A language we all can speak

A language we all can speak

Travel to a distant land where you are the stranger and cannot speak their language.  The same is true for foreign visitors to our country who attempt to converse with us.  This becomes the stumbling block for anyone who is entering a new environment and attempting to adhere to the dialect of believers in God.  

Many of us grew up learning the religion our parents taught us and that became our life-long church attendance.  However, as children reach adult status, if they’ve neglected to attend services at their church, the habit of retaining that status declines in a hurry.  When this occurs the church pews become empty and we as parents who continue to attend Mass question what has happened.  

This is a problem that resembles a language barrier since these matured children no longer believe in their childhood pattern of church attendance.  With that criterion is it any wonder what has become of Christian beliefs of our growing children?  How many families are referring to the absenteeism of their children who have reached decision making in their own homes and do not attend church any more?  Added to that, there are some families that do not have their own children baptized as well.

We may all witness this resolve of younger generations to become distanced from what we as the older generation found to be apropos.  Is there anything we, as the older generation, can do?  Just like the seminaries have been declining where the numbers of young men have turned away from the call to ministry, so the numbers of our children who at one time were eager to attend Mass has also dropped.  The one reality is there are too many outside influences competing with spiritual attractions in God and the Church that promise a type of wealth that the Church does not adhere to.  This wealth is growing at a rapid rate and includes keeping up with the Jones’ (old cliche’) bigger homes in upscale neighborhoods, many sports activities for their children that compete with Church attendance, and the need to become the top achiever in the neighborhood.  There is nothing wrong with these aspirations, but when Church attendance and the meaning of a spiritual connection become 2nd place in our lives, we are playing into the very plan of Satan’s attack on the Church via the home first.

Paul told his followers this regarding the devil;  “Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power.  Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil.  For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.  Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having everything, to hold your ground.  So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace.  In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”  (Eph 6: 10 - 17).  The problems that were prevalent in Ephesus are no different in 2024.

We are in a decline from a faith-filled society that promises to bring down all the connections to freedoms that are promised to us while the governments of the world will join in controlling us as a Marxist-oriented society that will destroy our democracy.  Neglecting our faith will be the first arrow of death to a God-given country that once trusted the rights of the Constitution.  Lose our faith in God, and where will our nation be?

Ralph B. Hathaway