15th Sunday after Pentecost 9.9.07 Becoming religious
Our Lord restores the young man to life and gives him back to his mother.
This can be taken as a symbol of Our Lord’s restoring the sinner to life and giving him back to his mother (the Church).
The Church is naturally solicitous for all her children and many of them are dead at any one time, dead in mortal sin.
How to bring them back to life is a perennial problem, and one which we all have, as we all share in the maternal role of the Church.
You worry about your children and grandchildren, and so do I, because they are my children too. As priest, but also just as member of the Church, we have a collective interest in each other’s children (and of course adults).
I say to some mothers who pray for their children’s conversion without any apparent success that maybe their prayers are helping convert someone else’s children, and someone else’s prayers may convert yours. In any case keep praying because that is always what is needed.
Why is it so hard to convert people? One would think we were taking them out and shooting them for the resistance that it meets. People don’t want to be converted.
Conversion is not a fast-selling item. It needs a bit of better advertising.
Going back to raising people from the dead, if we could do that as a regular thing imagine how much demand there would be.
We can’t bring dead people back to life physically, but we can do it spiritually. The Sacrament of Penance restores divine life to a soul which is dead in sin (or at least wounded).
This is a moment to be celebrated. There should be a brass band outside of every confessional to celebrate the return to life of the penitent.
But because forgiveness is not usually visible and not something that can be filmed or measured, it passes largely unnoticed.
Conversion, however, is more than being forgiven. People like being forgiven, but they don’t want to change the way they are living. That is, they want to be forgiven but they also want to keep sinning.
True conversion will lead to sorrow for sins to the point that we want to get rid of them completely, to live in a better way.
The joyful discovery waiting to be made is that if we do change to the point that we no longer sin we will actually be much happier, even in this life.
The general belief is that holiness of life is a drag, a real wet blanket, and something to be avoided as much as possible.
This is why your various children will shift uncomfortably if you raise religion with them. They will sense you are trying to get them back to Mass and the next thing they will be in the choir and praying all day.
How boring, they think. We know of course that being ‘religious’ is not just walking around all day with our hands joined. It is a whole way of life, where we give God His proper place and refer all things to Him. It does not mean we cannot enjoy life or do normal things, but just that whatever we do is for His glory and in proper balance with His will.
We have to get this message out, that being converted is fun, that it is the best thing anyone could do, that if you are not converted you are square and not one of the crowd. It won’t be easy, because there are more people resisting than who believe this, and also the devil will be in there spreading confusion and doubt in all directions.
But it is worth the battle, and the cause is urgent. Collectively we make one Mother, always concerned for her children. We cannot cease from that concern until every child has been rounded up. May Mary, Mother of us all, Mother of the Church, assist us with her maternal love and prayers.
