This is my first blog in a couple of months and my first attempt to maintain blogs for resources. Possibly I aim to do one a least one a week and I wanted to write this one as soon as possible as the idea only came to me on the 10th September.
I was attending mass and today’s gospel was the Parable of the Prodigal son from the book of Luke. The priest followed with the homily commenting that the Prodigal Son is one of the most difficult parables to appreciate as it shows the father praising the return of the son who appeared greedy and irresponsible whiles the hard working son was not accredited for his hard work. The moral of the story is that God loves us no matter what we do in the past. This story does not appear to all for that reason and there can be many examples that can be found in modern day to day lives.
The priest in the homily acknowledged how the story also focuses on the persons redemption and to turn away from our bad past is worth a celebration and worthy of recognition, as in in the words of Oscar Wilde; every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
The priest also related the story to an episode of First Dates Ireland that he recently watched ( a very trendy and up to date priest altogether). Anyway he discussed an episode where two people meet and click fairly well on their date. However it is noted by the girl that the man is not drinking, when the girl questions him on this, he admits he is a recovering drug addict and alcoholic. They discussed the matter for a while and even though they got along very well the woman decided not to meet the man again because of his past. This simply raises an ethical questions was the woman right? Her reasons were certainly justified. However her choice certainly places the man in a difficult position in that he is being reminded of his past and not feeling rewarded for overcoming his problems.
The episode, if can be found, is a great resource for the topic of social development and ethical choices. Teenagers may easily encounter similar problems, but it raises social and political questions.
http://www.her.ie/entertainment/recovering-addict-big-hit-first-dates-rejected-revealing-past/288787
Above is the link illustrating what happened on the date and the twitter reactions. The resource is effective for a mature discussion methodology lesson.
B Courtney's Blog 