I Am Tired & Sad
Within my parish boundaries this past week, a grave, sexual evil happened to young children by young children. It has bothered me for days. Induced upon each other by each other, children today are destroying their bodies and their souls in the name of pop culture; and, they are doing it at the feet of their selfish parents.
It makes me queasy when I think about the mass amount of children growing up with consciences formed by evil (see the latest MTV Music Award's Miley Cyrus' performance with Robin Thicke), making it near impossible to know the difference between right and wrong. Not to sound desperate or drastic, but, our culture has lost its morality.
A person raised in a culture with no morality ends up in bondage to sin and evil. The person does not know he or she is in bondage; nor, quite probably, will ever know. Coffee shops and shopping malls do not have any sign of the religious. Music and television artists, writers, and producers who are responsible for forming peoples' consciences for the good are greatly lacking in their responsibility. The idea of God, much less God himself, cannot be found in the exterior of our culture today. Unfortunately, unless people search out the rooms behind closed doors where any form of prayer, spiritual activity, and / or worship is found; they are hard-pressed to find freedom from that which clings to them -- a spiritual ineptitude, a lack in that which most matters.
I understand that the parents of today are the most uncatechized generation in the history of the Church. I also understand that much of their irresponsibility in spirituality or religiosity is not their fault. They were never taught it. You cannot know what you were never taught.
However, when I witness the souls of so many children falling into destruction by the selfish actions of their parents, parents who are the adults and caretakers of these children, I am rightly angered at them.
Parents and adults of today, life is not about you. It is no longer about you. It is about your children; it is about the youth of today. The material world has a lot of enticement and anyone can easily get caught up in it. However, when we are spending money for comfort and ignoring our responsibility to form children who are not self-centered and not caught up in the culture, a culture of destruction I might add, then we are making an eternal choice that will affect them for the rest of their lives, both here and in the life to come. We are making the wrong eternal choice.
C. S. Lewis once said, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet ... only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
These are our children. They are our future. We are responsible for them. I am tired and sad of hearing of the pain and destruction in so many lives around me. Please, this Advent and Christmas season, gift me with a Christmas present. Just one. I ask that you spend this year trying to be a better person, caring for others more than yourself, and ridding yourself of this "me"-ism. Genuinely search out God. Why? You, and all those in your life, deserve it. You are God's creation; and, He longs for you to find Him, know Him, and love Him.
