{"id":887,"date":"2019-09-12T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T09:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/?p=887"},"modified":"2019-09-12T09:30:42","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T09:30:42","slug":"reflection-15-september-2019-c-twenty-fourth-sunday-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/?p=887","title":{"rendered":"Reflection 15 September 2019 (C) Twenty-Fourth Sunday of the Year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>Reflection &amp; Dialogue<\/em><\/strong><em>:\nSearching for the lost sheep and the prodigal son today<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was once easy to identify \u201clost sheep\u201d\nand have a ministry to them. They were lapsed, or non-practising, Catholics. Certain\nzealous members of some Catholic organizations might seek them out and attempt\nto bring them back to the practice of there faith.&nbsp; They might also be visited by preachers\nduring parish missions. Matters are notably different in our own day. Many\nCatholics give up the practice of their religion at an early date. Some are\njust \u201clapsed\u201d and go no further, remaining believers to a greater or lesser\ndegree. But together with these there is now a growing denial of belief in God,\nand a tendency to make this denial public, as if such belief were incompatible\nwith a truly human life. And with this goes denial of belief in any afterlife.\nThis explicit denial can be pronounced among the literati and learned class. It\nis not new, and has in history tended to accompany high points in physics and\nliterature. We have a good example of it in the biblical <em>Book of Wisdom<\/em> (2:2-3), composed about 30 B.C., where the ungodly\nare made to say: \u201cthe breath in our nostrils is smoke, and reason is kindled by\nthe beating of our hearts. When it is extinguished, the body will turn to\nashes, and the spirit will dissolve like empty air\u201d. For believers, the loving\nFather in heaven continues to address his saving message to all these, and it\nwill be for believers to make this message known as befits each occasion.\nRejection, real or apparent, of the Church among the young can come about from\na variety of causes. With these in mind, it is good to pay attention to surveys\ndone on the attitude of the young towards the Catholic faith. Some of their difficulties\narise from an incorrect understanding of certain points of doctrine, such as\nthe real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or in consecrated hosts. The task\nof bringing the message of God\u2019s loving concern to the many groups in our own\nday is a daunting one, but not one to despair of, since the chief agent at work\nwill be none other than God, the loving Father and Jesus Christ present in our\nworld in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reflection &amp; Dialogue: Searching for the lost sheep and the prodigal son today It was once easy to identify \u201clost sheep\u201d and have a ministry to them. They were lapsed, &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":888,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/887\/revisions\/888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sundayscriptureonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}