Cooking and scripture

I was getting together a brine for some pork I'm BBQ-ing to celebrate the visit of a dear Catholic couple, so open to God and His will in their lives, and I spilled some salt. This quote came to mind of our mutually edifying friendship and Godly friendships in general.

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt lose its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house. So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. Matthew 5:13-16

It's the kind of jumbled up thoughts that come to mind when you are cooking & praying!

May you all be blessed with such Godly friendships!

An interesting reading list

1. Epictetus, Golden Sayings
2. Seneca, Moral Essays
3. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
4. St. Augustine, Confessions
5. Solomon, Proverbs (Bible)
6. Sirach and Wisdom (Bible)
7. The Gospels (Bible)

All of the above mentioned books are available for free as AUDIO files which can be downloaded to a portable device and listened to while driving.

Epictetus http://librivox.org/golden-sayings-of-epictetus-by-epictetus/

Seneca (seems to be all in German)http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=seneca&status=all&action=Search

Marcus Aurelius http://librivox.org/the-meditations-of-marcus-aurelius/

Saint Augustine http://librivox.org/confessions-by-saint-augustine-of-hippo/

Solomon, Proverbs-American Standard Version http://librivox.org/the-book-of-proverbs-asv-ss/

Proverbs - World English Version http://librivox.org/old-testament-world-english-bible/

Wisdom, Douay-Rheims http://librivox.org/book-of-wisdom-by-douay-rheims-version/

Nativity, St. Matthew, Douay-Rheims http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search.php?title=&author=Douay-Rheims+Version&action=Search
Librivox.org www.librivox.org

The Mothers of Lu

Without me telling them about this prayer, both my daughter & son announced their intentions within months of me beginning to pray this prayer!

"The little village of Lu, northern Italy, with only a few thousand inhabitants, is in a rural area 90 kilometres east of Turin. It would still be unknown to this day if, in the year 1881, the family others of Lu had not made a decision that had “serious consequences”. The deepest desire of many of these mothers was for one of their sons to become a priest or for a daughter to place her life completely in God’s service.

Under the direction of their parish priest, Msgr. Alessandro Canora, they gathered every Tuesday for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, asking the Lord for vocations. They received Holy Communion on the first Sunday of every month with the same intention. After Mass, all the mothers prayed a particular prayer together imploring for vocations to the priesthood.

Through the trusting prayer of these mothers and the openness of the other parents, an atmosphere of deep joy and Christian piety developed in the families, making it much easier for the children to recognize their vocations."

From 1 to 4 September 1946, the majority of the 323 priests and religious met in their village of Lu for a reunion which attracted world-wide attention.

"Did the Lord not say, “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Mt 22:14)? In other words, many are called, but only a few respond to that call. No one expected that God would hear the prayers of these mothers in such an astounding way. From the tiny village of Lu came 323 vocations!: 152 priests (diocesan and religious), and 171 nuns belonging to 41 different congregations. As many as three or four vocations came from some of these families.

The most famous example is the Rinaldi family, from whom God called seven children. Two daughters became Salesian sisters, both of whom were sent to San Domingo as courageous, pioneer missionaries. Five sons became priests, all joining the Salesians. The most well-known of the Rinaldi brothers is Blessed Philip Rinaldi, who became the third successor of St. John Bosco as Superior General of the Salesians. Pope John Paul II beatified him on 29 April 1990. In fact, many of the vocations from this small town became Salesians.

It is certainly not a coincidence, since St. John Bosco visited Lu four times during his life. The saint attended the first Mass of his spiritual son, Fr. Philip Rinaldi in this village where he was born. Philip always fondly recalled the faith of the families of Lu:

“A faith that made our fathers and mothers say, ‘The Lord gave us our children, and so if He calls them, we can’t say no.’”

Fr. Luigi Borghina and Fr. Pietro Rota lived the spirituality of Don Bosco so faithfully that the former was called the “Brazilian Don Bosco” and the latter the “Don Bosco of Valtellina”. Pope John XXIII once said the following about another vocation from Lu, His Excellency, Evasion Colli, Archbishop of Parma: “He should have become pope, not me. He had everything it takes to become a great pope.”

Every ten years, the priests and sisters born in Lu come together from all around the world. Fr. Mario Meda, the long-serving parish priest of Lu, explained that this reunion is a true celebration, a feast of thanksgiving to God who has done such great things for Lu."

The prayer that the mothers of Lu prayed was short, simple, and deep:

“O God, grant that one of my sons may become a priest!
I myself want to live as a good Christian
and want to guide my children always to do what is right,
so that I may receive the grace, O God, to be allowed to give you a holy priest! Amen.”



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Mother of six priests and four religious sisters mourned in India

Stories like this make me think of my dear daughter discerning a vocation to religious life and my sweet son, who has been saying since he was six that he is going to be a priest (he's further clarified recently-he's now eight- that he's going to be a missionary & monk). I do not know if my children will actually answer the call to religious life or the priesthood, but I am thankful that they are open to God's call.


Kolkata, India, Jul 21, 2011 / 04:36 pm (CNA).- Elizabeth Anikuzhikattil, a Catholic mother whose 15 children included five priests, a bishop, and four religious sisters, died at the age of 94 on July 14.

“We mourn the death of a holy mother,” said Fr. Augustine Kootala, a family friend, in an interview with India's Bosco Information Service.

Elizabeth Anikuzhikattil and her husband Luke, who died in 2006, raised eight boys and seven girls. Four of her daughters became religious sisters. Two joined the Sacred Heart Sisters in Kerala, one is a Salesian Sister, and another is a Franciscan Missionary of Mary.

Six of her sons have become priests, with the oldest going on to become the current bishop of the Diocese of Idukki in southern India.

“Don Bosco's promise of heaven for her is surely fulfilled,” said Archbishop Dominic Jala of the Diocese of Shillong. St. Don Bosco taught that a priest is the single greatest blessing to a family, and those who give their sons to the Church as priests will blessed for generations.

One of Anikuzhikattil's sons, Fr. Jose Anikuzhikattil, remembered his mother's perseverance in raising 15 children during the “frontier days” of a settlement in Idukki. The family moved to Idukki in 1949 with the first agricultural migrants to the area.

Fr. Anikuzhikattil said the family lived in a large tree house and frequently had to face wild elephants and other animals in the jungle who were displeased with the human intrusion.

His mother took care of one of her youngest sons when he was bedridden for 15 years, due to the paralyzing effects of an autoimmune disorder known as Guillain-Barre syndrome.

“My mother looked after him single-handedly for 15 years without even a single bed sore on him,” said Fr. Jose.

Elizabeth Anikuzhikattil was buried at Holy Family Parish near Munnar, India on July 18.

http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/mother-of-six-priests-and-four-religious-sisters-mourned-in-india/

How horrid... EVERY life has dignity

Follow the money:  Is the elimination of children with Down syndrome the first sign of a new eugenics?
By the year 2030, Denmark will become Down syndrome-free. If this happens, the landmark elimination of this minority group will be due to the introduction of a national prenatal testing program in 2004. The number of DS births halved in 2005 and has dropped by 13 percent every year since then. Niels Uldbjerg, professor of gynaecology and obstetrics at the University of Aarhus, told the Copenhagen Post that this is a “tremendously great accomplishment”.
But is it? Or is it a form of latter-day eugenics?
Although the United States is far bigger and more diverse than Denmark, the development of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) could make Down syndrome births a rarity there as well. Normally, they account for about 1 birth in 691. But when statistics show that when pregnant women are diagnosed with a DS child, as many as 90 percent terminate it.
Up until now, diagnostic techniques have been invasive and carried a risk of miscarrying the child. A good number of women refuse the testing and some give birth to DS children. But with non-invasive screening, the risk disappears. More women will have the test and nearly all DS children will be aborted.
Some consider this eugenics.(1) Eugenics – selecting people based on genetics out of a belief that it improves the human race – has been taboo since the compulsory sterilization laws in Germany under the Nazis. These evolved into the euthanasia of the disabled and were a precursor to the Holocaust. While no one is predicting government-mandated breeding policies, many people are worried that NIPD is ushering in an era of privatized eugenics.
Children with Down syndrome are the first to be affected. In recent years, abortions of DS pregnancies have outnumbered live births worldwide.(2) In France and Switzerland, over 85 percent of all DS pregnancies are terminated.(3) A recent United States study found that the gap between expected versus actual live DS births is widening due to DS pregnancies being terminated.(4) Given this impact, it is no wonder that prenatal testing is regarded by some as Eugenics 2.0.
A gross exaggeration, respond proponents of prenatal testing for DS. It’s not compulsory! Expectant mothers are free to choose whether to accept screening or diagnostic testing and to decide whether to continue or terminate following a diagnosis.(5)
The reality, though, is different. Many women are too scared to say No to testing and then to an abortion. Doctors admit to being poorly trained in counseling their patients and to even urging them to terminate.(6) There are too few genetic counselors for current prenatal testing programs. When NIPD arrives many more will be needed. Older diagnostic systems are invasive and women risk miscarrying. So “risk-free” diagnosis will be far more popular.
There are other problems. Doctors do not provide educational materials to their patients, nor do they discuss the third option of adoption following a diagnosis.(7) It’s not surprising, then, that mothers say that prenatal testing makes them anxious, regardless of the test results. A significant number believe that their decision was inconsistent with their values.(8) Sure, there’s no compulsion. But there is heavy-handed social pressure.
Commercial interests also stand to benefit from the introduction of NIPD. In the US, the National Institutes for Health (NIH) funded the confirmation of nuchal translucency as a first-trimester screening test for Down syndrome with millions of public dollars.(9) Just this year the NIH granted a private laboratory US$2 million for its efforts at developing NIPD, in addition to private funding.(10) In Europe, a multi-national consortium is supporting the Orwellian-named SAFE project: Special Non-Invasive Advances in Fetal and Neonatal Evaluation.(11)
In[m1] many countries, prenatal testing for DS is funded by taxpayers. Governments justify funding prenatal testing based on a claimed benefit that fewer children with Down syndrome mean more healthcare dollars for other people. Not surprisingly, because the patient does not have to pay the cost, there are more tests and more terminations.(12)
Supporters of public funding argue that it is cheaper to offer subsidized prenatal testing and abortions than to pay the medical bills of a child with Down syndrome.(13) Governments, therefore, are involved in a program intended to reduce the number of lives with DS. The new eugenics looks a lot like the old eugenics.
This eugenic inspiration becomes even more evident when considering what governmental programs do not fund. In the United States physicians are not required to have regular training on ethical, non-directive counseling and disability awareness. Testing laboratories are not required to also provide balancing information about DS to go along with the offering of their testing. In the US genetic counseling sessions are not covered by medical insurance and there is no public funding for parent support organizations, a helpful resource recognized by both patients and professional guidelines. Furthermore, governments fail to run public awareness campaigns on the value and dignity of a life with DS. They fail to combat stigmatization of people with Down syndrome.
What a contrast with reactions to the scandalous treatment of girls in Asia! It is estimated that 100 million girls are missing as a result of sex-selective abortion. It may be a mother’s choice, but Americans are not buying that argument. They are calling it gendercide. Meanwhile the Government funds prenatal testing that targets children with Down syndrome with an equally brutal result.
Following the money, and what it funds and what it does not, reveals that the current administration of prenatal testing for DS appears much more like the old eugenics that the civilized world pledged would happen “never again.”As a woman with a child with Down syndrome told a Danish newspaper, “We should not have an ethnic cleansing type of situation, which this resembles. They are going after one specific handicap. What’s next? Will it be children with diabetes who will be rejected?”

Mark W. Leach is an attorney from Louisville, Kentucky pursuing a Master of Arts in Bioethics.


Notes

(1) See e.g. McCabe LL, McCabe ER. Down syndrome: coercion and eugenics. Genet Med 2011 May 6; Stein JT. Backdoor eugenics: the troubling implications of certain damages awards in wrongful birth and wrongful life claims. 40 Seton Hall L. Rev. 1117 (2010); Dixon DP. Informed consent or institutionalized eugenics? How the medical profession encourages abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome. Issues Law Med 2008;24:3-59.
(2) Cocchi G et al. International trends of Down syndrome 1993-2004: births in relation to maternal age and terminations of pregnancies. Birth Defects Research (Part A) 2010;88:474-479.
(3) Boyd PA, et al. Survey of prenatal screening policies in Europe for structural malformations and chromosome anomalies, and their impact on detection and termination rates for neural tube defects and Down’s syndrome. BJOG 2008;115:689-696.
(4) Egan JF, et al. Demographic differences in Down syndrome livebirths in the US from 1989 to 2006. Prenat Diagn 2011; 31(4):389-94.
(5) Chervenak FA, McCullough LB. Ethical considerations in first-trimester Down syndrome risk assessment. Curr Opin Obstet Gynecol 2010;22:135-8.
(6) Cleary-Goldman J, Morgan MA, Malone FD, Robinson JN, D’Alton ME, Schulkin J.Screening for Down syndrome: practice patterns and knowledge of obstetricians and gynecologists. Obstet Gynecol 2006;107:11-17; Wertz DC, Drawing lines: notes for policymakers, in Prenatal Testing and Disability Rights (Parens E, Asch A ed., 2000).
(7) Driscoll DA, Morgan MA, Schulkin J., supra; Lindh HL, Steele R, Page-Steiner J, Donnenfeld AE. Characteristics and perspectives of families waiting to adopt a child with Down syndrome. Genet Med 2007;9(4):235-40.
(8) See e.g. Lalor, J Fetal anomaly screening: what do women want to know? J Adv Nurs 2006;55:11-19; Seavilleklein V. Challenging the rhetoric of choice in prenatal screening. Bioethics 2009;23:68-77.
(9) Malone FD et al. First-trimester or second-trimester screening, or both, for Down’s syndrome, New Eng J Med 2005;353:2001.
(10) Gene Security Network receives $2M grant from NIH to fund clinical trials to apply parental support for non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. available at http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110427007058/en/Gene-Security-Network-Receives-2M-Grant-NIH.
(11) Maddocks DG et al. The SAFE project: towards non-invasive prenatal diagnosis. Biochem Soc Trans 2009;37:460-5.
(12) See Boyd PA, et al., supra.
(13) See Andrews LB. A conceptual framework for genetic policy: comparing the medical, public health, and fundamental rights models. Wash U L Q 2001;79:221; (citing Sally Lehrman, Prenatal Genetic Testing: The Topic In-Depth, DNA Files (Nov. 1998), at http://www.dnafiles.org/about/pgm3/topic.html. (last visited Sept. 18, 2003). California's Genetic Disease Branch frankly reported in a government-sponsored study recounting the societal benefits resulting from genetic testing, “it saved a total of $108 million in 1993 by preventing 265 cases of Down Syndrome through prenatal testing and the abortion of affected fetuses.”); Morris JK, Alberman E. Trends in Down’s syndrome live births and antenatal diagnoses in England and Wales from 1989-2008: analysis of data from the National Down Syndrome Cytogenetic Register. BMJ 2009;339:b3794; Ball RH et al., First- and Second-Trimester Evaluation of Risk for Down Syndrome, Obstet Gynecol 2007:110(1):10-17; Gekas J, et al. Cost-effectiveness and accuracy of prenatal Down syndrome screening strategies: should the combined test continue to be widely used? Am J Obstet Gynecol 2011;204:175.e1-8.

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/follow_the_money/

On Recreation

Recreation is only rightly called "recreation" or "refreshment" when work is completed--that is assumed by the prefix "re" (again). It is refreshment AFTER work is done when the mind and body are afforded a time of renewal...for more work. Idleness is sinful and simply has no place in the Christian life. In fact, I'd say you can't get much more sinful than to be idle. Idle people often justify their idleness by saying they don't hurt anyone or that they don't spend any money. That is false. Their daily eating and drinking is wasteful because the principle is "he that does not work shall not eat". The idle person is like a car that burns fuel, but does not move or the cow that eats grain and gives no milk. Their LACK of production comes after they have filled their belly with food that God intended to strengthen man for work...not to provide sluggards with something to do every few hours.

The real problem in our culture is defining "work". Most Americans define "work" as punching a clock somewhere until they earn enough money to cover their expenses. A family that pays their bills is "doing well". The problem with this is that our desires then define work as it merely covers our costs. A selfish and indulgent man appears responsible by earning enough to cover his expenses--but this is a false appearance of responsibility. God does not teach us that paying our bills makes us righteous. He takes issue with those bills and teaches us that they ought to be limited to our needs...not our needs as defined by a weak and indulgent society, but our needs as defined by nature. The old philosophers all taught that frugality was a great means of income and that those who give to the poor lend to the Lord. This leads us to the true goal of Christian work. It is not self-support. It is charity.

St. Paul teaches the laborer to work, "that he may have something to give to him that suffereth need." Our Lord callus to to the abundant Christian life when He teaches, "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

The definition of our "work" is supplied by our own charity. It is determined by our own spiritual goals and as Our Lord likened the Christian life to an investment in the kingdom of heaven, we ought to be seeking to become as wealthy (in eternity) as possible...this life is a timed shopping spree for eternal rewards!!! The more we desire to do good, the more joyfully will we work for others--without reference to our own needs. Hope of reward will motivate us to give and do more and more...not seek rest here--rest that is cheap and inferior compared to that which we will have there! The most beautiful thing about charity is that the man doing good to another is doing so with the fruit of his own toil--which he could have spent on himself. The thief steals from him that works to satisfy his own desires, but the man of charity works to supply another man's needs. Is that not beautiful? That beauty of soul is what marks us as the children of God and disciples of Christ. It is the mark of the saints..not whether they keep their treadmill routine up or whether they've had a vegetable at each meal.

This leads us first to appreciate those who are generous--with true sacrficial generosity, not sharing out of abundance. Wisdom teaches that "the sluggard craves but has nothing", while the man of charity has to elect to work beyond his own needs that he may do good to others. How different is that spirit from the man seeking days off, watching the clock, making just enough to pay the bills, etc.?

You're going to waste your time trying to find guidelines to justify recreation because it is a question that history'd great people didn't sit around asking. The body is not a machine that runs out of gas and needs to be re-fueled as modern nutritionists health experts pretend. Our bodies run on more than calories and Jesus said as much when He taught that "man does not live by bread alone." Our bodies can work tirelessly when the hope of eternal rewards inspires us and the love of God and our neighbors enflames us. When we are doing God's will we are strengthened to do it, as He said, "My grace is sufficient for you." You will notice in the lives of many of the saints that their nutritional and sleeping habits were very strict, but we misread this to think of strictness and hardship. The saints were filled with love and courage...they didn't want to eat because they wanted their minds to be sharp and discerning. They didn't sleep because they saw too much work to be done--and they longed to do it.

Consider David in Psalm 132:

"LORD, remember David and all his anxious care;
How he swore an oath to the LORD, vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob:
"I will not enter the house where I live, nor lie on the couch where I sleep;
I will give my eyes no sleep, my eyelids no rest,
Till I find a home for the LORD, a dwelling for the Mighty One of Jacob."

David saw the Lord's worship in a very humble state...and couldn't allow himself to sleep while it remained so.

Consider our Lord and the Apostles. They were tired after much service and sought to get some refreshment. Jesus said, "Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while." However, they were kept from resting by a crowd of 5,000 that traveled to find them. It was in that context that Jesus said to his apostled, "You feed them." In the end...instead of a time of refreshment, the apostles spent the day serving the multitude. Their own "refreshment" was never sought in place of the work of charity.

Such people do not live on vitamins, well-balanced meals or 8 hours of sleep. They love on grace, which God himself supplies to those who serve Him. It was this food that Our Lord lived on, as He said, "My food and drink is to do the will of Him who sent me." This is the spirit of true refreshment, and is captured eloquently by St. Ignatius in his prayer for generosity:

"Lord, teach me to be generous.
Teach me to serve you as you deserve;
to give and not to count the cost;
to fight and not to heed the wounds;
to toil and not to seek for rest;
to labor and not to ask for reward,
save that of knowing that I do your will."

That is true Christian refreshment and, last of all, was the refreshment the Lord sought through...yes THROUGH...the cross:

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith. FOR THE SAKE OF THE JOY THAT LAY BEFORE HIM he endured the cross."

By William Michael, CLAA Family Forum

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

True Fasting

Quote from John Cassian's Institutes, Book V on Fasting (Paraphrase and Meditation by Wm Michael)

The goal of fasting is to mortify (kill) the sin of GLUTTONY. Gluttony is defined by John Cassian as "seeking the pleasure of the palate", that is, eating to satisfy the desires of the mind rather than for the need of the body. We do this because we are not spiritually minded. We are not praying, meditating, reading and therefore our minds are confused, distracted and led about by the impulses of the flesh. The goal of any spiritual practices is to focus the mind on God and on the Virtues and to quiet all of the random thoughts and desires that come up in us.

A saint wants to spend his entire life in contemplation--worshipping, praying and preparing for the vision of God and eternal life. Eating and sleeping--to the saints--are times away from their chief delight and they would serve the needs of the body only as far as is necessary for strength. Eating is not a matter of times or quantities, but of necessity. The goal is not to delight in rich meals, but to enjoy contemplation, prayer and works of mercy--the food and drink Christ lived on.

Thus, true fasting is eating what is needed and not eating for pleasure. Starving oneself is indeed a form of fasting but the saints all taught that the only true definition of fasting--with spiritual benefit--is that which serves the needs of the body and no more.

God will never allow us to face greater enemies until lesser enemies are overcome. All vitues must be sought together, by:

1. Fasting
2. Vigils
3. Holy Reading
4. Compunction/Sorrow for Sins
5. Contemplation on the Virtues


The challenge I see in this is that if this is the way to perfection, it must be built into the lives of our families and children. If the goal of the Christian life is to maintain a focus on God and the virtues, how ought we to do this in our homes? Obviously homeschooling is an ideal means for doing this, but we must make this the focus of that homeschool. Consider some applications:

1. Fasting: Eating a light, healthy diet that does not cater to tastes; maintaining carefully the Church's appointed fasts. Discouraging/disallowing eating for pleasure save for appointed feasts and celebrations. Forbid eating outside of appointed meal times where food is eaten with prayer and reason. Note: When we eat out of gluttony, we rarely give thanks or do so in community at appointed times.
2. Vigils: Appointing nights to stay up together (sacrficing some sleep) to pray Night Prayer, read Scripture or pray the Rosary.
3. Holy Reading: Scrapping all the garbage and reading saint biographies and saints' writings on virtue, the character of God and heaven. Watching videos on the saints' lives or the life of Christ.
4. Compunction/Sorrow for Sins: Cultivating devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, practicing examination of conscience together as a family discussing our sins and how terrible they are considering how much God has given us. Going to Confession regularly.
5. Contemplation of the Virtues: Recite catechism questions on the virtues before the Blessed Sacrament, a Crucifix or sacred Art. Discuss/Write on what a life of perfect would look like and what the saints would have done in different situations we face. Cultivate devotion to one's Guardian Angel and live with the sense that we are never alone...and act accordingly.

By steps like these we can cultivate Christian perfection among our entire families and make our homeschool a true school of saints.

CLAA article: THE FORMATION OF GOOD HABITS

by William Michael
February 4, 2010

From my daily interaction with parents, I see many of the common problems they face and the solutions suggested to them by many different sources. However, these suggestions rarely come from the wisdom of Scripture, or from the teachings of the Church or from the lives of the Saints. The solutions passed around are like new fashions that burst onto the scene with all sorts of hype and energy, but soon lose their luster and eventually fade away, leaving all the problems behind.

One of the greatest problems children in modern society face is the lack of good habits. Good habits are among the greatest of human achievements because they prove one's consistent good behavior. Not good behavior as a bunch of "random acts of kindness", but as a consistent pattern of well-doing. Sometimes good habits are gained by conscious effort, but in children they are normally absorbed from a good environment. To establish a good environment, distractions and temptations must be resisted consistently for long periods of time. When that environment is established, wonderful things happen--and most of the problems modern families are facing disappear. Only when we become aware of these problems and their sources can we hope to make progress in the pursuit of good habits.

A SOCIETY WITHOUT ROUTINE

Modern society is cash-based, which means that folks buy finished products in exchange for cash. We desire a car, so we take out a loan and get a complete car...today. We desire a meal and we stop at the pizza parlor...now. We think of an outfit we'd like and we buy it...immediately. When a problem arises, we expect that there is a solution available somewhere that, for a certain amount of cash, we can immediately obtain. For many problems, this is true. However, compare this to simpler times before the industrial era.

Many communities were self-sufficient. Clothing didn't come from a store and wasn't obtained at a checkout counter. A family had to feed a lamb, provide it with fencing and shelter, protect it from danger for months and months before shearing its wool. Then the wool needed to be combed and spun so that fabric could be woven. Then, at last, the articles of clothing could be made. The tunic may be put on for the first time in August, but its creation started in March.

For food, families did not pick up a loaf of bleached white bread and a gallon of milk at the convenience store. Bread started with tilling in the fall and sowing wheat before winter. It required an exhausting harvest in the Summer, and the threshing and storing of the grain. It required grinding to produce flour and kneading and baking to finally make bread. Thus, a good meal was the result of months and months of work.

People in those times understood routine. Because things took more time, one could only have a few things--and they needed to be priorities that were prepared for and carefully provided for. To get all of the essentials taken care of, families needed to follow a seasonal routine that came to be done unconsciously after generations.

Today, most families know no such routine. The seasons change and all that really is affected is what clothing needs to be taken down from the attic or stored away and what holidays are celebrated. There are few events that form some sort of routine but not many. Very few families in modern society pray together, work together, study together, eat together, etc.. There is very little routine and in the end a culture develops like that in the ancient world of which we read,
In those days there was no king in Israel,
but every one did that which seemed right to himself.
THE PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES OF MODERN SOCIETY

Look around at parenting books and magazines and you'll find a recurring list of common parenting problems.
Kids have bad study habits, short attention span, etc..
Kids are very messy, disorganized, etc..
Kids don't eat well, prefer sweets, fast food, etc.
Kids are idle, always playing, into trouble, etc..
Kids don't pray, sing or enjoy devotional activities.
Now, the parenting gurus fill the shelves and airways with their clever cures to these problems, but can you not see the real problem running through them all? We don't need to order salads at McDonald's instead of Big Macs. We don't need to buy more Rubbermaid containers to keep clothes off the bedroom floor. We don't need to bargain with our kids so that their time on the Wii is balanced with some school work in the evening. We need to take seriously that the family is spiraling out of control as it mindlessly conforms to secular modern society that calls all people to sacrifice their spiritual and intellectual lives for the economy so that we can build a society of impious and ignorant but well-fed and immunized citizens.

It is because the true end of education has been abandoned that children are not motivated to study. Why should they? All that is required is that the basic state-approved information be learned in each of the modern subject areas. Parishes often require little more that attendance at Sunday School for sacramental preparation. Colleges will admit them with average grades in an average study program. They can earn the degrees they need with C's and D's and may find a job requiring little of them but that they follow instructions and show up on time...most of the time. When trouble arises, the government will readily show up to cover the problems with tax-funded solutions that stimulate the economy and keep people shopping. After all, there are 300 million people to draw from anytime funds are needed. If we can't afford it, we can borrow money from our unborn grandchildren to fund our needs today. It's a beautiful system.

Moreover, since each citizen ultimately pursues his own degree and his own individual job, there is really little reason for a child to honor his mother and father. It is unlikely that he will be living near them when he finally chooses a college or lands a job, so their property or status is really of little interest to him. Moreover, since Mom and Dad are themselves mortgaged to the neck, they have nothing to offer their children and are looking forward to the day when the kids grow up and get jobs of their own...and mortgages of their own.

Why, then does the family even matter? Sure, the mother and father can physically produce the child, but the state can take it from there. Can we say that the mother and father give the child its food and clothing? Not exactly. They have made themselves dependent on others for their basic needs and the state can provide them just as well. Is the family needed for education? No, the state can take care of that as well. So long as the child's goal is future employment, a roof over his head and some food on the table, there is no reason to honor Mom and Dad at all. This isn't ancient Israel or medieval Europe after all. Family and community mattered there, but not here. The idea of obedience to parents is unnecessary.

"NOT IN WORD ONLY, BUT IN DEED AND TRUTH"

Now, this spirit of independence trickles down into Christian homes as well as non-Christian homes. The parents themselves often live with this spirit and the routine of the home is one of spontaneity, leisure and materialism. If there is a schedule it is centered not around ora et labora, but manduca et labora (eat and work) or labora et lude (work and play), the routine that develops is not that which developed in Christian society in the past. The habits that develop are not habits of prayer, of study or of satisfying labor. They are habits of laziness, gluttony, idleness and self-indulgence. If we want habits to change, the entire orientation of our lives must change. How genuinely we want that change will be proven by how radically we make it.

If you have read any of my articles, you know that my advice always starts with the schedule. After all, despite what people say, their priorities in life are on their schedule. There are 24 hours in a day, what is the most important thing to be done with that time? Make money? Eat? Sleep? No one will admit that these are the greatest priorities, yet their daily schedule (if they have one) suggests that they are. The consequences of that reality are what they are. It is no mystery that children don't care much for prayer or study. It is no mystery that children don't pay attention to their studies for long. It's no mystery that children are focused on food rather than prayer. Their habits have been formed by their home life. Rather than be surprised by these habits, we should be surprised that parents expect something different.

If you need help working through your family's schedule, I recommend an older article I wrote, How To Create a Schedule. That is not where I'd like to end this article.

MAKING ORDER OUT OF DISORDER

Many Christian families--even when they begin to get things together--are discouraged and stressed out by the constant feeling that chaos is about to break in upon them at every moment. It seems that, if we have things together, we should be able to wake up in the morning and find all at peace.

Well, this is false.

In the Garden of Eden, God created a world of beauty--but also of disorder. He created man to accomplish a specific task in this new world:
"And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it." Gen. 2:15
Now, it is obvious that man was given the gift of Reason so that he could act as God's governor in the world. Man was given the task of bringing the potential disorder into order and keeping it there. Thus, it is an essential characteristic of human beings to encounter disorder. Making order of disorder is the practical end for which they were made.

When the grass grows, cows know it's their job to eat it. When the flowers open, the bees know to pollinate them. The animals don't stress and complain when their duties appear before them. The presence of work to be done speaks to their importance in the world. Likewise, finding disorder around us should not surprise us--it is the reason why we exist. We should get after that disorder with the same quiet labor as we see in the animals and insects around us.

Notice that when God created the world he built into it geographical boundaries (seas and lands), time limitations (stars, sun and moon) and differences in species that would be discernible by man who was to order them. Of course, the classical liberal arts flowed naturally from this duty as man sought to identify the order God intended and pattern his earthly management after the wisdom of God. It is no surprise that Our Lord taught us to pray that God's will should be done on earth as it is in heaven. That is man's duty.

Thus, the ordering of the home, the ordering of time and the management of life in general is our normal work. There is no such thing as natural peace and quiet. What is natural is disorder and confusion and our job is to daily tend to that disorder and make order out of it. Our stress is not caused by that disorder, but by our expectation to finish our work before it is actually finished. It is the desire to stop working that makes work so stressful; the desire to stop cleaning that makes cleaning stressful; the desire to stop studying that makes studying stressful. It is an unnatural desire for leisure that creates rather than relieves our stress and disorder. We do not see this desire among the cows or the bees, we only see them quietly going about their daily work...every day. They do not have video games or vacations. They do not spend days golfing or shopping. They spend days peacefully doing their jobs. This is simplicity of life St. Paul taught:
"Use your endeavour to be quiet: and that you do your own business and work with your own hands...and that you walk honestly towards them that are without: and that you want nothing of any man's."
This life hardly resembles the life of the modern family and this is the real cause of the problem. The modern family is discontented with its simple necessary work and is striving for so many unnecessary things that it lives a life quite contrary to that which Jesus and the Apostles taught. The modern family is full of noise, full of play and leisure, often giving an unattractive testimony in the community, dependent on a thousand other men--for everything they consume! This is not the Christian life. We must realize that the desire to get away from our necessary work as God's governors of the earth and its affairs is the cause of all of our stress, confusion and spiritual poverty. After all, Sunday is only Sunday when it follows six days of labor.

A PERSONAL EXAMPLE

My wife and I were married in 1998. When we married, I was reading Seneca, the old Stoic philosopher. In his letters, he wrote of the folly of men going on vacations. It seemed that these men wanted to "get away" from their real lives by escaping into a place where there was peace, quiet and opportunity for leisure. However, Seneca remarked that this was a vain dream because the problem in the men's lives would be traveling with them wherever they went! The stress was not caused by the environment, but by the men themselves in it. Seneca argued that if those men lived more simply, their own lives would provide them with all the peace and comfort that they hoped to find some place else. We also read a quote that really impacted us: "Duty done is fireside to the soul."

My wife and I decided that we were going to live a life that was so peaceful and pleasant that we would never have a desire to go anywhere else. We directed all of our efforts at our scheduling, routines and daily work so that by always having duty done, our souls would at all times be at rest as by a fireside.

While it took some time for us to get things ironed out, we have now gone 10+ years without any thought of "getting away". Our life consists of no "leisure activities" and we work sometimes from 7am until 2am, but all is peace and quiet. We seek nothing else. We wish to be nowhere else. We seek satisfaction in seeing our work done well and make the art of living well our chief recreation. We pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily and enjoy a monastery-like environment at home. We are active in missionary work and because of that work are able to engage in charitable endeavors. We believe we have come to know the peace that everyone is seeking--and which we sought before--only in the right place: within ourselves. The problem throughout our society is desire to avoid necessary work.

THE FORMATION OF HABITS

What prompted me to write this article was a question from a parent about study habits. It is popular today to discuss a child's habits, but how does a child acquire habits? The child lives within an environment controlled by adults. That environment and the routine of its activities is the source of the habits in the child. The child does not create its own habits, but is trained in them by its environment.

Therefore, how can we expect our children to possess good habits of study, work and prayer when the routine is not one ruled by study work and prayer? The habits they develop will be those of the routine they are raised on, not that which a parent idly dreams of or reads about from the homes of others. The training of children is not complicated when the children are immersed in an environment that is constantly establishing good habits in them. Discipline has a specific and simple function when the home is firmly rooted in a good routine, rather than a source of mob control in a wild and unprincipled home. If parents desire children to have good habits, those parents need to establish good routines, not try to force momentary good behavior all day long. The habits will proceed naturally from the routine. Where parents live in disorder, their empty commands and complaints are not going to order and sanctify the children's habits. What hope do parents have in yelling at children for bad habits, which have their source in the parents' own lives?

Therefore, before buying another parenting book or trying some new gimmick to make your children do something they ought to do out of habit, change the culture the home. Establish a routine that is good and responsible. It may take great sacrifice and months of sustained effort to resist old ways, but that's the price of happiness. If you are unwilling to pay the price, you cannot complain when you lack the benefits of those who do.

CONCLUSION

There are no mysteries in parenting and family life. Our Lord taught us the principle that "Whatever a man sows, the same does he reap." There are few surprises at harvest time. Those who are slack when it's time to sow or cultivate get what they deserve, and those who work diligently get what they deserve. If we want children with good habits, we have to raise them in homes with responsible routines. These routines will form the habits than the children will benefit from. In sports we say that "Winning begets winning." and in education, the same is true. The early taste of success and praise that children enjoy from good habits will develop in them an appreciation for those habits. However, as I discussed above, a family immersed in modernity is lost at sea with no anchor and constantly changing winds.

We must mortify the harmful desire for leisure and devote ourselves to loving our necessary work. We are to simplify our desires and pursue an undivided heart that follows St. Paul's teaching. We are to embrace the work of each day as the purpose of our existence and do it with the same contentment and perseverance that we see in the animals who are free from competing interests. As we do these things, we will develop healthy routines, which will begin to create in us healthy habits. Once that environment established, our children will be under it's influence rather than that of the world.

http://www.classicalliberalarts.com/library/goodhabits.htm

Clutter

I once heard Al Roker (the meteorologist & morning host) express disbelief, upon returning home as an adult, that his parents had raised him & his siblings in their small house. How had they done it, he mused. When he and his siblings visited now, everyone was all over each other!

I think I know. As a mother of six, living in a three bedroom, 2000 sq. ft house, I find that we don't need a bigger house for the people, just the stuff!

When I compare the average house from now-a-days to a house from 1960, I have to note that people 50 years ago did not have two TVs (or any DVRs/VCRs/gaming systems). They didn't have a radio in every room. They didn't have every kitchen gadget known to man. They didn't have any computers, let alone multiple computers.

Most people had three or four pairs of shoes; work shoes, church shoes, galoshes, and house slippers (and THAT was a reflection of wealth compared to Laura Ingalls' time when one had ONE pair of shoes...if you were fortunate). They didn't have, as I do, 6 prs of flats, 3 or 4 heels, and about six pairs of sandals. I look at my closet & realize that I have, though modest to some, about four times as much clothes as I actually wear! I brought four outfits on a recent ten day trip and only wore three (cleaned regularly, of course).

What does this clutter cost us financially? Will it necessitate a larger house payment? More furniture to store it all? A pod in my driveway? Not only did this clutter cost me when I bought it, it is costing me to store it, and will cost me to dispose of it.

I must have at one time wanted this clutter. What need was I trying to fill when I purchased said clutter. Was there a memory I was trying to preserve? Why do we do that, as if we can preserve our memories in a THING? Was the item a supposed "time saver"? It's certainly not saving me time as I wash/dust/organize said clutter! Was I trying to bolster my emotions at a low time? I am now aggravated at having to navigate around all this clutter, frustrated at trying to find a place for it!

What does this clutter cost me in peace of mind? After six months of house-hunting, countless hours sorting and purging, I'm finding the costs of all this clutter isn't worth the memories, time-saving, and fleeting emotions. After looking for the perfect house for our family for half a year, I'm thinking that we may already live in the perfect house for our family. It isn't necessarily the house that needs to change, it might just be the STUFF.

So, although I've been purging in earnest for six month now, I feel a new wave coming on. Who knows, if we do decide to move, we'll have a lot less to move!

Nothing original...

I'm sorry I haven't been publishing much original... I've been under the weather.  I'm working on two blogs on different but similar topics.  Hope to post soon.
Thanks!

Motherhood as a Mission Field

There is a good old saying, perhaps only said by my Grandfather, that distance adds intrigue. It is certainly true — just think back to anything that has ever been distant from you that is now near. Your driver’s license. Marriage. Children. Things that used to seem so fascinating, but as they draw near become less mystical and more, well, real.
This same principle certainly applies to mission fields too. The closer you get to home, the less intriguing the work of sacrifice seems. As someone once said, “Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to help Mom with the dishes.” When you are a mother at home with your children, the church is not clamoring for monthly ministry updates. When you talk to other believers, there is not any kind of awe about what you are sacrificing for the gospel. People are not pressing you for needs you might have, how they can pray for you. It does not feel intriguing, or glamorous. Your work is normal, because it is as close to home as you can possibly be. You have actually gone so far as to become home.

Home: The Headwaters of Mission

If you are a Christian woman who loves the Lord, the gospel is important to you. It is easy to become discouraged, thinking that the work you are doing does not matter much. If you were really doing something for Christ you would be out there, somewhere else, doing it. Even if you have a great perspective on your role in the kingdom, it is easy to lose sight of it in the mismatched socks, in the morning sickness, in the dirty dishes. It is easy to confuse intrigue with value, and begin viewing yourself as the least valuable part of the Church.
There are a number of ways in which mothers need to study their own roles, and begin to see them, not as boring and inconsequential, but as home, the headwaters of missions.
At the very heart of the gospel is sacrifice, and there is perhaps no occupation in the world so intrinsically sacrificial as motherhood. Motherhood is a wonderful opportunity to live the gospel. Jim Elliot famously said, “He is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Motherhood provides you with an opportunity to lay down the things that you cannot keep on behalf of the people that you cannot lose. They are eternal souls, they are your children, they are your mission field.

Faith Makes the Small Offering Great

If you are like me, then you may be thinking “What did I ever give up for them? A desk job? Time at the gym? Extra spending money? My twenty- year- old figure? Some sleep?” Doesn’t seem like much when you put it next to the work of some of the great missionaries, people who gave their lives for the gospel.
Think about the feeding of the five thousand when the disciples went out and rounded up the food that was available. It wasn’t much. Some loaves. Some fish. Think of some woman pulling her fish out and handing it to one of the disciples. That had to have felt like a small offering. But the important thing about those loaves and those fishes was not how big they were when they were given, it was about whose hands they were given into. In the hands of the Lord, that offering was sufficient. It was more than sufficient. There were leftovers. Given in faith, even a small offering becomes great.
Look at your children in faith, and see how many people will be ministered to by your ministering to them. How many people will your children know in their lives? How many grandchildren are represented in the faces around your table now?

Gain What You Cannot Lose in Them

So, if mothers are strategically situated to impact missions so greatly, why do we see so little coming from it? I think the answer to this is quite simple: sin. Discontent, pettiness, selfishness, resentment. Christians often feel like the right thing to do is to be ashamed about what we have. We hear that quote of Jim Elliot’s and think that we ought to sell our homes and move to some place where they need the gospel.
But I’d like to challenge you to look at it differently. Giving up what you cannot keep does not mean giving up your home, or your job so you can go serve somewhere else. It is giving up yourself. Lay yourself down. Sacrifice yourself here, now. Cheerfully wipe the nose for the fiftieth time today. Make dinner again for the people who don’t like the green beans. Laugh when your plans are thwarted by a vomiting child. Lay yourself down for the people here with you, the people who annoy you, the people who get in your way, the people who take up so much of your time that you can’t read anymore. Rejoice in them. Sacrifice for them. Gain that which you cannot lose in them.
It is easy to think you have a heart for orphans on the other side of the world, but if you spend your time at home resenting the imposition your children are on you, you do not. You cannot have a heart for the gospel and a fussiness about your life at the same time. You will never make any difference there if you cannot be at peace here. You cannot have a heart for missions, but not for the people around you. A true love of the gospel overflows and overpowers. It will be in everything you do, however drab, however simple, however repetitive.
God loves the little offerings. Given in faith, that plate of PB&J’s will feed thousands. Given in faith, those presents on Christmas morning will bring delight to more children than you can count. Offered with thankfulness, your work at home is only the beginning. Your laundry pile, selflessly tackled daily, will be used in the hands of God to clothe many. Do not think that your work does not matter. In God’s hands, it will be broken, and broken, and broken again, until all who have need of it have eaten and are satisfied. And even then, there will be leftovers.

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/motherhood-as-a-mission-field

Motherhood Is a Calling (And Where Your Children Rank)

A few years ago, when I just had four children and when the oldest was still three, I loaded them all up to go on a walk. After the final sippy cup had found a place and we were ready to go, my two-year-old turned to me and said, “Wow! You have your hands full!”

She could have just as well said, “Don’t you know what causes that?” or “Are they all yours?!”
Everywhere you go, people want to talk about your children. Why you shouldn’t have had them, how you could have prevented them, and why they would never do what you have done. They want to make sure you know that you won’t be smiling anymore when they are teenagers. All this at the grocery store, in line, while your children listen.

A Rock-Bottom Job?

The truth is that years ago, before this generation of mothers was even born, our society decided where children rank in the list of important things. When abortion was legalized, we wrote it into law.
Children rank way below college. Below world travel for sure. Below the ability to go out at night at your leisure. Below honing your body at the gym. Below any job you may have or hope to get. In fact, children rate below your desire to sit around and pick your toes, if that is what you want to do. Below everything. Children are the last thing you should ever spend your time doing.
If you grew up in this culture, it is very hard to get a biblical perspective on motherhood, to think like a free Christian woman about your life, your children. How much have we listened to partial truths and half lies? Do we believe that we want children because there is some biological urge, or the phantom “baby itch”? Are we really in this because of cute little clothes and photo opportunities? Is motherhood a rock-bottom job for those who can’t do more, or those who are satisfied with drudgery? If so, what were we thinking?

It's Not a Hobby

Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for.
Christian mothers carry their children in hostile territory. When you are in public with them, you are standing with, and defending, the objects of cultural dislike. You are publicly testifying that you value what God values, and that you refuse to value what the world values. You stand with the defenseless and in front of the needy. You represent everything that our culture hates, because you represent laying down your life for another—and laying down your life for another represents the gospel.
Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die—and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.

Run to the Cross

But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.
Death to yourself is not the end of the story. We, of all people, ought to know what follows death. The Christian life is resurrection life, life that cannot be contained by death, the kind of life that is only possible when you have been to the cross and back.
The Bible is clear about the value of children. Jesus loved them, and we are commanded to love them, to bring them up in the nurture of the Lord. We are to imitate God and take pleasure in our children.

The Question Is How

The question here is not whether you are representing the gospel, it is how you are representing it. Have you given your life to your children resentfully? Do you tally every thing you do for them like a loan shark tallies debts? Or do you give them life the way God gave it to us—freely?
It isn’t enough to pretend. You might fool a few people. That person in line at the store might believe you when you plaster on a fake smile, but your children won’t. They know exactly where they stand with you. They know the things that you rate above them. They know everything you resent and hold against them. They know that you faked a cheerful answer to that lady, only to whisper threats or bark at them in the car.
Children know the difference between a mother who is saving face to a stranger and a mother who defends their life and their worth with her smile, her love, and her absolute loyalty.

Hands Full of Good Things

When my little girl told me, “Your hands are full!” I was so thankful that she already knew what my answer would be. It was the same one that I always gave: “Yes they are—full of good things!”
Live the gospel in the things that no one sees. Sacrifice for your children in places that only they will know about. Put their value ahead of yours. Grow them up in the clean air of gospel living. Your testimony to the gospel in the little details of your life is more valuable to them than you can imagine. If you tell them the gospel, but live to yourself, they will never believe it. Give your life for theirs every day, joyfully. Lay down pettiness. Lay down fussiness. Lay down resentment about the dishes, about the laundry, about how no one knows how hard you work.
Stop clinging to yourself and cling to the cross. There is more joy and more life and more laughter on the other side of death than you can possibly carry alone.
Rachel Jankovic is a wife, homemaker, and mother. She is the author of "Loving the Little Years" and blogs at Femina. Her husband is Luke, and they have five children: Evangeline (5), Daphne (4), Chloe (2), Titus (2), and Blaire (5 months).

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/motherhood-is-a-calling-and-where-your-children-rank

Moral Capital

Moral Capital by Anthony Esolen

Let us suppose we are looking at people who are not going to Yale or Harvard, or even to the local state university. First, they can’t afford it, and second, they lack the capacity to immerse themselves in absurdity for the sake of a few courses here and there that will deepen their understanding of the world, or that will at least help them make a living. They are not going to write papers on Herbert Marcuse and Woodstock. Perhaps their intelligence lies elsewhere. Or perhaps their backs and their arms are stronger than their minds. What capital can we give them to help set them up in life?

Currently, we don’t give them any at all. We flush many billions of dollars into higher education, often of very dubious quality, so that our “best” students can afford to go to college. The colleges themselves count on that money, floating their sticker prices upward to take it all in. State schools milk the population quite well, taking in many thousands of students who have developed neither manual nor intellectual skills, squeezing them for what they are worth, and conferring upon them degrees that mean little more than that the graduate usually shows up to work on time and follows directions.

The net result, as I see it, is twofold. First, a skilled working man — let’s say a carpenter who has learned his trade well and has worked hard, who has a child with the intellectual capacity to attend one of the elite colleges — will be less able to afford it now than in 1940, when four years’ tuition at Harvard cost one and a half years of the national median household income. Second, that same man, if he does not have a child capable of going to one of those schools, will be rifled for all he is worth to send his children to lower-tier schools, or will watch helplessly as the children flit from service job to service job.

Again I ask, what capital can we give to people who are not going to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, accountants, stock brokers, or business executives? Maybe I could put it this way instead: What capital of theirs have we rifled these last several generations?

I call to mind here my grandfathers, who were hard workers but not saints, not by a long shot. One worked for 15 years in the coal mines. That was brutally hard and dangerous work. Imagine swinging a pickax against a wall for nine hours a day, when the ceiling is so low you can’t straighten up. Then, one day, he couldn’t take it anymore. He had a nervous breakdown. He would collapse if he were away from his home for even a day. By then, he was well on his way toward middle age, and he and his wife had three boys and three girls. The state took pity on him and considered him permanently disabled. So they received a monthly check.

It wasn’t much. They lived poor enough — but they did not live in squalor. For poverty is one thing, and squalor is another. You’re poor when you don’t have money, but you’re squalid when you don’t have any decency, and that is primarily a moral condition, not a material one. They kept clean by taking the weekly bath, with hot water poured from buckets into a metal tub. The privy was outside. Each child had one or two changes of clothes, handed down from one to the next. My grandmother cooked and washed constantly. That meant scrubbing the clothes on a washboard, wringing them out, and hanging them to dry on the line, just as all the neighbor wives did. It also meant trooping up the hill to the coop every so often, grabbing a chicken, cracking its neck, and plucking out all the feathers, to get it ready for soup.

My grandfather should never have been a coal miner. He should have been a farmer. He didn’t stay idle at home. The house came with a sizable piece of property, so he cut it into terraces, just as they did in Calabria, where he was a boy, and he farmed it. He once told me that he could put a seed in the ground and spit on it, and it would grow. He tended that land, his garden, as well as any piece of land could be tended. They got from it all the vegetables they needed: beans, peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, radishes, corn, zucchini. They got plums, apples, peaches, and grapes. They got figs from a fig tree that had no business surviving so far north. They got eggs and chickens, and I believe he kept a pig or two for a while. They made do.

They had the advantage then, too, of no television, and so there was still a considerable sense of community. They knew all their neighbors. In fact, they knew their neighbors across the generations. That meant that they were never really alone. Italian was spoken up and down the street, though my grandfather did not want his children to speak it, and as they grew older they forgot what little they ever knew. When it came time to build a house, the men of the neighborhood would get together to do that. My grandfather himself had built the house his family lived in.

But there was much more. Here I dearly wish that Catholics would actually read the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII, rather than rely upon commentators who reduce them to a single political position, as for instance that workers have the right to form unions. For Leo’s social vision was an intricate and coherent whole, with the church and the family at the heart of it. The family, he saw, was itself a society, with its own duties and rights, and its own sphere of governance, with the father as the head. He wrote quite movingly about the dignity of the wife and the mutual love that characterizes a true Christian marriage. But a society needs a head, and without any sense of being controversial, as at that time he was not, he affirmed that the head was the father. He saw, too, that the growing ambitions of the state — he was thinking particularly about socialism in its various forms — came at the expense of the father. That is, he saw that to weaken the father is to weaken the family, and that weak families are exactly what the enlightened wanted. And this has not changed.

But my grandfather, as debilitated as he was in his spirit, was not a weak father. He might have been too stern in his bearing; he grew up believing that it was not a father’s place to be overly affectionate with his children, that he would lose their respect, and that that would hurt the children in the end. I don’t believe he was right about that, but that is what both he and his wife took for granted. But he did more than tell his children he loved them: He did love them. He made sure that they grew up respectful of their elders. He made sure that they worked hard. The girls did not fall backward into shamelessness. The boys did not get other people’s daughters pregnant. They did not cheat or lie or steal, or even use foul language. My grandfather — one of those old Italian men with a great respect for religion, though he did not himself often attend Mass — made sure that they all went to church, the boys included.

They had, you see, a great fund of moral capital. All the children worked when they were old enough for it. All the money, too, went back to the family. Even when my mother was engaged, she worked as a seamstress in one of the many local dress factories and gave her whole paycheck to her parents. The boys lent themselves out in the summer as seasonal farm workers. All three of them entered the service, one of them lying about his age to try to enlist at the end of the Second World War. All six children were married, without any out of wedlock births, and without divorces. All six, with some straying here and there, remained in the Church. All had families that thrived in a material way, at least. All of them ended up living within a half mile of their parents. When their parents needed the house painted, the boys were there to do it. Same thing with paving the driveway, installing pipes for plumbing, and putting siding over the old asphalt shingles. They wanted for nothing. And the 19 grandchildren were at that house constantly, eating homemade cookies and pie, watching television, or playing in the backyard. Their stricture against showing affection didn’t apply to grandchildren, so we were made much of.

My grandmother was a saint. I could write a great deal about her unfailing charity and her cheerful deference to a man who was often difficult to get along with. I mean to take nothing from her when I say that she couldn’t have raised those children without him there as the head of the family. The boys were physically strong and active; the girls were stubborn. They would have been unmanageable if she had been alone. But she wasn’t alone: He was there, powerfully built and remarkably intelligent — he with his second-grade education could put many of my students to shame, with his general knowledge of the world. He and she made that family into a society that spanned several generations.

Through their example, we can see that the main fund of capital for people whose children are not going to be doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs is moral. Now let us see how the well-to-do rob them of it.

The first thing to do is to cripple the family. That can be done most quickly by crippling the father, or removing him altogether. How do we accomplish that? We take aim at his authority. We say, for a while, that we merely wish that the marriage be egalitarian; but what we really want is that it should be egalitarian and weak. It’s not as if we are going to take some of the authority of the father and lend it to the mother. For the secret is that a good and strong father — not a patsy, and not a tyrant — enhances the authority of his wife, and a weak or absent father compromises it or destroys it altogether. So we look kindly upon single motherhood and invade the woman’s home with social workers. We embrace feminism. That always was a revolt of some women against other women: in our day, mainly well-to-do women, college graduates, against women whose husbands are not professionals and who might actually wish to raise their own children at home, with neither monetary assistance nor moral interference from the state.

I am thinking now of a family I know. The father is a manual laborer of considerable talent. He doesn’t drink, doesn’t go to the casino, and doesn’t sleep around. He works hard when he comes home, too, so the back yard is now half vegetable garden, half park. The children are bright but not the right fit for college. If this were a sane world, if the elites had not polluted the moral watershed upstream, there would be order in this household. That is, the family would exist as a zone of authority and law-abiding in its own right, and it would span the generations. It would not be truncated by divorces and made chaotic with out-of-wedlock births. The sons and daughters would be preparing themselves, in a clear and coherent way, for assuming the duties of fathers and mothers. It would resemble the family of my grandparents.

But though the mother and father are genuinely good people, they have no moral capital. It has been rifled. They cannot depend upon the local school to preach such difficult virtues as chastity, manly courage, and piety. The school preaches quite the opposite. The television is an open sewer. The local drug stores peddle porn. The churches have capitulated and preach niceness rather than holiness; and people, bored with niceness, turn instead to what is neither nice nor holy, but simply material — riches, if they can get them, and sexual thrills, in any case.

After we’ve crippled the family with no-fault divorce, easy sex, smiling upon unwed motherhood, abortion on demand, and perversion parades — after we have cut its muscles to ribbons, and made it a cringing ward of the state, hurting rich families somewhat, and devastating the poor and the working class — we go after the boys. Back during the potato famine in Ireland, a certain family named Harkins pooled its little money to send one boy, a “likely lad” of 14, alone to the United States, to keep the family alive there. He arrived in New York, worked hard, and raised a family. His grandson became the first bishop of the diocese of Providence and was the founder of the college where I teach.

He and thousands like him built bridges and skyscrapers, mined coal, farmed the land, paved roads, and raised churches, not with money in the collection plate, but with their own hands. Of course they had the inestimable assistance of their wives, who had to be strong, too, and far stronger and more skilled than most of our college graduates are today. But the Brooklyn Bridge was not going to be built by people named Mary. We have depreciated work that is done with back and hands, because we don’t have to do that work; we’re educated, you see, and can do such necessary things as come up with Five Year Plans for the teaching of gender diversity.

I have no quarrel with studying the humanities. It’s how I earn my living. But I know well that all that I’m privileged to do, I do upon the bent backs of thousands of men who sweated more than I ever will. I am reminded of it every time I take a walk; I see roads, and houses, and bridges, and stone walls, miles of stone walls that once were the boundaries of farms and pastures in my neighborhood, and I know that all those stones came from the acres and acres of fields cleared by man and horse, and all those walls were built up of stones either muscled into place by the men, or lifted to their place by winch and pulley.

My reasoning here is simple enough. Suppose your family is not going to do well or even survive if it places all its hope in academic study. Then your children have to make their way by skilled hands or strong back or both. But that means, as a brute practical fact, that you are going to have to raise boys and girls to be men and women. Those boys will have to learn a trade. They will have to be carpenters, roofers, road builders, plumbers, welders, auto mechanics. And they will have to be more, not less, traditional in their morals and in their view of manhood. The boy who is encouraged to be effeminate is not going to repair motorcycles.

Perhaps it’s easier to see these things by applying them to a specific family. Let’s say we have what my grandparents came to America with; not much schooling, not much money, and no real hope that the children would go to college. There are millions of such families in the United States now. Let’s also grant them an intact marriage, and no illegitimate children on the side. Let’s grant them both boys and girls. As I’ve said, these are not going to be doctors, lawyers, and Indian chiefs. What does this family need to do to ensure that, a hundred years hence, it will still be recognizable?

The boys have to be trained to be men. That is a sine qua non. They cannot be allowed to play around in effeminacy. The son of Lord Marchmain can do that, because he has a lot of money and a huge estate. The son of two college professors can do that, for the same reason. Not that the effeminacy will do those boys any good; it will hurt them, but they’ll still get by. But the working-class family has not that same margin for foolishness. They don’t get to pass their moral license along, hurting others more than themselves. They are at the base, not the top, of the watershed. If we are going to be depending upon Stan’s skilled hands and Sam’s strong back, then those hands had better soon be chapped and rough with calluses, and that back had better be straight and the shoulders broad.

In other words, if we really wanted to help the poor and the working class, we’d be preaching manliness and chivalry to the boys and training them up in hard but well-remunerated work. But if we didn’t care about them, we’d just continue in our own self-indulgent feminism, and let them go hang.

Next, we would cripple what was left of their neighborhood. Not much would be left; there isn’t much of a community once we’ve tossed the hand grenade into the family. But whatever is left would have to be dealt with. We remove their schools from their proximity and from their influence. We turn policemen into “safety officers,” who do not know the people they are charged with protecting, and who in some cases are no match for the boys now hanging about and delving into crime. Not satisfied with removing the father from the home, we remove the mother too, so that children spend most of their time with people who do not love them, and who move in and out of their lives as transients through a slum.

Finally, we would preach moral relativism, the rot that destroys the soul. If I have money, if I’ve graduated from Yale, if I teach at a nice college, I can indulge myself in intellectual nonsense, and perhaps my children will be eager enough for material comforts and worldly prestige that they too will go on to graduate from Yale. I can dump battery acid into the river with a carefree heart, knowing that I get my own water from somewhere else. But the virtues are sometimes the only thing a poor family has. The boy sent to America from Ireland had a few coins in his pocket but a great deal more in his soul. He had courage, perseverance, self-control, obedience to authority, and willingness to learn. My uncles had those same virtues. They were sufficient.

That, readers, is what Catholic social teaching builds upon. Outside of an integrated Catholic vision of life — outside of the virtues, and of family — it makes no sense. If we want to help the poor, we can begin by restoring some of the moral capital we have robbed.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2011/moral-capital

This is why we become priests …

Helping a Child of God Fall Asleep in Christ to Rise with him in Glory by Fr Dennis Mary Dugan, SOLT

As I knelt beside the bed of a thirty year old dying woman, I began to read the baptismal prayers. The gravity of what God was doing here was apparent to all present. The loving God in His generosity was giving her the gifts of His Church, including the most supreme gift of Himself, the Eucharist. God was present to her in her sufferings; He loved her dearly. He was comforting her as she listened attentively to the prayers. This is why we become priests … to share the love and generosity of God to those in most need. Her cancer was discovered only a few months ago, now she received notice that it had spread and was in an advanced stage. She stated that she wanted to get right with God before her death, so she summoned a priest. Her Mother was seated at the end of her bed, her soon-to-be Godmother knelt beside me, while her father and boyfriend of ten years drew close to witness her Baptism. She encountered Jesus in the four Sacraments that she received - Baptism, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, and the Eucharist.

She was made who God called her to be … a child of God, an heir to God's Kingdom, a new creation in Christ. She was welcomed into the family of God, in communion with all Christians. The original sin was cleansed from her soul, all her actual sins were forgiven her and all punishment due to these sins were removed. Through His sanctifying grace she became a participant in the divine life of the Trinity. In obedience to His heavenly Father, Jesus was lead by the Holy Spirit, through His suffering and death to His glorious resurrection. She, too, was being lead through suffering and death to her glory in God. She heard that her life was lived in union with Jesus. The Lord had lived, suffered, died and rose and so shall she. She was entrusted to follow Him and His life. To live in Jesus, is her life. Though weakened by her illness, she was now strengthened by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and empowered with His supernatural gifts and virtues. She was made ready to be received by God, if He took her to Himself. Through His real, true and substantial Presence she became the temple of the God. He indeed lived in her and she truly lived in Him. In her sickness she was ever conformed into the likeness of the suffering Jesus. Now she was animated by the God who did not abandon her on her cross. He desired to unite Himself to her in her suffering. And with His strength and grace, through her cross God was leading her to her salvation.

The Lord in His goodness had one more gift for her. She was told that we Catholics believe that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Our Savior Jesus - was given to all as our spiritual mother, by Jesus on His cross. Jesus gave to His Mother the parting gift of His faithful disciple John, "Woman, behold your son." And Jesus gave to John His dear Mother in the words, "Behold your Mother." In this last gift of God, Jesus gave to all mankind Mary as our spiritual Mother. Mary desires to have a relationship with all her children and to help them in their needs. This newest Catholic was given a homemade string rosary, with a Miraculous Medal on it blessed by our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI. She listened how the Rosary is a prayer from the Gospels, and that we pray it in union with Our Mother Mary. While we meditate on the mysteries of Christ life, contemplating His face, Mary's help us to know and love God more. May we, her spiritual children, be worthy of so noble a Mother. She kissed the cross and the image of Mary on the Miraculous Medal and the Rosary was put around her neck. She expressed gratitude for all that she received and we praised the Lord together for His generosity. We parted ways with smiles and tears. I told her I would soon return for a visit, and she told me to come again anytime. God is great ! Now and forever!


http://soltnews.blogspot.com/2011/07/helping-child-of-god-fall-asleep-in.html

DEFINITION OF THE PREDOMINANT FAULT

THE THREE AGES OF THE INTERIOR LIFE by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

DEFINITION OF THE PREDOMINANT FAULT



The predominant fault is the defect in us that tends to prevail over the others, and thereby over our manner of feeling, judging, sympathizing, willing, and acting. It is a defect that has in each of us an intimate relation to our individual temperament.(1) There are temperaments inclined to effeminacy, indolence, sloth, gluttony, and sensuality. Others are inclined especially to anger and pride. We do not all climb the same slope toward the summit of perfection: those who are effeminate by temperament must by prayer, grace, and virtue become strong; and those who are naturally strong, to the point of easily becoming severe, must, by working at themselves and by grace, become gentle.



Before this progressive transformation of our temperament, the predominant defect in the soul often makes itself felt. It is our domestic enemy, dwelling in our interior; for, if it develops, it may succeed in completely ruining the work of grace or the interior life. At times it is like a crack in a wall that seems to be solid but is not so; like a crevice, imperceptible at times but deep, in the beautiful facade of a building, which a vigorous jolt may shake to the foundations. For example, an antipathy, an instinctive aversion to someone, may, if it is not watched over and corrected by right reason, the spirit of faith, and charity, produce disasters in the soul and lead it to grave injustice. By yielding to such an antipathy, it does itself far more harm than it does its neighbor, for it is much more harmful to commit injustice than to be the object of it.



The predominant fault is so much the more dangerous as it often compromises our principal good point, which is a happy inclination of our nature that ought to develop and to be increased by grace. For example, a man is naturally inclined to gentleness; but if by reason of his predominant fault, which may be effeminacy, his gentleness degenerates into weakness, into excessive indulgence, he may even reach the complete loss of energy. Another, on the contrary, is naturally inclined to fortitude, but if he gives free rein to his irascible temperament, fortitude in him degenerates into unreasonable violence, the cause of every type of disorder.



In every man there is a mixture of good and bad inclinations; there is a predominant fault and also a natural quality. If we are in the state of grace, we have a special attraction of grace, which generally perfects first of all what is best in our nature, and then radiates over that which is less good. Some are thus more inclined toward contemplation, others toward action. Particular care must be taken that the predominant fault does not snuff out our principal natural quality or our special attraction of grace. Otherwise our soul would resemble a field of wheat invaded by tares or cockle, of which the Gospel speaks. And we have an adversary, the devil, who seeks to foster the growth of our predominant fault that he may place us in conflict with those who work with us in the Lord's field. Christ Himself tells us: "The kingdom of heaven is likened to a man that sowed good seed in his field. But while men were asleep, his enemy came and oversowed cockle among the wheat and went his way." (2)



Christ explains that the enemy is the devil,(3) who seeks to destroy the work of God by creating disunion among those who, in a holy manner, ought to collaborate in the same work for eternity. He is skillful in exaggerating in our eyes the defects of our neighbor, in transforming a grain of sand into a mountain, in setting up, as it were, a magnifying glass in our imagination, that we may become irritated at our brethren instead of working with them. Considering all this, we can see what evil may spring up in each of us from our principal fault if we are not most attentive to it. At times it is like a devouring worm in a beautiful fruit.



HOW TO RECOGNIZE THE PREDOMINANT FAULT



Evidently it is of primary importance that we recognize our predominant fault and have no illusions about it. This is so much the more necessary as our adversary, the enemy of our soul, knows it quite well and makes use of it to stir up trouble in and about us. In the citadel of our interior life, which is defended by the different virtues, the predominant fault is the weak spot, undefended by the theological and moral virtues. The enemy of souls seeks exactly this easily vulnerable point in each one, and he finds it without difficulty. Therefore, we must recognize it also.



But how can we discern it? For beginners who are sincere, this is quite easy. But later the predominant fault is less apparent, for it tries to hide itself and to put on the appearances of a virtue: pride clothes itself in the outward appearances of magnanimity, and pusillanimity seeks to cover itself with those of humility. Yet we must succeed in discerning the predominant fault, for if we do not know it, we cannot fight it; and if we do not fight it, we have no true interior life.



That we may discern it, we must first of all ask God for light: "Lord, make me know the obstacles I more or less consciously place in the way of the working of Thy grace in me. Then give me the strength to rid myself of them, and, if I am negligent in doing so, do Thou deign to free me from them, though I should suffer greatly."



After thus asking sincerely for light, we must make a serious examination. How? By asking ourselves: "Toward what do my most ordinary preoccupations tend, in the morning when I awake, or when I am alone? Where do my thoughts and desires go spontaneously?" We should keep in mind that the predominant fault, which easily commands all our passions, takes on the appearance of a virtue and, if it is not opposed, it may lead to impenitence. Judas fell into impenitence through avarice, which he did not will to dominate; it led him to impenitence like a violent wind that hurls a ship on the rocks.



A second step in discerning the predominant fault, is to ask ourselves: "What is generally the cause or source of my sadness and joy? What is the general motive of my actions, the ordinary origin of my sins, especially when it is not a question of an accidental sin, but rather a succession of sins or a state of resistance to grace, notably when this resistance persists for several days and leads me to omit my exercises of piety?" Then we must seek sincerely to know the motive of the soul's refusal to return to the good.



In addition, we must ask ourselves: "What does my director think of this? In his opinion, what is my predominant fault? He is a better judge than I am." No one, in fact, is a good judge in his own case; here self-love deceives us. Often our director has discovered this fault before we have; perhaps he has tried more than once to talk to us about it. Have we not sought to excuse ourselves? Excuses come promptly, for the predominant fault easily excites all our passions: it commands them as a master, and they obey instantly. Thus, wounded self-love immediately excites irony, anger, impatience. Moreover, when the predominant fault has taken root in us, it experiences a particular repugnance to being unmasked and fought, because it wishes to reign in us. This condition sometimes reaches such a point that, when our neighbor accuses us of this fault, we reply that we have many bad habits, but truly not the one mentioned".(4)



The predominant fault may also be recognized by the temptations that our enemy arouses most frequently in us, for he attacks us especially through this weak point in our soul.

Lastly, in moments of true fervor the inspirations of the Holy Ghost ask us for the sacrifice of this particular fault.



If we have sincere recourse to these different means of discernment, it will not be too difficult for us to recognize this interior enemy which we bear within ourselves and which enslaves us: "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin," (5) says our Lord.

It is like an interior prison that we bear about with us wherever we go. We must earnestly aspire to deliverance.



It would be a great grace for us if we were to meet a saint who would say: "This is your predominant fault and this your principal attraction of grace which you must follow generously to reach union with God." In this way Christ applied the name, "sons of thunder" (Boanerges) (6) to the young apostles James and John who wished to call down fire from heaven on a city that had refused to receive them. We read in St. Luke: "He rebuked them, saying: You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of man came not to destroy souls, but to save." (7) In the school of the Savior, the Boanerges became such gentle souls that toward the end of his life St. John the Evangelist could say only one thing: "My little children, . . . love one another." (8) When asked why he always repeated the same exhortation, he used to reply: "This is His commandment. . . . And he that keepeth His commandments, abideth in Him and He in him." John had lost nothing of his ardor, of his thirst for justice, but it had become spiritualized and was accompanied by a great gentleness

Books I am reading

Imitation of Christ by Thomas A Kempis
Introduction to Devout Life by St Francis De Sales
The Rules of St Benedict
The Sinner's Guide by Ven Louis de Granada

If I were not a Catholic by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hated.

My reason for doing this would be, that if Christ is in any one of the churches of the world today, He must still be hated as He was when He was on earth in the flesh. If you would find Christ today, then find the Church that does not get along with the world. Look for the Church that is hated by the world as Christ was hated by the world.


* Look for the Church that is accused of being behind the times, as our Lord was accused of being ignorant and never having learned.
* Look for the Church which men sneer at as socially inferior, as they sneered at Our Lord because He came from Nazareth.
* Look for the Church which is accused of having a devil, as Our Lord was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils.
* Look for the Church which, in seasons of bigotry, men say must be destroyed in the name of God as men crucified Christ and thought they had done a service to God.
* Look for the Church which the world rejects because it claims it is infallible, as Pilate rejected Christ because He called Himself the Truth.
* Look for the Church which is rejected by the world as Our Lord was rejected by men.
* Look for the Church which amid the confusions of conflicting opinions, its members love as they love Christ, and respect its Voice as the very voice of its Founder, and the suspicion will grow, that if the Church is unpopular with the spirit of the world, then it is unworldly, and if it is unworldly it is other worldly. Since it is other-worldly, it is infinitely loved and infinitely hated as was Christ Himself. But only that which is Divine can be infinitely hated and infinitely loved. Therefore the Church is Divine.

Taken from Radio Replies, Vol. 1, p IX, Rumble & Carty, Tan Publishing

Favorite quotes from Introduction to Devout Life

Some favorite quotes from Introduction to Devout Life by St. Francis De Sales:

"The soul which rises from out of sin to a devout life has been compared to the dawn, which does not banish darkness suddenly, but by degrees. That cure which is gradually effected is always the surest; and spiritual maladies, like those of the body, are wont to come on horseback and express, while they depart slowly and on foot."

“Throw precious stones into honey, and each will grow more brilliant according to its several colour:--and in like manner everybody fulfils his special calling better when subject to the influence of devotion:--family duties are lighter, married love truer, service to our King more faithful, every kind of occupation more acceptable and better performed where that is the guide.”

“The world runs down true devotion, painting devout people with gloomy, melancholy aspect, and affirming that religion makes them dismal and unpleasant. But... the Holy Spirit tells us through His Saints, and our Lord has told us with His Own Lips, that a devout life is very sweet, very happy and very loveable. The world, looking on, sees that devout persons fast, watch and pray, endure injury patiently, minister to the sick and poor, restrain their temper, check and subdue their passions, deny themselves in all sensual indulgence, and do many other things which in themselves are hard and difficult. But the world sees nothing of that inward, heartfelt devotion which makes all these actions pleasant and easy. “

"Aristotle says that the bee sucks honey from flowers without damaging them, leaving them as whole and fresh as it found them;—but true devotion does better still, for it not only hinders no manner of vocation or duty, but, contrariwise, it adorns and beautifies all. WHEN God created the world He commanded each tree to bear fruit after its kind; and even so He bids Christians,—the living trees of His Church,—to bring forth fruits of devotion, each one according to his kind and vocation. A different exercise of devotion is required of each—the noble, the artisan, the servant, the prince, the maiden and the wife; and furthermore such practice must be modified according to the strength, the calling, and the duties of each individual. I ask you, my child, would it be fitting that a Bishop should seek to lead the solitary life of a Carthusian? And if the father of a family were as regardless in making provision for the future as a Capucin, if the artisan spent the day in church like a Religious, if the Religious involved himself in all manner of business on his neighbour’s behalf as a Bishop is called upon to do, would not such a devotion be ridiculous, ill-regulated, and intolerable? Nevertheless such a mistake is often made, and the world, which cannot or will not discriminate between real devotion and the indiscretion of those who fancy themselves devout, grumbles and finds fault with devotion, which is really nowise concerned in these errors. No indeed, my child, the devotion which is true hinders nothing, but on the contrary it perfects everything; and that which runs counter to the rightful vocation of any one is, you may be sure, a spurious devotion. Aristotle says that the bee sucks honey from flowers without damaging them, leaving them as whole and fresh as it found them;—but true devotion does better still, for it not only hinders no manner of vocation or duty, but, contrariwise, it adorns and beautifies all. Throw precious stones into honey, and each will grow more brilliant according to its several colour:—and in like manner everybody fulfils his special calling better when subject to the influence of devotion:—family duties are lighter, married love truer, service to our King more faithful, every kind of occupation more acceptable and better performed where that is the guide."