add that we knew them from conception at their births, well before the phrase gender assigned at birth had ever come into July. And we've known them as children from God from the moment of their baptism. They don't remember that. We do. We are a constant reminder of who they really are. Historically, Noel noted, family separation was more likely to happen to preserve societal cohesion, such as if the child became a threat to the community and had to be contained in jail, prison, or treatment facility. But in this century, estrangement is more ideological, directed from young to older, and prompted not for the sake of preserving unity, but to evoke an interruption of the relationship for the sake of changing the culture in a revolutionary utopian way. I call it Marxism dressed up in different clothing. Starkly, Noel noted how in the time of Mao's influence, the goal was to get rid of the four olds: old religion, old culture, old ideas, and old people. For example, the Chinese youth movement, part of the Communist Party, denounced their parents on stage in public, replacing loyal familial piety with piety to the state. Now, Noel said, we're seeing something similar, but coming from the individual himself, often influenced by TikTok psychologists who proliferate hashtags like toxic parents and narcissistic parents, doesn't take much to see how damaging things can become in families. Often accompanying this reality has been a growing and pervasive victim mentality, Noelle said, in which young people have embraced their wounds to a dangerous degree, noting that once you elevate the identity of woundedness as being something that gives you a platform and explains away some of the sufferings you've had in your life, you start looking at your history for a culprit. And parents are a natural place to put that. Two things to mention. One, parental abuse can and does occur, but as Noelle noted, estrangement issues are happening in healthier homes, in which young people affected by this toxic mindset conflate normal parenting failures with abuse, providing legitimate reasons in their minds to defect from their families. And like the Chinese youth in the earlier example, they've allowed the state more sway than those who brought them into existence, have sustained them for years, and truly love them. This relatively modern occurrence, according to Noel, results from a subversive movement to re-engineer society, which requires a culture of forgiven. Not only then is a loving history erased, but the fourth commandment, honor your father and mother. The respect is simply no longer there, and that breach can be ultimately destructive. In this climate, as Noelle pointed out, we hear phrases like, you choose to have me, chose to have me, I did not choose to be born. Or you owe me everything, I don't owe you anything. Detect my snark. I'm I'm yeah, I've heard these things. It's easy to see how easily this thinking leads to disorder within the family unit. Another unfortunate effect in such a culture, Noelle noted, is that while many young people maintain that their very existence was forced, parenting itself is becoming a casualty with many young couples foregoing and parenting altogether. It's a logical outcome. If having been born is something to resent, unjustly apparently, because they had no choice in the matter, then won't their own children also resent their having been born? Again, I call it Marxism in new clothing, and truly the devil is in the details. Our children disagreeing with us is just the start. The ultimate goal, of course, is to bring down the family, the very base of our existence and flourishing as humans. And as Noelle pointed out, Christianity is the prime enemy to any utopian ideology. So we are, without doubt, the targets of this battle against principalities and powers. Within this disorder, Noelle added, our roles within family become inverted. Men become weak and can no longer lead, while women, no longer protected by men, become hardened and form a shell around themselves to survive. And often in estrangement situations and others, children become the authoritarian over their parents, while parents become the child. You don't have to raise your hand this time, but I wonder if others in this room can relate to this experience. I know I have. She also recommended we affirm our children's deeper identity whenever possible, which is to say, the suffering is real, but so is our love, which is more powerful than any ideology. As Noelle mentioned, true can withstand any scrutiny, whereas ideology has a fragile and hollow core. Though it is coercive and silencing by its nature, she said, ideology is also often defeated just by shining a light on it. Noelle said it's also good to remember that our younger generations lack a lot of resources and often are flailing. Many teens and young adults right now have unstable identities because they've been told, on the one hand, that they have the godlike power to determine things like what sex and gender are. And at the same time, they've been led to believe that because of systemic forces, they have no power at all. So again, where's the good news? Where's the hope? Beautifully, in the interview, Noelle recalled the story of St. Maximilian Colby. He died in 1941 in a Nazi concentration camp, which she had recently visited, offering his own life in place of a father who was slated to be executed. Visiting Auschwitz gave Noel this insight that Colby took this horrific moment in history, which was another time of attempted social re-engineering, and inverted it with love. I love that. I love that phrase. What beautiful words. How might we follow in St. Colby's footsteps and deal with the divisions within our families and inverse them with love? Now, by love, I don't mean acquiescence. Appropriate boundaries are a loving action. Some exasperated parents relinquish their rights and means to keep the peace, but here we have to be careful and not sacrifice the wrong things. Noelle said that along with reaffirming our children's true identities, we need to, this is important, recall the dignity of our parenting role. We need to recall the dignity of our parenting role and the many gifts and graces we have to offer, like peace and love, much like the waiting, patient, prodigal father. We can also invert these situations with love by shifting the conversation when things are going south, as I did with my adult child when she began to drag me into a political battle. By mentioning that her grandma wanted to know how many people to expect for the Thanksgiving meal, I was able to defuse the situation simply through reminding her of something more immediately important. By just inserting that reality of love into the conversation, just this basic, just the detail, the dynamics of the conversation thankfully began to turn. Noel advised we keep asking our adult children questions and having conversations, but again, without compromising the truth, adding, we might be for them more than they are for themselves. And at times we may have to love our adult children to the point of sacrificing that relationship, hopefully temporarily, for the sake of loving them more honestly. We have to stick with the truth and we have to stick with what we know is real. One of our children in their later teen years ended up moving in with a toxic partner and their parents who welcomed them into their home. It was devastating and a time filled with some very dramatic and divisive moments. Ultimately, though, we set a boundary that kept the abusive partner away from our home. And while making it clear that the path for our home was open to our child. Little by little, that child began spending more time at our house, which became the safe place to be, until one day they summoned the courage to leave the situation. I remember that night we were at Mass and the path was still illuminated, and welcome, we welcomed our child home with great joy. It wouldn't be the first time I would text my husband saying, kill the fatted cat. We'd have to laugh or we'd cry. And if you can't see what that says there, there's a big party tonight. The master's lost son has returned home. He specifically requested for the fatted cat to be there. What else might we do to invert it with love? As Patty and I learned in writing our book, and I've already shared, God seems to be inviting us beautifully to focus our faith lives in this challenge. Maybe we need to brush up our catechism, or perhaps while we wait and pray, we can turn our time and energy to others seeking mentorship and guidance. There's always somebody. We're not going to waste our energy. God will not let it be wasted. Saint Monica did this while she waited for Saint Augustine to come to his senses, becoming known as a kind person in the community who helped catechize many in the faith and gave her time and resources to the four. God will not waste a willing heart. That heart, that zeal that you have will not be wasted. Even though, yes, you want to pour it on your children, there might be someone else that needs it right now. And someday, someday. He put that zeal in us for a reason. And if if our own family members are not open to hearing the good news right now, someone else is desperate to hear it. So search out those people while continuing to love your wayward loved ones, even with the limitations that may be in place. And again, even if it seems like they're stalled or even digressing, God can reach the hidden areas of their hearts much more certainly than they ever could. What we see on the surface is not what's going on underneath. And we have to let God do his hidden work. And so it was that Noel suggested we set the table and be prepared for their homecoming, noting they might go off, but they'll also know what welcomes them when they come back. I can't emphasize this enough because as noted earlier, I've lived it more than once. Also, we have more in our arsenal than we sometimes realize. We have Jesus, we have his mother Mary, we have all the saints and angels, not a bad team, I'd say, along with all the others here on earth who offer helpful perspective. Dr. David Anders, host of EWTN's Called to Communion Radio Show, makes a few appearances in our book as well. I found his insight on fallen away children extremely helpful, especially given the complexities that can erupt in navigating these tender relationships. Recently, a caller to his show asked about an uncle living with his fiance and how the parents were consorting about reaching out to him to encourage him to marry in the church. The caller wondered if it might do more harm than good, but said her parents were adamant because the Bible exhorts us to admonish the sinner. And they felt that if her uncle were to go to hell, they would be responsible. Acknowledging that the parents were referencing a passage from Ezekiel, Dr. Anders claimed that while Ezekiel had a very specific vocation, God has not called us to be a biblical prophet in the same sense. St. Paul was explicit, he said, when he noted in 1 Corinthians 5 that we are not to pass judgment on people outside the church. We should only approach people with admonishment who are already in the fold but are risking the scandal, sin of scandal by their actions, he said, adding that the church delineates this, but we can also understand it purely from natural law. So in the chapter of our book, When the Debate is Over, we noted that there is a timeline that eventually expires for us to teach our children the faith. And once they become adults, they are responsible for their own consciences. And we then slip into the role of being living witnesses to the faith. If we insist on debating during this phase, it's likely to cause more harm than good. And trust me, I did it. I've done it, I've sent the articles, I've done everything. You know, I mean, it's hard to make that break, that shift from guiding our kids to letting them go. It is so hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. So Dr. Anders said that we need to question our motives and we're we're we're wanting to push, we're wanting to throw our agenda at our kids. He said, are we just trying to prove we're right? If so, we're probably on the wrong track. He admitted imperfection in this area himself, noting how one of his sons once helped him along by commenting, Dad, you're right about everything and nobody cares. It was then that he started realizing his constant harping was not getting him anywhere, he said. And then later one of his adult children and he were at odds and they sat down with a Catholic counselor to sort it out. Dr. Anders recounts how that counselor ultimately asked him, Do you want to have a relationship with your son or continue pounding out your agenda? And he realized then that his true goal wasn't to prove his point, but to build a bridge. It's hard. It's hard to discern most things, but that maybe is a guiding principle. If relationship is the goal, he said, we ought to consider common sense, which directs that we don't hit them on the head with a contradiction, which will naturally cause them to push back and double down. I know my kids are stubborn. I don't know about you guys. They are not easy. They're they're they're so he quoted Dr. Cardinal John Henry Newman, who once said that people do not assent to prepositions as a result of argument. People seek out arguments that sustain or justify the intuitions they already want to hold. So if you want to change how people think or act or behave, you have to get into relationship with them, invite them into a place in the world where they can see and experience others from a new vantage point, and you can only do that with empathy. Dr. Anders added that love be or else by gunpoint doesn't work. Because by its nature, love can never be commanded, only elicited. That's a beautiful way to cook out to. Now let's return to the word hope. I love that word. In February, Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, addressed the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in DC, calling to mind the Jubilee year of hope, which I might happily add is not yet over. He noted in his beautiful talk, which I'd encourage you to find online, that human beings cannot live without hope. For without it, everything falls apart. He added that we can have health and prosperity of every kind, but that's not enough. For at the end of our roads, we need to know that something, that there's something that's going to be good to end, okay? So this explains why we're tempted toward despair when our loved ones leave the faith. Their departures cause us to question what good is at the end of our world. After all, if everything we work for as parents seems to have been an utter failure, how can this be good? Monsignor cautions here that we need to distinguish between foundational hope and proximal hope, the latter of which cannot bear the weight of immortality. As faithful Catholics, we have this foundational hope, this hope placed in the context of eternal life at our disposal. But fallen away loved ones may have lost sight of it, reaching instead for the unsustainable and elusive proximal hope to the world. And whether they know it or not, they're counting on us to hang on to this greater enduring hope. Somewhere deep inside, they sense, they sense that we carry it. And in their time of greatest need, I have to believe they will be drawn toward it. In the meantime, dear fellow sojourners, we must keep the fire lit. That's not to say we won't suffer at the same time we are living in this hope. Monsignor pointed out that the two, this foundational hope and our suffering, often exist side by side. But as the faithful Catholics of our generation, he said, we, we are responsible for the rest of humanity currently living on the earth for counting on our hope. Where will they experience this witness of hope if not through us? Let this be an encouragement to you and me too, to carry forward in confidence, trusting that God's promises are true, believing firmly that He has our children and loved ones in his heart, even when we have no visible evidence of it. One of the ways we can keep hope alive is by looking for what I call breadcrumbs, little signs that God is still working in our children. A few months ago during Lent, one of our young children and I experienced a terrifically difficult week. It started with lunch, a lunch that promptly ended when I said something meant to be a general statement, but was taken as a personal attack. I found myself along with our uneaten food alone. Eventually I caught up with this child now walking home on foot, and we tried to come back together, but the wounds within screamed out, seeking relief and harsh words and unfair accusations. I stayed calm and in a very soft but firm voice said, Your heart has become so hardened to me. There has not been one moment that I haven't loved you. You will not let me love you. Ultimately the child left, still in an angry state. But that evening I was home alone and there was a knock on our door. And she said, I was at work and I wasn't planning on coming here, but my car turned into the cul de staff. We sat down and now we were able to have a more hopeful conversation, and we agreed to try carving out a new path. Not long after, I came to learn of some wounds within this child that are completely apart from me, and I am understanding better now the true root of the anger. As the mother, I just happen to be the safe place to vent and even blain in less thoughtful moments. I think it's important to mention this because in many cases the wounds of our children are very real. Aside from those imperfections, we most must hone up to, and I've had those conversations as well, asking for forgiveness for the times I did not live up to perfection in quarantine. There are unreachable wounds that only God. This can be confusing, and especially in a culture that's placing so much blame on quarantine. So what can we do? We can offer consistent love and live out our faith and joy as joyfully as possible. To that end, our home is stilled with signs of our faith, not as an overt message to our children, but simply because our faith is important to us. And over the years, we've added these signs of our faith to our home as an outward sign of our interior dispositions. So for instance, I have a merry garden out front next to our driveway. Inside, you'll find a holy water fount and our entrance and in our living room various religious pieces, including framed art pieces from my friend Nellie Edwards, a large cross with the resurrection Christ and his fine give grace. All of these things to just show that we uh love our faith. Now I'm being told, am I at the end here? Okay. I want to end with one thing before I leave. I wanted to add some um some pulp from Rosary Year. There's many beautiful thoughts in there, but I'm gonna skip ahead to what I wanted to be my closing today. In closing, I recall one of my favorite servants, uh favorite servants of God, Elizabeth Lassur. Who's heard of Elizabeth Lassor? Uh, she endured her sufferings while dying from cancer with great faith, despite her atheistic husband who frequently disparaged her belief in God. Her steadfast trust in God, rooted in Christ's love, eventually brought about her husband's conversion after her death, leading ultimately to his entry into the priesthood. It's an incredible story of hope, a portion which is what is shared in the June 23 Magnificat, where we reread a portion of her diary entry to Jesus. And this is what I want to end on. You are my father, my friend. Be also, O Jesus, the companion of my solitude. You know how spiritual isolation weighs on me. With you, I shall never again be alone. If I am not on earth to see my beloved ones united to me in my inner life, may I from heaven unite myself with them, who shall then become yours and made holy by you. Let us wait in hope with Elizabeth, who did not see her loved ones conversion aside of heaven, but whose conversion did come as the result of true love. Like Elizabeth and Monica, may we persevere in folk and faith, our eyes on the prize of heaven for ourselves and those who cannot help but in the end to be won over by love. Thank you very much.