Oh My Papa

 

The men’s prayer group played a video this morning of the 1974 Paul Anka hit, Oh My Papa, and I cried as I recalled and softly sang the words: “Oh my papa, to me he was so wonderful …”.  When I got back home, I found that on-line video and saved it on my computer for future playings.

I’ve read many stories (and heard personally) about the impact of bad or absent dads on their children.  Most of the most prominent atheists of our time had terrible fathers.  I know that aborting or the taking of a life, which is a gift from God, is very wrong in all cases, but I don’t pretend to understand how that evil compares to the accepting of God;s gift of life, a child, and then then abusing it.  Created in His Image, we were meant to live and protect that image.  Jesus showed us how.  And He showed us what love is.  An image is made so that you can perceive the reality of the original by looking at it.  When people look at us, are they inclined in some way to see God?  Our earthly fathers are so important in helping us grow in that image, of our heavenly Father.

So, either play the Oh My Papa song and cry in happiness, or don’t listen to songs like that, but pray for your father.  For some reason, God chose you as a gift to him, him being good or bad (as we now understand it).

But no father is perfect.  The night I heard that old hit song, I had dreams of the blessings my father gave to me.  And then I recalled the time or two where he failed.  No person is perfect while on earth.  So, I’m having a mass said for him on the 30^th of this month.  It’s a good thing to pray for both our parents. God chose our parents for a reason, amd I pray I can live up to His reasons. 

And, I recalled that I AM special to God.  After WWII my dad came home with post-traumatic stress syndrome, but they didn’t call it that then.  And he was so bad that my mom tossed him out.  And after living as a hobo for 6 months he came back, better I guess.  And within a year later I was born.  I’m sure no relatives back then faulted my mom for tossing my dad out.  But if that “bad man” wasn’t allowed back, I wouldn’t be writing this now.

All life is a gift from God, and for a reason.

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And after I finished reflecting and writing the above words, while in the adoration chapel, God gave me a nudge, or perhaps His thoughts on the matter.  I began reading the book My Other Self again recently.  In the words of the book, Jesus speaks to you.  I opened to my bookmark, which was on page 21.  Jesus spoke straight to the heart of the matter.

Why Satan Agrees With Our Goals

 

Jesus said to focus on helping the poor and the lowly.  That is what most people say they are trying to achieve, help those in need.  And Satan might agree with that focus, that it is a good thing to do.  What?! So why might Satan be agreeing with our goals, which seem to be focused on loving God and neighbor?  I think we are seeing why in our country, and in the world today.  The end-result focused on by all those in power sounds like a very good thing, but the means used to achieve those results can be very bad. And that is where Satan gives his advice.  It is like trying to help a poor person to get food, and Satan suggests we do that by giving him a gun so he can rob a grocer.

In our culture, there are record numbers of single people (and married people) “choosing” not to have children which they can’t properly take care of – by their definition of what take care of means, or by eliminating them by abortion other means.  Many people justify these self-centered actions by pointing to the poor children or other people they can now help, or sometimes even to the church ministries they now focus on to help the poor --- as they ignore their spouse and/or children.  Families and having kids are looked down upon by our society today, and especially family-focused activities, like prayer.

I’m reading a book titled “War and Peace,” but not the one you know.  This one is sermons by Bishop Fulton Sheen, given from 1941-1945.  They could --- or perhaps should is a better word --- be given in churches today.  He talks about women working, focused on money or careers, not their children.  He talks about prayers not allowed in school, and forgotten in homes, and college professors teaching there is no “truth or morality.”  He talks about selfish views and the low-value placed on some life, which led to getting rid of those “unneeded lives,” --- like the Jews in Nazi Germany, (and aborted babies are today). 

Perhaps Sheen’s (and other’s) sermons, along with the horrors of WWII, did bring about some change in the culture then.  After the war, when television became popular, Bishop Sheen’s program was one of the top-rated shows.  And from 1947-57 the Family Theater was a top-rated weekly radio program.  That program began and ended with “The family that prays together, stays together.”  I was born during that period, into a Christian America, where there was a truth, a moral right, and prayers were said in schools (and the pledge of allegiance).

You know where things are at now.  The primary focus of politics or in the press or in our schools is making sure we “help people in need of help” ---- as those in power define those people, and that help.  And Satan likely agrees with that end and will suggest ways to achieve it, even as he did with those doing “good things” to justify the war we now call WWII.  And all of the people in power then, on all sides in WWII, thought they were doing “good things.”  None thought they were doing evil.  Satan lied to them well.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says to love as I have loved.  Love starts now, whatever the situation.  Past is past.  Love now, is helping others --- yes --- but as Jesus would have loved them.  Those ways never were self-centered, or for a political party.    

It took a world war to change the then-existing cultural mindset of our country back then, as Bishop Sheen spoke of in his sermons.  And with the similar mindset now in our culture today ….?

A Life

 

As I drove to church this morning, I tuned to the local Catholic radio station.  On Saturday mornings they play an episode from Family Theater.  This morning’s story, I quickly determined, was about a young boy and his toy whistle, a story I had heard before but decided to listen to again as I drove to church.

The young boy loved his toy whistle and blew it often and everywhere, including school, where it taken from him after he blew it during one of his classes.  He was also required to stay after class as a punishment for his misbehavior.  His parents noticed the missing whistle and his staying late.  “Did you blow that whistle in school?” they asked.  “No,” he replied, but he was staying late just because his teacher was mean.  She was mean to everyone, except one other teacher who she was always kissing.  His parents didn’t believe him, but ….  And so the rumors started among parents in the small village, and both teachers were fired as a result of the young boy’s lies.  On her last day, the class watched silently as she cleaned out her desk.  Then she called the young boy’s name, and gave him back the whistle. 

I arrived at the church early intending to go to confession, but I decided to stay in the car a few minutes to listen to the end of the story.  The man on the radio said how the boy had justified all his actions to himself and his friends, and no one ever knew of his lies. At that point I suddenly realized the story being told on the radio was being told by an old man, who once was that boy.  He was cleaning out old storage boxes from his youth, and came across the whistle.  He remembered how his young teacher had gone home to live with her parents after her firing, and that rumors followed her as she tried to find new employment.  She contracted a minor illness and then, to everyone’s surprise, had suddenly died.  The old man telling the story sadly recalled all that he had done as a boy, blew the rusted whistle once more, and then threw it away.

It was a very moving program, and made me sad.

The man spoke of how lightly we treat another’s life, and like little kids we think everything we want is so important.  But every life is important he said ---- and then I realized that the radio story had ended, and these words were a man speaking in support of a local pregnancy counseling center, against abortion.  The words he said sounded like they also could have been said about that little boy, the one who wanted things his way.  But this was a different story; it just sounded the same, as like that little boy some of us think our life is more important than some other little child’s life, and so we can kill the life God gifted us.

It was a very moving commercial, and made me sad.

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Inside the church, I read my Morning Prayers, and so many of the words continued the story in my heart.

                1^st Letter of John, 3:11-17

This is the message you heard from the beginning: you should love one another.  We should not follow the example of Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother.  …. The man who does not love is among the living dead.  Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.  And you know that eternal life abides in no murder’s heart.

The way we came to understand love was that He laid down His life for us; we too must lay down our lives for our brothers.  I ask you, how can God survive in a man who has enough of the world’s goods, yet closes his heart to his brother when he sees him in need?

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I had arrived early at church intending to go to confession, but a sign said that there would be no confession today; there would be the sacrament of Confirmation given, in which the Holy Spirit is called down upon people to help them begin to witness love to others as Jesus did.  And then at mass, we heard a young man pronounce a commitment of his beliefs and his oath, in front of all his parish witnesses, that he would give his life to God.  Next week he will be ordained as a priest, and the Holy Spirit called down upon him, for him to become a priest, a shepherd of God’s people.

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All these stories were about the importance of each life, to the God who created them, and as they should be to each one of us.  No life is unimportant.  Ours is no more important than that any other’s, but how we each live our life has eternal consequences.

It was a good morning.