Book Four - True Family
Chapter Eight - True Parental Love
Section 6. Parental Love Is Eternal

Is there a limit to parents' love for their children? Parents love their children not only during the childhood years, but throughout the child's entire life, and even into eternity. If a relationship is established between a parent and a child through whom they can feel increasing worth and value, then infinite force, infinite stimulation and something infinitely new will arise within that relationship. (322-12, 1970.6.14)

The love of a mother or father is one of the greatest forms of love in the human world. Even people in high positions in society are vulnerable to the needs of their children. Parental love toward one's children is unconditional and unlimited because it is the mother of all kinds of love. Thus, orphans who grow up without receiving parental love, thirst after it most of all. Although they may have a house to sleep in and food to eat, orphans always lack and long for something in their heart, and that is the love of a parent. (Blessed Family - 1017)

Most of you were raised by loving parents. Whether the children are young or old, their parents always love them. Even if parents have a seventy-year-old son, they will still look at him the way they used to when they raised him long before; this is parental heart. As children age the parent's heart continues to draw ever closer, the sense of responsibility toward their children increases, and the heart to live for the sake of the children deepens. We can see this clearly when we observe how parents relate to their children in society. (Blessed Family - 1017)

Parents go through many difficulties for the sake of their children, but do not feel the hardship. Why? It is because they love them. After giving their flesh and blood, do parents keep a record? No. Rather, they are pained at not being able to give more. The same is true for the mothers here, isn't it? When you breast-feed your babies and they don't feed well, you feel worried. Isn't it true that your babies take away your flesh and blood? In a sense, aren't they the greatest of all thieves? Yet still mothers feel anxious when their babies do not feed properly. Why do parents love their children so much? It is because this is the law of love. (39-334, 1971.1.16)

When a mother watches her baby feeding at her breast, her touch and feeling is centered on love. Also, when holding her baby, a mother experiences a beautiful atmosphere because heaven and earth enter a state of peace. This is why, no matter how much trouble babies can be, mothers have room in their hearts to accept and even encourage such behavior. There is no limit to the love parents feel for their children. In one sense, a baby is an enemy who sucks out his mother's flesh and blood. Yet there is no mother who thinks that way. A baby allows the discovery of many new things. For instance, a baby stimulates new hope for the mother and father. At such times, there are also new realizations. This bond is unchangeable. (Blessed Family - 1017)