Why is it that I am so affected by other people’s lack of discipline?

I always notice when children misbehave, but I often forget to notice when they’re behaving kindly. I never fail to recognize when people are talking disruptively (no matter how quiet) in a situation that is best suited for quiet. Yet the people who sit attentively go completely unnoticed.

Did I get old all of a sudden? Have my standards changed, or are people changing?

When I was a child if I was making noise in church (on the rare occasion that I was actually in a church of some kind), I’m very confident that some sort of corrective action would have taken place to silence me. (Note: That’s not a good thing.) When my children were younger, we treated them similarly. We never would have accepted unruly behavior in a quiet environment. It’s just disrespectful.

Am I just overly sensitive to the feelings of others? From my perspective, it seems like most people are concerned with only themselves. They give no thought to how their behavior (or the behavior of their children) might affect others.

While I may be hypersensitive, I think we Americans could use a good dose of discipline! So many people seem to be completely incapable of sacrifice. We eat too much. We spend too much. We talk too much. We sit on the couch too much. In today’s society, can you imagine if you were to ask a Catholic to abstain from meat on a Friday (outside of Lent)? We have this sense of entitlement that comes from — well, I don’t know where — but it seems to come from the devil!

Paragraph 1438 of the Catechism tells us that we should include penitential practices on Fridays. What a wonderful way for us to embrace the discipline that we are called to. So why don’t we? Instead of practicing discipline with an eye on Christ, we practice excess with an eye on the world.

There are numerous scriptural references to fasting and prayer, and I suggest that we could all benefit by taking them seriously. Why not start some sort of Friday tradition in your family?