{"id":17587,"date":"2015-01-10T14:46:33","date_gmt":"2015-01-10T20:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/?p=17587"},"modified":"2017-04-17T21:58:49","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T01:58:49","slug":"losing-our-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markmallett.com\/blog\/losing-our-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Losing Our Children","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"
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THE NOW WORD ON MASS READINGS
for January 5th-10th, 2015
of the Epiphany<\/p>\n

Liturgical texts here<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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I <\/strong>have had countless parents come up to me in person or write me saying, “I don’t understand. We took our children to Mass every Sunday. My kids would pray the Rosary with us. They would go to spiritual functions… but now, they’ve all left the Church.”<\/p>\n

The question is why? As a parent of eight children myself, the tears of these parents has sometimes haunted me. Then why not my kids? <\/em>In truth, every one of us has free will. There is no forumla, per se<\/em>, that if you do this, or say that prayer, that the outcome is sainthood. No, sometimes the outcome is atheism, as I’ve seen in my own extended family.<\/p>\n

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But this week’s powerful readings from the First book of John unveil the antidote <\/em>to apostasy that truly is the answer to how to keep oneself and one’s loved ones from falling away.<\/p>\n

St. John explains that the very hope of our salvation is that God loved us first.<\/p>\n

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In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as expiation for our sins. (Tuesday’s first reading)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Now, this is an objective truth. And here’s where the problem for many families begins: it remains an objective<\/em> truth. We go to Catholic school, Sunday Mass, Catechesis, etc. and we hear this truth, expressed in a multitude of ways through the life and spirituality of the Church, as objective <\/em>truth. That is, many Catholics are raised their entire lives without being invited, encouraged, and taught that they must make this love of God a subjective <\/em>truth. They must enter into a relationship, a personal<\/em> relationship with God of their own free will in order for the power of these objective truths to personally “set them free.”<\/p>\n

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Sometimes even Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally: not Christ as a mere \u2018paradigm\u2019 or \u2018value\u2019, but as the living Lord, \u2018the way, and the truth, and the life\u2019<\/strong>. \u2014POPE JOHN PAUL II, L\u2019Osservatore Romano (English Edition of the Vatican Newspaper), March 24, 1993, p.3.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is the beauty, wonder, and essential difference that sets Christianity apart from every other religion. We are invited by God Himself to a transforming and tender relationship with Him. Hence, St. John makes the crucial point that his victory over the world comes from having made the objective truth a subjective<\/em> one.<\/p>\n

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We have come to know and to believe<\/em> in the love God has for us. (Wednesday’s first reading)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What I am saying is that, as parents, we must do everything we can to bring our children to a personal <\/em>relationship with Jesus, who is the way <\/em>to the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit. We have to invite them over and over again to make their faith their own. We have to teach them that a relationship with Jesus is not just believing He exists (because even the devil believes this); rather, they need to cultivate this relationship through prayer and reading Scripture, which is God’s love letter to us.<\/p>\n

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…prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ and with the Holy Spirit. The grace of the Kingdom is “the union of the entire holy and royal Trinity . . . with the whole human spirit.”<\/span><\/strong> \u2014Catechism of the Catholic Church, <\/em>n. 2565<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My heart explodes when I read these words. God wants to unite Himself to me. <\/em>This is wondrous. Yes, as the Catechism teaches, “prayer is the encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him.” <\/em>[1]<\/sup><\/a>cf. CCC, <\/em>n. 2560<\/span><\/span>