From True Womanhood, Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1893
Magnum donum Dei, donum cordis! “A great gift of God is the gift of heart.” -St. Thomas Villanova
The heart of youth can be most truly likened to these rich deposits of mineral wealth which the hand of the Creator has accumulated for our use beneath the surface of this globe, or to the mighty elements of fire and water out of which the science of man is developing daily such beneficent or destructive forces.
There is no limit to the wealth of goodness and generosity which lies hidden within the heart of any one of your boys or girls; and this fund every mother has to study and bring to light, enriching therewith first of all the soul of her child, and then teaching it to bestow its treasures of goodness and generosity on others,— on the members of the family circle first, and then on all who stand in need of generous words and deeds.
There is more power for good stored up in the heart of a babe,— power to lift itself upward to God by heroic goodness and godlike works, and to lift others with it to God’s level,— than there is of electric force in the ocean. And yet science tells us that a tiny cup full of water contains undeveloped electricity enough to blow up a fortress.
The forces which education—the true education given by a Christian mother—calls forth in the soul of her child may be destined, in the designs and with the aid of God’s almighty grace, to save and sanctify as many souls as St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, St. Vincent de Paul, or St. Teresa. These same forces neglected or perverted by a wrong heart-culture, may destroy as many souls as a Lucifer or a Mazzini.
Let not mothers who read this,—no matter how poor or overburdened with care,—say: My child is born in obscurity, and cannot be designed by Providence for such a great work and such mighty results as are pointed out here.
Shall we look at one or two examples near our own times, of men and women who have lived in our generation…
Here is a poor cooper’s family in a little town in the midst of a vine-growing country. There are two children: a boy who is working hard to gain promotion in the parish school, with the hope of being then sent to college and becoming in good time a priest,—and a timid, sickly little girl, whom it requires perpetual nursing and all the industry of a mother’s love to save from the hand of death.
The mother is a God-fearing woman, who makes of the practice of solid piety the first care and pleasure of both her children; and the father—in the midst of the deluge of irreligious doctrines and revolutionary tendencies which have crazed the laboring classes in town and country—holds firmly to the faith of his fathers.
From the dawn till late into the night the townsfolk see him toiling away at his trade, varying his occupation with the culture of a small patch of vineyard at some distance in the country.
In the terrible times during which their boy has grown to manhood and is approaching the epoch of his ordination, and while their sickly girl is budding into womanhood, both parents have had to fight a hard battle with the dire distress and famine which sweeps over their country like the breath of the Divine wrath, and with the tempest of impiety, blood, and fire which sweeps before it throne and altar, king, queen, nobles, bishops, priests, and every man and woman on whom suspicion of loyalty or religiousness can light.
The brother, concealed in his lowly paternal home, has undertaken to cultivate the mind and heart of his sister, and he teaches her all he knows, the languages of Greece and Rome, together with those of modern Europe. It seemed a folly to the parents, a folly to friends and neighbors, this high schooling of the poor cooper’s sickly, shrinking daughter by a brother whose ambition was to cultivate both mind and heart, in man and woman, to the highest degree,— and for God’s service!
And so, while parents at home murmured, and outside acquaintance sneered, the twin souls grew under the silent training of that Spirit, who only asks of man to turn to good purpose “the late and early rain” of the present day, and will Himself give the increase and the ripe fruit in due season.
That brother’s soul was not of the temper which could permit a priest to tarry idly or lie hidden beneath the shelter of his father’s workshop, while Paris streamed with the blood of priests and bishops, and souls in hourly peril of death sought in vain the saving aid a priestly hand could alone bestow.
But to Paris he did not go alone. The timid, sickly maiden bore within her bosom a heroic soul, and she would share her brother’s dangers, and, so far as she might, his glorious labors.
When the great social earthquake was over, European society was like a city overturned to its very foundations. Unbelief and the most hideous forms of anti-Christian error had invaded hearts and households among every class, and the work of conversion had to be begun over again by the patient apostleship of education,—more laborious a hundredfold and more difficult than the first great mission of the Twelve, when they went forth from the Upper Chamber to overthrow Roman and Grecian idolatry, with all the barbarous paganism of the tribes lying outside the empire of the Caesars.
And new worlds were also opening beyond the seas, where woman’s devotion and heroism were called to vie with the most fervent zeal of priestly workmen.
The brother had been but the instrument in God’s hand training and preparing that little sister, till the memorable day, November the 21st, 1800, when Providence made her the corner-stone of a society of apostolic women whose ranks now extend from Paris to the ends of the earth.
She was in the very springtide of her maidenhood, when he who is now seated on the chair of St. Peter was first laid a babe on the knees of Countess Caterina Mastai; and on May the 25th, 1865, when that nobly-born child, after passing through the furnace, had borne for nineteen years the thorny crown of the Pontificate, that great-souled woman passed to the city of God on high, where thirteen hundred and sixty-eight of her associates in the world-wide apostleship were waiting for her, and nearly thrice that number were still on earth carrying on throughout both hemispheres the divine purpose to which she had devoted her life.
We have not forgotten that bent and venerable form as we were privileged to behold it – just before the Angel of Death had given the first warning of his approach: the face which seemed to shine with the radiance of the blessed, the words so full of the Spirit of God and which burned into the listener’s soul, the atmosphere of holiness which surrounded her, making one feel as if “a virtue went forth” from the very hem of her garments.
We could and would fain have knelt for a blessing from that great servant of God,—the little sickly maid brought up in the cooper’s poor cottage in Burgundy! And how many others like herself, born in poverty, but trained to that divine generosity, which is the soul of Catholic spiritual life, were drawn to the saintly foundress by the charm of her humility, her gentleness, her greatness of soul, her consuming love of our Crucified Lord!
Who has done most for His glory and for the true welfare of the race, the lowly-born French girl, who was worthy to be the parent of so wide-spread and so thrifty a spiritual family, or the noble scion of the Mastai-Ferretti, raised so unwillingly to the papal throne, and governing the Church amid trials far more searching and destructive than the persecution of Decian or Domitian?
Their lives have run parallel for three-quarters of a century, and were both animated by that same heroic generosity which knew not how to refuse aught to God or to the neighbor’s need.
“Like Christ, we bend our hearts down to the lowly, the little ones. We wipe away tears, change diapers, put on band-aids, feed the hungry and many other menial, yet meaningful services. We are available for the powerless, not the powerful.” – Finer Femininity, Artist: Arthur John Elsley (1860-1952)
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