The Difference Is in the Parents

A look at the childhood of the prophet Samuel brings to our hearts the issue of parental responsibility in the conduct of children, especially in the first stage of their lives - when they are not yet fully aware of their actions.

There is a contrast between Hannah and Elkanah, Samuel's parents, and Eli, the father of Hophni and Phinehas. In their early life, it is said of both Samuel and Hophni and Phinehas that they did not know God (1 Sam. 2:12; 3:7). However, in spite of this, their conduct was very different from the beginning: Samuel pleased God, while Eli's sons repeatedly offended the Lord.

The fact that neither one nor the others knew God means that their conduct could not have come from the life of God in them, for they did not have it. It was simply the consequence of their upbringing at home, of the teaching and example of their parents.

While Hannah, a barren and suffering woman, had asked the Lord for a son and then offered him to His service, Eli had been complacent with his own, to the point that they had blasphemed against God and he had not hindered them (3:13). God had justified complaints against Eli, who had honored his sons more than the Lord (2:29).

Hannah had promised her son to the Lord, and in due time she fulfilled her promise, bringing him to the sanctuary of Shiloh. This gesture of Hannah's demonstrates a deep piety and self-sacrifice. Then, year after year, when she and her husband went to worship, they brought the child a beautiful robe, but always respecting his consecration. They knew that the child no longer belonged to them. Such was the measure of their devotion to God, and the way they honored him.

Eli, meanwhile, let the days go by contemplating the misdeeds of his sons, without assuming a firm attitude to stop them. Behind this passivity, there was a contempt for God, an iniquity that cost him dearly. We know how different was the end of both of them. Samuel was one of God's great prophets; on the other hand, Hophni and Phinehas died early under God's judgment.

Of course, in their majority, we cannot exempt Samuel and Eli's sons from personal responsibility. However, in the first stage of their lives, when they did not yet have a personal knowledge of God-that is, a faith of their own-their conduct was determined by the faith and conduct of their parents. And that faith and that conduct traced their paths from an early age.

May the Lord grant us Christian parents the grace to perceive this in time, before the die is already sadly cast for our children.

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