reflection for 19 Aug

I was just reading the readings for today and I decided to write a little about what I thought about them. I like to try and find common denominators so that I can understand what the day’s readings are about and I think today, we should reflect of judgements.

The first reading deals with an ancient Jewish belief that a father’s sin is automatically imposed upon the son. This means that whatever judgement is put upon the father passes on to the son. The prophet Ezekiel tells us that this is not so and possibly pre-empts the statement from Jesus about whose sins had caused God to take away the sight of the man born blind. That’s what I know about the reading.

This is what I feel about the reading. I feel that the reading tells us not to blame others for our own wrongdoings. In this modern day, people too often blame things beyond their control for whatever wrongs they committed. This is just pushing the blame and the first reading today says that we can not just shift the blame like that.

There are many instances in our lives when we do something wrong and blame it on the circumstances. Yes, peer pressure is a problem and it can influence our decisions. But we must remember that we have a choice and many times, the choice we know will please God tends to be the unpopular choice and so that is the reason we give in to temptation.

This desire to be popular is inherent in all of us but I think more so in the youths. Adults tend to be more secure in their positions and so do not give in as easily to peer pressure. However, the youths and teenagers just do not have it as easy. As a young person, everybody wants to fit in and be part of a group. The problem here is that there are more groups doing the wrong things than there are doing the right. For every youth division of the Legion of Mary, there are probably about 50 cliques meeting on the very same days to do things that are or could be harmful to the spiritual or even physical wellbeing of the youths.

Maybe one way to counter this would be to have more youth groups catered to the youths looking to further their spiritual lives. This would be a good idea but it does seem like something that needs something else to work. I think that having more youth groups is a good thing but the more important thing that needs to be done is to encourage the development of the characters in the youths who join the groups.

I know that in many churches, there is a boom in the numbers in youth groups just before confirmation and that this boom lasts about a year at the most and then tends to fade. This needs to be addressed because it seems most people leave with a bad impression of these groups and this starts their falling away from the church. This is the first snowball per se. I know because that was the excuse I used when I was falling away from the church.

I was very active as a teenager in youth groups in the church. One day however, I just stopped because I felt there were other better things to do. I also felt that the group was getting too cliquish and I just did not feel a part of it anymore. There was also that wonderful catholic youth group thing that kills many catholic youth groups, politics. I shall write my views on that some other time but suffice to say, it made me leave that group.

That was not the end of it though. When I left the group, I started becoming what I swore I would never be, a Sunday Catholic. I had been serving the church since I was about 10 and without anything to do in church I suddenly felt lost. I went to mass every Sunday but it just did not mean anything to me anymore. I was falling away from the church and what did I do? I blamed the catholic youth groups.

No, I did not blame the group I had been in, I blamed every group out there. I was convinced that every Catholic group was the same and I wanted no part in them. The sad thing was, I knew that joining a group would be good for me. I knew that to stop the rot I needed to join a group but I just could not because I did not take responsibility for what I had done on my own accord. The group did not force me to leave, I did that on my own.

Now, I shall go into the point of that long spiel. Firstly, we as catholic youth groups need to keep onto our members. This is something we need to learn from the protestant churches. We tend to think that our church is so great that we don’t need to do that. Well, we’re right, we don’t need to. But we should anyway. We need to show concern about everybody who joins us. Yes, people might abuse this but do it anyway. We need to show that although the head of the Catholic church is in Rome, the heart of the Catholic church is in each and every one of us. We need to start caring.

If, when I had just started to fall away from the group, someone from the group had called me to see what was going on, I don’t know what the result would have been. But, nobody called and thus I am writing this. Maybe if in our groups, we don’t see somebody for a while, we should just call them and see if anything is the matter. We need to take the initiative and go out and help without others needing to come and ask us for help. Somehow, we are all good being reactive, a little too good maybe, but not really good at being proactive.

So that’s the first thing, be proactive when we see a fellow brother or sister start falling away. Oh, and in order to do that, we need to notice people. That is not usually done in most cases. We always tend to notice the prominent people but those guys don’t need to be noticed. We need to start noticing the quiet ones. These are the ones who won’t ask for help and the ones we won’t notice when they leave. We need to note their presence and approach them. As mechanical as this might be, we need to take down when they are there and when they are not. This will make them feel special and make it seem like the group really cares for their individual well being.

Besides keeping onto our members, we need to encourage them to participate more in ways in which they can contribute to the group. By giving them tasks to do that they’re good at, they might start to feel a stronger sense of belonging. This sense of belonging is important as if you read up on gangs and other entities of their ilk, you would realise that that is what keeps youths from leaving the gangs.

I realised I got a little sidetracked. I was talking about judgements and pushing the blame. Well, the parts above are like how to avoid getting the blame pushed upon youth groups but they seem to have nothing much to do with judgements. No worries, I shall touch on that now.

The Psalm for today tells about what kind of sacrifices God desires from us. From the psalm, we are told that the best sacrifice to offer God is a contrite heart. Why is this so? Well, a contrite heart is malleable and it tells God that we accept him as our Lord and God and commit all that we do to his hands. He does not need anything we give Him. He needs us. So by going to God with a contrite heart, we are in fact offering him ourselves.

Lastly, we reach the Gospel. The Gospel today was really short and talks about little children. Jesus accepts the little children because of what we are told in the Psalm. Little children admit that they are weak and thus give themselves fully to Jesus. As children we allow others to lead because we know that we do not know. We acknowledge or fallings and realise that there is someone else who can help us. When we get older, pride tends to get in our way but as children, this pride is not a major consideration at all. Thus, when we are told to be like little children, we need to understand that we need to chuck our pride by the door and let God lead our lives.

That was my convoluted way of reflecting on the bible verses for today. I hope this was beneficial. If not, I will promise you that I will practice until it becomes beneficial.

Mahalo