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Dear Father Angelo,
We write to you because we are heartbroken.
It’s about the relationship with my daughter.
From adolescence she started rejecting us as parents and there is no dialogue.
She does not care about God.
She sponsored all the so-called progressive theories. From a moral point of view, she lives in a clearly disordered manner with her boyfriend.
It is as though she is not the girl we brought up.
As parents it’s like living on another planet from the one she lives on.
We are sure that as soon as she will be independent, she will move out by herself or with her boyfriend.
We see that she is restless, looking for something that does not give her peace.
We pray for her, we have masses celebrated for her. What more can we do to have her come back to God?
Please give us some advice.
We live with a permanent sorrow in our hearts.

Priest’s answer

Dearly beloved,
1. it seems to me that you are going through the same experience as the Prodigal Son’s father. He watched his son depart for a far flung land and fritter away all the goods he had received through his father’s love.
I understand your pain because in some ways it is similar to the pain a priest feels in trying to bring up children, young adults, youths according to God’s will and then he loses them one by one. 

2. We must not forget that whilst we do our best to sow good seeds, our adversary sows weeds, and not only secretly, but openly. Today in fact we call conquest of civilization what in reality is degradation of the human person, blind alley and road to perdition not only for the present but also for the future life.
Our children breathe the air of this world deeply through what is transmitted on social media and in the environments in which they spend a good part of their day.
Their parents’ testimony is like the voice of him who cries in the desert.

3. What to do for your daughter?
At this moment there is refusal on her part. Words are not heard. The testimony of her parents who are the most precious asset that the Lord has given her will perhaps be appreciated, but it is not part of the horizon of her future.
She wants her freedom, just like the prodigal son.
What she breathes around her together with the consequence of a disordered moral conduct has placed a veil over her mind. Right now there is no reasoning that can break through because her mind is darkened.

4. The bishop to whom Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, had turned understood this well. Saint Monica hoped that by talking to the Bishop her son would come to his senses. But the bishop told her that her son was unable to take in anything at that moment.
He assured her however, that a son worth all those tears would not have been lost.
Monica had to wait 14 years. She had to go through her son leaving home to settle in a far away land (from Africa he had come to Italy, first Rome, then Milan). She knew he was cohabiting and that he enjoyed some success at work, especially in Milan).
It looked as though all was lost.
But the Lord was waiting for him precisely in Milan to have him meet that great man and pastor: Saint’Ambrogio.
His conversion matured here and as a result he wrote that what before used to be his main mirage of his life, all of a sudden lost its charm. He wrote: ‘’What before (his conversion) I feared to lose, now I was glad I had left behind’’. (t.n)

5. Whilst you wait for your daughter to experience such a day, you are called to experience in your lives the passion and death of our Lord.
As you observe your inability to enter your daughter’s heart, you feel like Jesus stripped of his clothes, naked and humiliated.
Her rejection is like a never ending flagellation to you. Her obstinacy is like a crown of thorns.
This is the cross you are bearing. Only you know how bitter and heavy it is. 

6. I wish there was a little handy formula to help you quickly solve the anguish you are feeling right now.
But it doesn’t exist.
The Lord presented us with the image of a father who has a son who feels the oppressive weight of his father’s home and wants to leave for a distant country. 

It is the same pain that Jesus Christ felt when he saw the rejection and obstinacy on the part of some Jews.
He lovingly carried the cross for them too. His suffering was not in vain because it was accompanied by several conversions both before and after his death.

For now, the Lord has arranged for your sanctification to take this path, which was the path he had already taken.

7.  I don’t think you need to add other practices to those you are already doing.

Continue to have Masses celebrated and to pray the Holy Rosary.

I only suggest that you recite the Dominican litanies from time to time, which you can find by clicking on the search engine on our site. They are powerful in radically overturning situations considered humanly desperate.

Above all, I urge you to offer your life and your suffering to the Lord daily for the conversion of your daughter.

If, as has rightly been said, the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians, we must be equally persuaded that this daily martyrdom of yours is not in vain either for your sanctification or for the conversion of your daughter.

I accompany you with my prayer, and together with you I accompany your dearest daughter with prayer.
I bless you and I wish you all the best.
Father Angelo