In our first encounter, we reflected on the best gift we can give our children: prayer. But we also discovered something that can be challenging: when we begin to pray for them, God does not only want to act in their lives… He wants to act in us first.

Prayer invites us to begin a journey. A journey of growth, of conversion, of trust, and of spiritual combat — because, even though we often forget it, our battle is not against our children, nor against their decisions, nor against the circumstances we experience with them.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers, against the rulers of this dark world, against the evil spirits that dwell in the heavenly realms." (Ephesians 6:12)

Saint Paul reminds us that we are in a spiritual battle. And God, in His love, does not leave us unarmed.

Today I would like to share two simple yet profoundly powerful tools to continue this journey.

  1. The Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God: letting God speak to us and transform us

    One of the weapons of spiritual combat is the Word of God. And, curiously, we sometimes underestimate it precisely because of its simplicity.

    We are a bit like Naaman when the prophet Elisha asks him to do something seemingly simple: bathe seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman becomes angry. He expected something more spectacular, more complex, more extraordinary. Until someone helps him see a profound truth: if he had been asked to do something difficult, he probably would have done it without question.

    How many times does the same thing happen to us?

    We keep circling around the same pain, the same fear, the same problem for years — sometimes decades — and yet we leave closed the very source from which God wants to speak to us, heal us, and transform us from the root.

    Daily reading of the Word is not a secondary practice or a simple act of devotion. It is God speaking to our heart.

    It is there that He corrects us with love, consoles our sorrows, illuminates our darkness, unmasks hidden wounds, strengthens our hope, and engraves His precepts and His eternal purpose for each of us upon our hearts. It is also there that He reveals to us, with mercy and truth, what needs to be transformed in our lives.

    There is no need to start with something complicated. It is enough to open the Bible with humility and perseverance, even if at first it seems simple or even "insufficient."

    The Church reminds us of this truth with conviction. In Verbum Domini, Pope Benedict XVI states:

    "The Word of God is at the foundation of every authentically Christian spirituality."

    We will not be able to sustain a journey of growth, nor a spiritual battle, if we do not learn to nourish ourselves with the voice of God.

  2. Radically surrendering our children to God

    This second step may seem easy to say… but it is often one of the most difficult to live. Truly surrendering our children to God. Not a surrender of words. Not a partial surrender. A deep, radical, and genuine surrender.

    I say this from my own experience. For a long time, I believed I had already placed my children in the hands of the Lord. I prayed, I trusted… or at least that is what I thought.

    Until I understood something very simple: if I continued to live dominated by anguish, despair, and the constant need to resolve everything by my own strength, perhaps I had not truly let go yet.

    I remember the day when, before the Blessed Sacrament, I was finally able to truly surrender my children to the Lord. Curiously, the circumstances did not improve. They even seemed to worsen — but something changed profoundly within me: peace arrived.

    And that peace changes everything; because when we live in desperation, we make poor decisions, we seek answers where we should not, we act out of fear and exhaustion.

    But when we live in the peace of God, we begin to see differently. We can listen better. We can discern. We can grow.

    And from that peace, nourished by the Word, we also begin to see ourselves with greater clarity: our wounds, our reactions, our areas of conversion — everything that God wants to heal in us.

    Saint Francis de Sales said:

    "Let nothing trouble your heart; abandon yourself completely to the Providence of God."

    This surrender does not happen overnight. It too is a journey — but it is worth asking for that grace persistently. The grace to truly let go.

    The grace to trust even when we do not understand. The grace to rest in the hands of a Father who loves our children infinitely more than we ever could.

    Let us continue the journey — with prayer, with the Word, and with hearts learning, little by little, the difficult yet liberating art of surrendering everything to God.