Memorial of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, Virgin

Lectionary: 492

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111312.cfm

MSF Picnic
August 2012

Urge the younger men, similarly, to control themselves, 
showing yourself as a model of good deeds in every respect, 
with integrity in your teaching, dignity, and sound speech 
that cannot be criticized,

With the world-sweeping deluge of computerese, old folks have gotten used to calling in the grandchildren to show us how to copy and paste, email, and uninstall malware, whatever that is. 

They tell me that elephant cows live a long time, even forty years, because the African climate typically cycles every thirty to thirty-five years. Droughts fall upon the land and only the oldest animals remember where to find the deep springs of water. Grandmother elephants faithfully lead the young bulls and calves to those underground oases where dry dirt gives way to mud. Perhaps that's why some disciplined human beings live for a century, while the undisciplined die of COPD and alcoholism in their sixties and seventies. Despite the onslaught of bewildering gadgets, we're still needed. 

The key to disciplining children is self-discipline. The parent who lacks patience teaches impatience, anger and punishing violence. The self-disciplined parent makes disciples of her children. She teaches her children a love of learning as she studies; the love of work, as she works; and the love of God as she prays. She teaches peace-making as she holds peace in her heart. 

In today's first reading, Saint Paul urges his disciple Titus to be a model of patience, fidelity, confidence and patience. He is not permitted to bemoan the good old days of the past when children obeyed their parents and students respected their teachers. Rather he must have faith in the Spirit of God which seeps into the hearts of the young as they watch their elders. 

Patience, in our Christian spirituality, is not strangling the impulse to destroy, as we often suppose. It is rather that confident assurance that the Spirit of God will prevail. We have only to watch, wait and behold.