The Bethlen Home Messenger, 1997 (1. szám)

1997-06-01 / 1. szám

S ßö'RJiS'lQ BY REV. NICHOLAS NOVAK

MOTHERS, GRANDMOTHERS IN THE FINAL ACE OF THIS WORLD

From Paul, Apostle of Jesus Christ, to Timothy, his dear son: l thank Cod, whom I, like my forefathers, worship with a pure intention -- when I mention you in my prayers. I am reminded of the sincerity of your faith, a faith which was alive in Lois your grandmother and Eunice, your mother before you. Stir into flame the gift of God which is within you!

For my departure is upon me. I have run the great race, l have finished the course, I have kept the faith.

You , must face the fact: the final age of this world is to be a time of troubles. Men will love nothing but money and self... with no respect for parents... who put pleasure in the place of Cod; men who preserve the outward form of religion, but are a standing denial of its reality.

But for your part, stand by the truths you have learned... which have power to make you wise and lead you to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ!!

From Paul's Second Letter to Timothy 1:1-6, 3:1-15, 4:7-8

When the Apostle wrote these lines to his spiritual son Timothy, and spoke about the end, the collapse, disintegration of "this world” -- he meant his own age, his own generation, his own world, nearly 2000 years ago. Would we not know this, the passage may well be taken as a quotation from a present-day editorial. Not that these sins were not there in every age of history, in every society, because they were. But when this behavior becomes the dominant feature of a generation on a world-wide scale, when divinely ordained moral precepts are openly ridiculed, when the person and teaching of Jesus is the favorite subject of perverted mockery on stage and screen, when the chief Executive of the united States, finds it fashionable to preside, as it were, with an approving smile over a sickening display of sexual depravity, then only the spiritually dead cannot see the rock- bottom corruption, the cynical hypocrisy eating, rotting away the very foundation which once made America a respected, often emulated society in the eyes of the world.

Today? Christian congregations are again little islands amidst the unbridled flood of a new paganism, like they were in the time of the apostle Paul, in the public school system young children are expected to appreciate "alternative lifestyles" ; their parents are supposed to feel sorry for the victims of AIDS, while their hard-earned tax dollars subsidize the "artistic expression" of the ordinary filth and outright poison. Many people say: it's too bad, but what can we do about it? At the Bethlen Home, a residence of so many elderly mothers and grandmothers, we say: yes, there is much that can be done about it.

First: by our Christian witnessing, we stand by the truths we have learned from our faithful ancestors, from "our confessor fathers and mothers"-- as we celebrate in the words of our Communion liturgy. Also here, on the pages of our newsletter, the Bethlen Home Messenger. With a mailing list of more than 900 names, we are in touch with a very large "family"! In this issue, on this subject, we do have a message. A message of heartfelt concern, and a very certain hope. We call it: "cnristian Education". Our point is not merely recommending Sunday School, or the various youth programs in your congregation, in a totally secularized, anti-religious establishment they are of vital importance. But their effectiveness depends, to a very large measure, on the homes, the families, where our young people come from, in practical terms: on mothers and grandmothers, who teach them to pray, who bring them to church, who have the courage to say no to immoral, violence, glorifying TV programs, who read to them children's classics, who teach them respect for ail living things, who lay down the line against drug abuse, even before it starts. Parents, grandparents, who can rightfully expect to be honored, because they themselves lead an honorable life. Like Timothy, the young companion of the apostle Paul, they may also have a truly precious, enduring inheritance, the sincere faith of Lois and Eunice. Crowing up in a family where Christian principles are not only a tradition, ever so often taken for granted, and so relegated to things that belong to the past, but an every day way of life, beaming its guiding light on the path of the future. Mothers, grandmothers, save that faith in Jesus, and that faith will save you and your children!

Dear God, my Father in Heaven,

I know that you do not expect me to save the whole world, I am so worried about. But give me strength and patience to do my best with what I have, where I am. Teach me the humble wisdom that it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Let me be a member of that minority, for whose sake you will show mercy even to the ungrateful, the undeserving, in the name of Jesus, l pray. Amen.