"The Good Old days"

The title of our Blog is called the "The Good Old days" for a good reason. The voices of the world are so loud and powerful and there is so much static in the airwaves that we can't hear the Lord calling. The Good Old days" used to be when my grandma was a child. Sadly enough we find ourselves calling the 50's and 60's The Good Old Days. We are now in an age of selfishness and sin, neglect and self satisfaction. Remember "Mr. Rogers", the kids TV show that people loved. Parents felt safe with Mr. Rogers, but if you remember, one of the repeated songs on that program was "The Most important person in the whole wide world is me, me, me". That generation is now in their 50's and 60's and their children are in the 30's and 40's and their children are those little ones today, three generations later, that are often times the young people out of control, disobedient, and disrespectful  to their parents, grand parents,teachers and authority in general.

Where did this all get started and when did this roller coaster speed up?   Lets back up just a bit. When we were young (I'll be 75 years old next month) Manners were taught, our christian and Catholic teachings were practiced. God was evident inn most homes and certainly the biggest crime that we committed in school was leaving chewing gum under the desk on the chair or in the girls hair in front of you. We did what we were told or we got spankings if we didn't or were sent to the office if we were disrespectful. As we grew up, we began to loose our bearings.. We started to look for freedom from those restrictions. We were tired of being told what to do. We started on the long empty journey of getting to know ourselves.  And we started making our own choices about right and wrong. In the process we lost God who set out a group of laws that were truly life giving and we lost the spiritual dimension of ourselves. So some went searching and ended up in the spirituality of the East. Some found Gurus, many were shucking off the moral teachings of our Christian upbringing and trading it for a new found freedom to make our own decisions about our bodies, to seek pleasure and not having so many restrictions.  

Choices! It was all about Choices. In Deuteronomy 30:19 the Lord said," I call heaven and earth today to witness against you. I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live.".We made our choices and shucked off the teaching of the Church (Roman Catholic) and rejected Pope Paul VI solemn words rejecting the practice of birth control for instance. He told us then that it was not tested enough and no one knew the real consequences of using chemicals in ones body like this. He also said that the most important was the result in the marriage . The danger of using these drugs was the growing seeing the woman as an object of pleasure rather than a cherished "bride". As a result of this, Priests and sisters were leaving the church in droves and parents were getting divorced at an alarming rate. There was outright disregard of authority in general. Decency was beginning to fade into the background. We had the Viet Nam War, The protesters, drugs, free sex and free from life and responsibility! With it came first birth control then soon to follow came abortion and now the result of all of that is euthanasia and assisted suicide. We listened to the devil himself with the cunning message of freedom to choose. When did this enter our minds? Over the course of years. Much was subliminal, under the line of conscious thought, ideas were promoted subtly

Just as we have the freedom to choose wrongly we can also choose rightly. We believe that God is calling us out of that self focused life style to lives of prayer and serious searching, honest searching our lives and looking deep into the eyes of Jesus calling us to Himself and His mission. Those eyes full of mercy and compassion love us so deeply that it is hard to take in sometimes. When He calls he gives us every thing we need to answer. Courage, just like he gave to Our Blessed Mother. Her Yes was all he needed . He supplied the Grace and that is what he has in store for us. Let us turn this world around and make it so that some day in the future maybe they will look back at us and say "Wow, look what they faced and the courage it took to turn the tide of suffering in their day. Those were the "Good Old Days" when prayer and courage won the battle, so, if they could do it , so can we.