Call Your Parents

On the virtue of piety

By Sr. Mary Ignatius Nesbit, O.P.

Netherlandish (Antwerp) Painters, “Rest on the Flight Into Egypt,” mid-16th century, via The Met Museam.

Mark Wolynn was a businessman in his mid-thirties when he began to lose his eyesight. He learned he was afflicted with central serous retinopathy, a condition without a cure that, in his case, would lead to blindness within a few years. Overwhelmed with grief and fear but refusing to resign himself to a life without eyesight, he sought out alternatives to conventional medicine. He went to Southeast Asia, visiting any guru who offered healing or enlightenment. He fasted, meditated, drank herbs—anything that anyone proposed might help his eyes, but to no avail.

But finally, after years of searching, Mark tracked down a true “spiritual master.” He waited in line for hours to have a satsang—a meeting with the teacher. Finally, he thought, he would find answers. To his dismay, when Mark walked in, the master looked at him and said the most unsatisfying and un-guru-like words: “Go home and call your parents.”

Shocked and angry, Mark went in search of a new teacher, someone who would really help him. New mountain, new temple, new spiritual master. Surely this one would give him the truth. Yet this teacher, too, said the same thing: “Call your parents. Go home and make peace with them.”

Humbled, Mark (who tells his story in the introduction to his book It Didn’t Start with You) headed back home. He thought he had already worked through his family problems in therapy, “beating pillows and tearing cardboard effigies of [his] parents to smithereens.” Now he began the slow process of reconnecting with them, forgiving them, and learning to accept their love, “not in the way [he] had once expected it, but in the way they could give it.” Mark’s concern for his eyesight receded into the background as new avenues of healing opened before him. Not long after, his vision returned. He was cured.

Were the gurus right? Was Mark’s physical healing locked behind his spiritual healing? Whether Mark Wolynn’s cure was connected to his reconciliation with his parents is an open question. Regardless, he seems to have discovered an ancient and often forgotten virtue—one he had to travel across the world to find: piety.

What is Piety?

St. Thomas Aquinas addresses piety—the virtue of honoring father and mother—in his treatise on justice. Interestingly, St. Thomas speaks of justice primarily in terms of what we owe to others, rather than what is owed to us. In his view, we are each members of communities—families, countries, the human race—who owe things to others in webs of interconnection and interdependence. It is through these relationships that we have all that we own, all that we are. There are some relationships in which we owe a debt too great to ever be repaid.

The first of these, of course, is our relationship with God, the supreme “first principle of [our] being.” As the origin of our being, we stand before God in humble, existential dependence. The virtue that gratefully seeks to give God his due is religion. But after God, says St. Thomas, we owe the most to our parents because, regardless of their imperfections, our parents are the human instruments of an unmerited and inestimable gift: life.

What a different way of looking at the world! Don’t we often think more about what is owed us than what we owe? What was not given than what was? What if we stepped into St. Thomas’ worldview? What if underneath our myriad life experiences, we looked deeper and saw that we are, at bottom, the recipients of priceless and unasked-for gifts, gifts that can never be repaid: existence and life?

Could it be that knowing this truth and seeking to honor it could make us happier? After all, St. Paul calls “honor your father and mother” the “first commandment with a promise, ‘that it may go well with you and that you may have a long life on earth,’” (Ephesians 6:2-3, NABRE).

Whether we experience dramatic healing or benefit in more subtle ways, the words of Scripture and St. Thomas invite us to rediscover the forgotten virtue of piety.

Growing in Piety

Now comes the hard part.

God is perfect. St. Thomas calls him our “unfailing principle.” Giving due worship and honor to God (through the virtue of religion) is simpler and easier, in one sense, because he is perfectly good. Our parents, on the other hand, are imperfect at best, even morally corrupt in some cases. (St. Thomas’ own mother, for example, locked him in a tower for a year to prevent him from becoming a Dominican.) Are children of bad parents exempt from piety? Should piety towards parents be proportionate to their merits?

It seems not. For St. Thomas, the debt we owe our parents has more to do with our existential state than with our parents’ virtues. We are the kind of beings that come from others and depend on them for our survival for our first several years. Because of this, we owe them honor as the fragile instruments of God’s creative gift.

Accepting this may require a certain conversion of mind, but one that will ultimately make us more grateful and more peaceful. It does not, however, require us to call evil good or to compromise our own integrity or safety. Like all virtues, piety requires prudence. The following are five suggestions for living piety in a broken world.

1. Truth

We are made for the truth, and no virtue, healing, or growth is possible without living in truth. In our relationships with our parents, there are many truths that need to be held in tension. The trick, perhaps, is not to hyperfixate on one to the exclusion of the others.

Firstly, we need to take account of the ways in which our parents failed, not in a spiteful or vindictive way, but with a gentle honesty reflective of the impact they have had on us. The focus is not so much the guilt they bear as the effects we carry. Because of the importance and intimacy of the relationship, even small failures on the part of our parents can leave profound deficits in our ability to navigate our lives. These need to be honestly brought to light before God, and perhaps a trusted friend or therapist, so that, in our openness, the divine physician may heal us of our ails. Many people find this to be immensely freeing. “The truth will set you free,” (John 8:32).

Secondly, however, we should seek to understand our parents and their stories. Asking questions of our parents or those who knew them can bring important things to light. Without making excuses or diminishing one’s own suffering, we can come to have compassion for our parents when we see them as they are—frail, beautiful, and perhaps deeply wounded people with stories of their own.

Finally, beneath all of this is the deeper truth about the One who gave you life. Through these frail human instruments, whatever their failures and gifts, God willed you to be. Since your conception in your mother’s womb, he has held you in being with unfailing care, even as you suffered the effects of living in a fallen world. He is leading you through all this into a relationship with himself, the “Father of lights,” who loves you perfectly (James 1:17).

2. Forgiveness

I once heard a priest say that some people never forgive, not because they don’t want to, but because they cannot acknowledge the truth of how they have been wronged. This acknowledgment is a painful but liberating step that must precede forgiveness. Likewise, though, some may stop at the acknowledgement and never reach forgiveness.

Forgiveness is commonly misunderstood; it is not excusing the wrong. In fact, it implicitly acknowledges that there is a wrong to forgive. (Remember, truth is essential to forgiveness.) It is also distinct from reconciliation, which may or may not be possible or prudent. Forgiveness simply releases the person from the debt they owe and leaves vindication to God (Romans 12:19).

Many studies have shown the benefits of forgiveness for the one who forgives. It frees the wronged party from the corrosion of resentment and chronic anger, without compromising truth or justice.

3. Gratitude

The benefits of gratitude are also well documented. We could start, of course, with gratitude for our life, which our parents mediated to us. Life is a precious and beautiful gift, with all of its hopes and joys, fragility and pain. Are any of us sufficiently grateful for this fundamental gift?

Beyond this, in most parental relationships, even very imperfect ones, there are many, many things to be grateful for. After acknowledging the deficits and forgiving them, a helpful practice is to take account of the good. Write a list and share it with a friend, express it to God in prayer, or, if prudent and possible, express your gratitude directly to the parent. It is possible both to accept the reality of harms done in the past and to humbly and gratefully recognize the gifts given.

4. Boundaries

Once again, St. Thomas himself is a helpful exemplar here. His family did not have healthy boundaries. As mentioned, his mother locked him in a tower at age eighteen to prevent him from joining the Dominicans. While he was there, his brothers hired a prostitute to seduce him in the hopes of turning him from a celibate vocation. Throughout this trial, Thomas maintained firm boundaries, resisting his family’s abusive behavior. When they eventually released him, he pursued his Dominican vocation as planned, despite their disapproval. We can conclude from this that St. Thomas sees no opposition between the virtue of piety and healthy boundaries.

Boundaries are a necessary reality in life, allowing us to maintain the balance between authentic self-love and connection with others. The challenge is to hold boundaries out of love—without succumbing to pressure or manipulation on the one hand or to rage and resentment on the other. One has a calling—a moral responsibility according to Aquinas—to speak the truth, including the truth of relationships and one’s rights. After all, if it is an act of charity to prevent someone from doing evil, then boundaries with a parent could be an act of piety.

5. (Re)Connection

This last step may or may not be possible. One’s parents may be dangerous, abusive, or deceased. In such cases, reconciliation may consist in forgiveness in the heart and intercessory prayer. For those who believe in heaven and the communion of saints, these are not small gifts and will bear eternal fruits.

In many cases, however, connecting (or reconnecting) with those who gave us life will bear abundant fruit in this life as well. Even a small gesture—a text, an email, a phone call—could open the door for God to work in powerful ways, bringing healing and freedom to your family.

The Gift of Piety

St. Thomas concludes his treatise on justice with the gift of the Holy Spirit of piety, the gift by which we claim God as our Father. In this world, we may feel like orphans. But in baptism, we are adopted into the sonship of Christ. Our destiny is to be loved eternally by the Father. Firmly rooted in this identity, we are empowered to live in truth, forgiveness, and gratitude toward our earthly parents, preserving necessary boundaries while connecting when possible. Living in the freedom of the children of God, we have nothing to fear, nothing to lose, by the prudent exercise of piety toward our parents. So if it’s possible and prudent, take the advice of Mark Woylynn’s unnamed guru—call your parents.

About the Author: Sr. Mary Ignatius Nesbit, O.P., entered the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in 2008 and made her final vows in 2016. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education from Eastern Michigan University and a Masters in Theology and Catechetics from the Franciscan University of Steubenville. She has taught elementary, middle, and high school across four states. She also served in Openlight Media, the Dominican Sisters’ Education in Virtue program.