Cords of Love and Trust

As her children become young adults, Tina Mayeux discovered a means of entrusting them to Mary by means of a prayer binding them to her Immaculate Heart.

Holy Week is upon us, and we are anticipating the most solemn days of the Church calendar: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Solemnity of Easter. For our family, these days have always meant gathering to commemorate the Triduum and celebrate Easter together with our entire family, but this year our oldest daughter who is away at college will not be able to join us. Her absence is a stark reminder that our children are becoming young adults—more independent and autonomous—and that I must trust them to be responsible and virtuous, and to lead good lives, without guiding them at every moment. I must learn to let them go.

When praying the Stations of the Cross, I am often struck and saddened by the Eighth Station, when Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children," Jesus urges them (Luke 23:28). While they are weeping and mourning because of the suffering of Our Lord, He tells them that they should be expressing sorrow for their sins and the sins of their children.

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Jesus is also speaking to you and me today. As our children get older and less dependent on us as parents for guidance, they will inevitably make some less-than-perfect choices in their lives. Although we strive to guide and direct them, there will be times when they do not heed our advice and will make mistakes and poor decisions.

Remembering a recommendation I recently read to entrust our children to Our Lady during the recitation of the Rosary, I have started to conclude each decade with this short but powerful prayer, “With these beads bind my children to your Immaculate Heart!” The author of this short but powerful prayer is not clear; however, some have attributed it to St. Louise de Marillac, who lost her husband twelve years after their marriage and had an only son. She, with her spiritual director, St. Vincent de Paul, co-founded the Daughters of Charity following the death of her husband. In a letter from St. Vincent to St. Louise, he gives this comforting counsel to her regarding her son:

Remember also that the faults of the children are not always imputed to the parents, especially when they have had them educated and have given them good example as you have done, thank God. (Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Vol. 1, Letter 221)

As hard as we try, our children may make mistakes, and, according to St. Vincent de Paul, we are not always responsible for their faults.

Although reflecting on the Eighth Station is often troubling for me for a moment, I am quickly reassured when, at the Twelfth Station, as He is dying on the cross, Jesus gives us His Mother Mary and entrusts the disciple John to her. I remember that with this action, Jesus promised that He was giving us His Mother as an intercessor and protector: “Behold your mother!” (John 19:27)

With this prayer of binding my children to her during my Rosary, I am consoled and confident that she will lead them to her Immaculate Heart and keep them enfolded within it as they mature into young women and face the temptations and hardships that come with adulthood.

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In her apparition to the children of Fatima on June 13, 1917, Our Lady spoke of devotion to her Immaculate Heart. She singled out the visionary Lucia for a special mission to make her known and loved in the world and to establish devotion to her Immaculate Heart. She told Lucia that she would be with her always and that her Immaculate Heart would comfort her and lead her to God.

I believe that Mary’s words apply to each of us, and to our children as well. As hard as it is to let go of my quickly maturing children, her promise to be with them, comfort them, and lead them to God resonates in my heart and gives me the assurance that they are protected and well taken care of, even when I am not there to help them.

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Our greatest aspiration as parents should be for a happy reunion with our children one day in heaven. And so, I will continue to commend my daughters to the Immaculate Heart of Mary each time I recite the Rosary, binding them to her with cords of love and trust, confident that she will be a mother to them as they discover their paths in life.

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