This is an excerpt taken from a treasure of a book published in 1924 called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A Book of Inspiration and Self-Help.
It was originally written for teaching Sisters….
PURITY
This is a virtue which the teacher has much at heart, and yet she may often be puzzled about the best means for inculcating it.
The Rev. Dr. John M. Cooper has therefore rendered a real service not only to our young people but to our teachers as well by treating the delicate subject so very well in his book, Play Fair.
In order to induce the teacher to take up the book, we shall quote a few passages from the chapter on Purity.
“And God created man to His own image: to the image of God He created him: male and female He created them.”
We are men and proud of it. But God, who treats us as men, not as babies, expects us to play the man’s part. God trusts us. He puts us on our honor in the field of purity as in other fields of our lives.
Our sex nature and powers were given us as a sacred trust for the founding of homes and the protection and upbringing of helpless and defenseless childhood. Around these things cluster like stars many of the glories of life, above all, the hallowed name of mother.
But purity, fallen and dragged in the slimy sewers of sin, turns into something more hideous than rotting leprosy. “Here is a champion swimmer. Look at his broad massive shoulders, his deep chest, his muscles of iron.
Every stroke of his mighty crawl drives him through the water with engine – like force. Trained to the very pink of condition, his sun-tanned, brawny, robust body is a sight that makes you glad to look upon.
One day he ventures out in the river too near the falls, is sucked into its powerful draw, and is swept over the brink. A week later there floats up to the surface from down in the depths a bloated Thing with glassy, mud-filmed eyes, reeking with the stench of decomposition.
So changes purity sucked into the draw of sin.
“Be a man, and chaste,” challenged the old pagan writer. And a modern poet has put a still more stirring challenge into the mouth of the noblest of the knights of poetry, Sir Galahad:
My strong blade carves the casks of men:
My stiff lance thrusteth sure.
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
“Your body is like a frisky, spirited colt or bronco. Treat it kindly and fairly and it will carry you galloping toward your goal in life. Give it a chance. But do not let it throw you or run away with you. Make good in the bronco-busting game. Either you must break the bronco, or the bronco will break you.
Any mollycoddle can get himself thrown over a horse’s head. It takes a man to break in a worthwhile colt.
Be a man, and chaste!”
“Unchaste thoughts and images will come at times, invited or without an invitation. Three things will help keep them out or shoo them away.
*First, keep busy—with hobbies, collections, pets, sports, athletics, live games, books with much action in them, anything. It will be time to mope and daydream when you are ninety years old. Keep on your toes.
*Secondly, if wrong thoughts come, say a short prayer to Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, your Guardian Angel, then turn your attention to some of the things just mentioned and in which you are interested.
*Thirdly, stick to frequent Confession and Communion, weekly if possible. Be master of your thoughts and your tongue as well as of your body. Otherwise a boy becomes master of neither and the cringing flunkey of both.”
HUMILITY
Humility is the foundation of all virtuous living, and hence is of basic importance for character training. The normal child is predisposed to humility, as may be seen from the words of Christ wherewith He made the humility of the child the condition for entering into heaven: “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven.”
But if the teacher should discover that a pupil is conceited, she must set about to correct the defect.
In the first place, she will insist on prompt obedience. She will also insist on the child’s showing proper respect to all his superiors.
W. Foerster maintains that it is important in this connection for the children to arise when their elders address them, never to interrupt the conversation of their elders, and not to sing or whistle in their presence.
Religious education offers still more helpful means. The habit of prayer, insistence on original sin with its tragic consequences, consideration of our many sins and frailties, proper preparation for Confession and Communion—all these are means to impress upon the child the need of deep humility, and afford him an opportunity for practicing this very important virtue.
However, while training her pupils to humility the teacher must be on her guard lest she teach them diffidence and faint-heartedness instead of humility.
Outside of religious motives, there is, indeed, no set of principles that will safely guide her pupils in observing the golden mean between pride and faint-heartedness.
The wisdom and training you give to your child will determine the outcome. It is not the time to give in to weariness, indifference, laziness or careless neglect. Their souls are in your hands…. Painting by Tasha Tudor
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Marva Collins offers a beacon of hope in the midst of America’s educational crises. MARVA COLLINS’ WAY recounts Marva Collins’ successful teaching strategies and offers inspirational advice on how to motivate children to fulfill their potential…
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This article is meant, not just for teachers, not just for Religious, but for all of us who touch and teach the hearts of children. We women have an awesome responsibility…as mothers, as teachers, as single women, as Religious…to carry out the forming of those little minds and hearts to serve Our Lord in His Church to the utmost of our ability! Enthusiasm?? We must!
This is an excerpt taken from a treasure of a book published in 1924 called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A Book of Inspiration and Self-Help.
ENTHUSIASM FOR TEACHING
I ever held it sweet either to learn, to teach or to write.—SAINT BEDE.
Enthusiasm is the thing which makes the world go round. Without its driving power nothing worth doing has ever been done. Love, friendship, altruism, devotion to career or hobby—all these, and most of the other good things in life, are forms of enthusiasm.
THE DRIVING POWER
Real teaching is ninety-percent enthusiasm. Amid the numberless duties of her profession the teacher must be animated with the spirit that made Theodore Roosevelt spurn the sympathy of the visitor who pitied the President toiling, on a sultry afternoon in July, at his desk piled high with work.
Though the beads of perspiration stood on his brow, Roosevelt smiled his brightest and broadest smile: “Keep your sympathy; I am happy because I like my job.”
I like my job may well be the watchword of the teacher. A model teacher, like a model physician, will think her profession the finest in the world. She will possess for her noble calling the enthusiasm of the idealist and the firm faith that moves mountains, without either of which no good work was ever accomplished.
To succeed, the teacher must, day after day, enter the schoolroom live and fresh and active-minded. As soon as she discovers that her interest in her work is flagging, that she is growing weary of certain phases of her task, she must be alarmed over her fitness for her vocation, and she is in duty bound to use all means available to re-create in her soul the spirit that animated her on that first morning of her teaching career when her heart was singing a hymn of praise and thanksgiving to the Bridegroom of her soul for having called her to the most sublime work open to woman.
Nor should it be difficult for a religious teacher to glow with enthusiasm for her exalted mission. It might be difficult for her to grow enthusiastic about dress or other vanities. But it should be easy for her to glow with the idea of having committed to her care the mind and the will—the immortal souls—of boys and girls destined one day to constitute the main body of the Church Militant in the greatest country on earth.
Where is the Sister who could remain cold at the idea of having placed into her hand this clay plastic of Catholic manhood and womanhood, and to be told:
“Here is your material to work with. Each and every one of these children is a prospective citizen of heaven, and it is for you to make them all worthy of that high destiny.
This boy has talents that should enable him to do great things for God and America. His talents are entrusted to your keeping, and must be developed by you.
That other boy is less gifted intellectually, but has in him the making of a real man, and the material to inspire thousands with the example of his struggle against odds . . .
This girl has all the marks of a religious vocation, and it is for you to develop, by example and precept, her character, into one worthy of her sublime calling.
Those other girls may someday be nurses, teachers, or mothers of families; and one and all should be trained by you for the best that they are capable of.”
WORKING FOR ETERNITY
To the Catholic teacher the eloquent words of Daniel Webster may mean more than the orator ever dreamed of: “If we work upon marble, it will perish; upon brass, time will efface it; but if we work upon immortal souls, if we imbue them with principles, with the just fear of God and love of our fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which will brighten to all eternity.”
She may in a similar way attach a deeper meaning to Frank W. Simonds’ appreciation of the teacher’s profession:
“If an Agassiz finds pleasure among fossils in order that he may interpret the great story of pre-historic life; if a Thoreau by Walden Pond is delighted with his studies of bugs and beetles; if a John Burroughs on his little patch of ground in the valley of the Mohawk gloried in his life among the birds and bees; if a Burbank is enraptured with his work of transforming a worthless desert cactus into an edible fruit, or in producing sweeter rose or fairer lily;
if these and other workers, whose names are legion, revel in the love of their work—then by what term shall we designate the joy that should be the teacher’s, who works not with mere fossils, nor with bugs or beetles, nor with birds, bees or flowers, but with the child; who is at once the most complex, the most plastic, the most beautiful, the most wonderful of all God’s creation?
Yes, it is a wonderful thing to be a teacher; it is a great thing to teach school.”
Responsibility is the trait of getting a job done that has been entrusted to you, and doing the job right, to the best of your ability, and having it done on time. This trait is especially needed when you have no one looking over your shoulder to make sure the job gets done.
This is what so many wives of today are lacking – a sense of responsibility for the work they do in their homes and for their families. You don’t have a time clock to punch or a manager coming by to check on you to make sure the job is getting done. Without this outside pressure, many of us just don’t do as good of a job at home as we would do somewhere else. What’s missing? That trait of responsibility. – Helen Andelin
Coloring pages for your children…
Our attitude changes our life…it’s that simple. Our good attitude greatly affects those that we love, making our homes a more cheerier and peaceful dwelling! To have this control…to be able to turn around our attitude is a tremendous thing to think about! This Gratitude Journal is here to help you focus on the good, the beautiful, the praiseworthy. “For the rest, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever lovely, whatsoever of good fame, if there be any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8 – Douay Rheims).
Yes, we need to be thinking of these things throughout the day!
You will be disciplined, the next 30 days, to write positive, thankful thoughts down in this journal. You will be thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people you are grateful for, lovely and thought-provoking Catholic quotes, thoughts before bedtime, etc. Saying it, reading it, writing it, all helps to ingrain thankfulness into our hearts…and Our Lord so loves gratefulness! It makes us happier, too!
In With God in Russia, Ciszek reflects on his daily life as a prisoner, the labor he endured while working in the mines and on construction gangs, his unwavering faith in God, and his firm devotion to his vows and vocation. Enduring brutal conditions, Ciszek risked his life to offer spiritual guidance to fellow prisoners who could easily have exposed him for their own gains. He chronicles these experiences with grace, humility, and candor, from his secret work leading mass and hearing confessions within the prison grounds, to his participation in a major gulag uprising, to his own “resurrection”—his eventual release in a prisoner exchange in October 1963 which astonished all who had feared he was dead.
Powerful and inspirational, With God in Russia captures the heroic patience, endurance, and religious conviction of a man whose life embodied the Christian ideals that sustained him…..
Captured by a Russian army during World War II and convicted of being a “Vatican spy,” Jesuit Father Walter J. Ciszek spent 23 agonizing years in Soviet prisons and the labor camps of Siberia. Only through an utter reliance on God’s will did he manage to endure the extreme hardship. He tells of the courage he found in prayer–a courage that eased the loneliness, the pain, the frustration, the anguish, the fears, the despair. For, as Ciszek relates, the solace of spiritual contemplation gave him an inner serenity upon which he was able to draw amidst the “arrogance of evil” that surrounded him. Ciszek learns to accept the inhuman work in the infamous Siberian salt mines as a labor pleasing to God. And through that experience, he was able to turn the adverse forces of circumstance into a source of positive value and a means of drawing closer to the compassionate and never-forsaking Divine Spirit.
He Leadeth Me is a book to inspire all Christians to greater faith and trust in God–even in their darkest hour. As the author asks, “What can ultimately trouble the soul that accepts every moment of every day as a gift from the hands of God and strives always to do his will?”
This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.
From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924
THE DULLARD
The misunderstood children who are reached the stone of discouragement instead of the bread of hope and who are branded “dull and backward” when laid upon the Procrustean bed of closely graded schools. -THOMAS EDWARD SHIELDS.
The Rev. Dr. Shields gives us a pathetic but true picture of the dullard in his book The Making and the Unmaking of a Dullard. He tells us that the dullard is the trial of every teacher, and the prolific source of heartache and humiliation to his parents. His days are eked out in discouragement, and the future stretches out before him a barren waste with no ambitions beckoning to him, and no ray of hope to illumine his path.
Misunderstood by his companions, abused by his superiors, held up to the school as an example to be avoided, the butt of ridicule for the smart, jeered at by the thoughtless and the ill-bred, with all the currents of life soured and turned back upon their source, the dullard too frequently finds his way to the Juvenile Court, and thence he passes on to recruit the ranks of the vagabond and the criminal.
A PATHETIC PICTURE
Dullards are the trial of the elementary school teacher in particular, because she cannot, like the college professor, reject them but must bear with them patiently and do for them all that human and often superhuman efforts can accomplish.
But the dull pupils offer her an opportunity also. Anyone can teach a bright child. Skill in teaching is shown at its highest when it brings out the best in dull pupils. The teacher should, above all, avoid wounding the sensibilities of a dull child. There will always be those in every school who are slow to comprehend.
After their classmates have grasped an idea during the teacher’s explanation, they still have the vacant stare—the unintelligent expression. This may be so after a second or third explanation.
The teacher is now strongly tempted to indulge in expressions of impatience, if not of opprobrium. This temptation she should resist. Such children are to be pitied, but never to be censured for their dullness.
It is an unfeeling thing to sting the soul that is already benighted. She should cheer and encourage such a slow mind to greater effort, by the sunshine of kind looks, and the warm breath of sympathy, rather than freeze up by a forbidding frown, or a blast of reproach, the feeble current of vivacity which still remains.
A dull child is almost always affectionate; and it is through the medium of kindness and patience that such a one is most effectually stimulated.
THE POWER OF KINDNESS
By employing kind methods, the teacher may strengthen the memory of the dullard, develop his imagination, and so further his mental growth.
Visual aids must be used extensively in the case of dullards, and the teacher should be an expert in the training of the senses. It is obvious that the dullard requires more individual attention than the other pupils, but in overcrowded classrooms such attention will be out of the question as the teacher cannot neglect the whole class for the sake of a few stragglers.
INTELLECTUAL EDUCATION
The teacher should be slow in declaring a pupil a dullard or a hopeless dunce. Quite often the apparent dullness is due only to laziness, and then stern measures are in order. Or the pupil may be dull in certain subjects only, while gifted in others.
The history of many of the world’s greatest men shows that such a condition is not rare among highly-gifted pupils. The gifted child may also be somewhat slow of comprehension or slow in developing mentally, and if discouraged in his efforts may be stunted forever after.
Dr. Shields’ book on the dullard proves convincingly that mistakes in teaching are sometimes responsible for the dullness of pupils. The famous educationist Ernesti could rightly speak of a pedagogical dullness brought on by methods of teaching that insist on formalism and hence afford no opportunity for independent thinking on the pupils’ part.
Pupils may also be crippled mentally for life if they are compelled, despite their innate mental limitations, to take up higher studies. Such pupils are unequal to the task of assimilating all the mental foodstuffs crammed into their system, and consequently are afflicted with mental dyspepsia for the rest of their days.
NATURAL GIFTS
There is a tendency among modern educators to overestimate intellectual gifts. Though intellectual gifts are very desirable, and meritorious too if put to the proper purpose, yet they are not the whole man.
At all events the teacher is never justified in scorning the child who lacks these gifts. There may be other gifts that compensate for the absence of intellectual ability.
Some pupils who occupy the last place in school, may be possessed of valuable mechanical ability and may be trained to render very important service to their fellow-men. But it would be imprudent to advise the latter pupils to take up a course of higher studies.
It is also a mistake to insist that all who are intellectually gifted, should train for the learned professions. Every teacher would welcome a device that would enable her to measure reliably the natural gifts of her pupils. Helpful work has been done in this regard by empirical psychology, and much valuable assistance may be expected of educational measurements and intelligence tests.
However, for the time being the heads of schools are still trusting more to the word of experienced teachers than to the findings of the psychologists.
The psychologist Meumann offers the following as providing indisputable evidence of the absence of intellectual gifts: If you have a pupil who cannot memorize, who recites without understanding whatever has been crammed into his head, who quickly forgets all that he has learned, who cannot follow the easiest explanation, who can express himself neither in spoken nor in written language—then you can no longer doubt that he is intellectually dull.
The teacher must always strive to be fair to her pupils in judging their work. She must acknowledge the good will of the pupil who may be diligent and conscientious though he is intellectually less gifted.
But of the highly-gifted pupil she must justly demand more, and it is only the gifted that she should encourage to take up higher studies. The pupils with a talent for drawing and painting, or for singing and music, should be encouraged in the respective subject, while those who show aptitude for manual skill should be urged to take up manual and technical training.
But one and all should be encouraged to obtain first, a broad general training. It is broad men sharpened to a point, that the world needs most.
“To rear your child successfully, begin by resisting the first signs of evil inclinations and by sowing the first seeds of good in his soul. You can never pay too much attention to your child’s character formation in the first years. In this early period, the education of the child is based entirely on habits. On the parents depends the formation of either good or bad ones. To develop good habits in the little one is to prepare for him now the path he will follow as an adult.” -Education of Children, S. Hart
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Few realize that a person can pursue a truly supernatural vocation by consecrating himself or herself to perpetual celibacy while yet living in the world. Here Fr. Unger describes the main guidelines for such a religious vocation, showing the nature of this vocation and the manner of dedicating oneself to it. The author gives the history in the Church of consecrated celibate living, plus some basic helps in safeguarding purity in such a life. Based on the Pope Pius XII encyclical On Holy Virginity, this book shows that the consecrated life in the world is just one more example of the rich Tradition of the Church in providing for the needs of all her children. The Mystery of Love for the Single will bring much-needed encouragement and enlightenment to those generous souls who wish to pursue a supernatural vocation and yet remain single and celibate while living in the world.
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This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.
From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924
MEANING AND IMPORTANCE OF INTEREST
A very large part of the teacher’s task consists in arousing the interest of her pupils for the work of the school. Teaching is not simply giving out lessons and correcting exercises. It is the question of winning the loyal cooperation of human beings, of touching their imagination, rousing their interest, stirring their ambition, making them want to learn.
The teacher may know facts and figures, but she will fail nevertheless if she does not know human beings and their craving for subjects of interest. A. C. Benson says on this head:
“A school lesson should be in the nature of a dramatic performance, from which some interest and amusement may be expected; while at the same time there must be solid and businesslike work done.
Variety of every kind should be attempted; the blackboard should be used, there should be some simple jesting, there should be some anecdote, some disquisition, and some allusion, if possible, to current events, and the result should be that the boys should not only feel that they have put away some definite knowledge under lock and key, but also that they have been in contact with a lively and more mature mind.
Exactly in what proportion the cauldron should be mingled, and what its precise ingredients should be, must be left to the taste and tact of the teacher.”
Indeed, the teacher’s personality plays an important role in this respect. A tedious teacher may render even the most attractive subject dull to her pupils, while the enthusiastic and wide-awake teacher may make even dry and forbidding subjects interesting.
It would be well for every teacher to heed the advice given by A. C. Benson:
“The best training that a teacher can get is the training that he can give himself. If he has found an illustration or a story effective, let him note it down for future use; let him read widely rather than profoundly, so that he has a large stock-in-trade of anecdote and illustration.
Let him try experiments; let him grasp that monotony is the one thing that alienates the attention of boys sooner than anything else; let him contrive to get brisk periods of intense work rather than long tracts of dreary work. These are facts which can only be learned by practice and among the boys.
I declare, I believe that one of the most useful qualities that I have found myself to possess from the point of view of teaching is the capacity for being rapidly and easily bored myself. If the tedium of a long and dull lesson is insupportable to myself, I have enough imagination to know that it must be far worse for the boys.”
Yet there may be times when the teacher must check a pupil’s interest, for instance, if he is interested in a one-sided way in a subject for which he is particularly gifted, while ignoring the rest of the curriculum. Such a pupil must be compelled to study the essential subjects, even though they appear devoid of interest to him.
With persistent efforts he may find even these full of interest, as there is hardly anything that will not arouse some interest if we occupy ourselves with it for some time. But in general the teacher may follow the advice given by Charles W. Eliot:
“Enlist the interest of every pupil in every school in his daily tasks in order to get from him hard, persistent, and enjoyed work. Make every pupil active, not passive; alert, not dawdling; led or piloted, not driven, and always learning the value of cooperate discipline.”
But in order to carry out these directions for creating interest, we must have interested teachers, for without the latter we can never hope to have interested pupils. The teacher should be generally interested in what is going on, and not be merely bursting with superfluous information.
To sit and be pumped into, as Carlyle said, speaking of Coleridge’s conversation, is never an exhilarating process.
HOW TO SECURE AND HOLD THE ATTENTION
If the teacher cannot secure and hold the pupils’ attention, her best efforts will be in vain. But our pupils are often wrapped up in their own little world, and special efforts will be required for securing their attention.
Comenius gives the following excellent rules for securing the pupils’ attention:
Always bring before the pupils something pleasing and profitable.
Introduce the subject of instruction in such a way as to commend it to them, or stir the intelligence into activity by inciting questions regarding the matter in hand.
Stand in a place elevated above the class, and require that all eyes be fixed on the teacher.
Assist the attention by representing everything as far as possible to the senses.
Interrupt the instruction by frequent and pertinent questions, for example, “What have I just said?”
If a pupil fails to answer, ask another pupil or several, without repeating the question.
Occasionally demand the answer from several and thus stir up rivalry.
Give an opportunity to anyone to ask questions when the lesson is finished.
Some teachers make the mistake of resorting to violent measures for the sake of getting and retaining the attention of their pupils. But all such measures defeat their very purpose, for we believe that calmness on the part of the teacher is a necessary condition for holding the pupils’ attention.
It is not given to many teachers to possess the calmness of Fray Luis de Leon. He, a holy and very learned man, had been imprisoned for more than four years. On his release and restoration to his professorial chair, he quietly remarked, the classic legend runs, “As we were saying yesterday,” and calmly continued the lecture his imprisonment had interrupted.
Though such calmness is of a heroic degree, we agree with the writer in The Sower who says that calmness is the acid test for teachers.
There is an old legend that whenever and wherever a kingfisher builds her nest, she brings calm, golden weather. Calmness is a real test for teachers. Not the now-and-then kind, but the unceasing, unshaken sort which can only be bought at a dear price.
A teacher should be calm, because, if she has this gift, she is not a nervous woman, and because no one, however gifted, however amiable, who suffers from nerves, should have charge of children.
Nuns as a rule are not nervous invalids. A nun’s personality has been through the mill in the novitiate. The reward of all this is serenity, and this serenity, together with all the ingredients which have gone to the making of it—all that the nun has learned and suffered and sacrificed—reacts powerfully on the children.
Each of us, on entering a room, adds his special contribution to its spiritual atmosphere, and each contribution is mutually infectious. A restless child makes a restless class, and so does a restless teacher. But a well-balanced teacher makes a class of well-balanced children—and we shall add, of attentive children.
She ought not to be ignorant of what used to be considered the chief, if not the only occupation for women,—she ought to be fit to keep house on the shortest notice. It is a woman’s heritage. -Gentle Art of Homemaking, Annie Swan
“The alarm went off. Rose stretched and slowly pried her eyes open. Already? It seemed like she had just fallen into a deep sleep. The baby had been especially restless that night and so she was sooo tired. But the day must begin…”
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Most wives possess a deep, existential intuition that they bear primary responsibility for creating the home environment, in cooperation with their husbands, who protect and provide for it. When Leila Lawler started out as a young wife and then became a mother, she had no idea how to keep a house, manage laundry, or plan and prepare meals, let alone entertain and inspire toddlers and select a curriculum to pass on the Faith.
She spent decades excavating deeply rooted cultural memories that had been buried under an avalanche of feminist ideology. Lawler developed and meticulously presented these on her popular website, Like Mother, Like Daughter, and has now collected them in this comprehensive, three-volume set to help women who desire a proficient and systematic approach to home life.
The Summa Domestica comprises three volumes: Home Culture, which delves into establishing a home and a vision for raising children; Education, which offers a philosophy for the primary vocation of parents to form their children and give them the means to learn on their own; and Housekeeping, which offers practical details for meals, laundry, and a reasonably clean and organized busy and thriving household.
All at once lively, funny, calming, and complete, The Summa Domestica an indispensable how-to book on making and keeping a home that will serve your family best.
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This book, The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, has been a real gem! It was written for teaching sisters and this excerpt touches on the mental state of a person and how it affects one’s physical health….
From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924
In his helpful book Health through Will Power, Dr. James J. Walsh has drawn attention to the surprising power of the will for preserving or recovering one’s health.
The author draws on his wide reading and long experience to prove that the simple exercise of natural will-power is all that is required to cure half the ills of life. All the “dreads” can be cured by scientifically strengthening the will, and recovery from such diseases as pneumonia and tuberculosis depends largely on the patient’s vigor of will.
He counsels the use of the saints’ ascesis, in hours of stress and strain, instead of the “good cry,” which, in his opinion, only weakens the character.
The teacher has a double duty to perform in this respect, one toward herself and another toward her pupils.
Professor La Rue therefore demands justly in his book Psychology for Teachers, that the teacher live a life of mental health in the presence of her pupils; she must daily show them a living example of a big, strong, purposeful, well-poised, good-humored, sympathetic soul.
To this end he gives the following rules of mental hygiene:
1. Look at life in the large. Take a big view of things.
2. Pursue a great purpose. Whoever seeks his own selfish will is traveling toward zero; but he who seeks to serve mankind and her God in the children, is facing toward infinity.
3. Practice mental hardening. Children should be taught to meet and conquer all their ordinary worries and troubles, and not to shun them.
4. Keep your poise. Many people fail because of over-anxiety lest they fail.
5. Form good mental habits:
I. Habits of the intellect:
(1) Planning: there should be an ideal for life, a plan for the year, a program for the day.
“The difficulty,” says Judd, speaking of over-worked teachers, in Genetic Psychology for Teachers, “is not so much in the fact that teachers have to think and plan, as that they come to their work in a state of mental confusion and excitement which renders any task difficult.”
(2) Concentration, unit-mindedness, the one-thing-at-a-time attitude, distinguishes the master mind. Work when you work and play when you play. One must concentrate on recreation as well as on work.
Don’t spoil your game or your walk by carrying all through it a load of anxious thought.
And on going to bed, learn to turn off consciousness as you do your electric light.
Observe that the child in school is prevented from planning the larger features of his work, and that school conditions often favor distraction rather than concentration.
It is sad to think how many children are probably contracting bad mental habits in school.
II. Emotional health requires that we kill off the feelings that are bad for us and practice those that are good for us.
There is reason to believe that a large proportion, if not the major portion, of those who lose their positions do not lack either intellect or skill, but emotional control.
Many are egocentric, paranoid, have too much self-feeling; others are emotionally unstable; and still others, emotionally weak.
One’s prevailing mental state should be that of happiness and humor. It is surprising to find how much can be accomplished by just setting the mind to be happy whatever the circumstances.
Humor is like an application of mental massage which flushes out fatigue poisons and limbers one up all through. It lets loose the tensity of mental currents. The mind seems to relax, straighten up from its work, and take a long, fresh breath.
III. Quiet but effective determination must keep the mental machine running smoothly, rousing us to kill off some thoughts and feelings and promote others.
God’s grace coupled with natural will-power can accomplish wonders with a frail body.
Almost every Religious Order has cases similar to that of the Master General of the Dominicans, Father Cormier, who being professed as a preparation for death, outlived all his fellow-novices, and having joined the Order to efface himself, was from the beginning put upon the candlestick to be a light for his brethren.
But even the confirmed invalid has a real mission to perform in the Religious Community.
Canon Sheehan contended that there should be an invalid and an incurable one in every Religious Community, if only to bring God nearer to the Brothers or Sisters in His great love.
“Every effort we make to forget self, to leave self behind us, and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with whom we are bound to live, happy, is rewarded by interior satisfaction and joy. The supreme effort of goodness is,—not alone to do good to others; that is its first and lower effect,—but to make others good.” Rev. Bernard O’Reilly The Mirror of True Womanhood, 1893 https://amzn.to/2o35uN3 (afflink)
Lecture on protecting your family from the neo-pagan society that we live in today. How to do that? Music, books, stories, liturgy, etc. are answers…..
Beautiful Brass Wire Wrapped Rosaries! Wire wrapping is one of the oldest techniques for making jewelry or rosaries by hand. Frequently, in this approach, a wire is bent into a loop or other decorative shape and then the wire is wrapped around itself to finish the wire component making that loop or decorative shape permanent. Not only is it quite beautiful but it makes the rosaries sturdy and durable.Available here.
Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.
You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.
This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.
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A balanced approach to the subject of health written for Catholic teachers….
From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924
An ounce of sanctity with exceptionally good health does more for the saving of souls than striking sanctity with an ounce of health.—St. Ignatius
Carlyle remarks that health and holiness are etymologically first cousins. And Dr. James J. Walsh has pointed out that health and holiness “have many surprising relations, and some of them contradict current notions; but it must not be forgotten that they are really coordinate functions.
For while we talk about the influence of the mind on the body, and the body on the mind, we must not forget that these two constitute one being; and there is quite literally no idea which does not make itself felt in the body, and no emotion which does not make itself felt in the mind. Wholeness of body and soul that is, health and holiness—work together for good in that mysterious compound we know as man.”
The Claims of Body and Soul
Body and soul are twin gifts from God, and bring with them responsibilities, and it is no sign of superior care of the soul to be slothful and neglectful in regard to the body.
Asceticism is another and quite a different thing. It is one thing to discipline one’s body; it is quite a different thing to neglect one’s teeth, or wash one’s body, or see that one’s food is digestibly prepared, or masticate it properly, or take reasonable exercise and fresh air.
Habits of this sort may quite as easily be owing to slothfulness as to superior spirituality. The distinction is not always observed. The wisdom of the ancient sages proclaiming the demand of the sane soul for a sane body has been further established by the insistence of the Christian saints, notably the founders of Religious Orders, Sts. Benedict and Ignatius, of Bernards, the Franciscans, and the Teresas.
St. Benedict’s Rule contains wise provisions for the bodily as well as the spiritual well-being of its followers. If the monks were to work, they were adequately to eat.
Think of it! “A pound of bread daily and two dishes of cooked food at each meal!”
“The habits that are to be worn are to fit the wearer, be sufficiently warm, and not too old.”
Again, each of the brethren is to take “from six to eight hours of unbroken sleep daily, with the addition of a siesta in summer”; each likewise is to have “a blanket, a coverlet, mattress and a pillow!”
St. Francis of Assisi strictly enjoins the Superiors of his Order to “take special care to provide for the needs of the sick and the clothing of the friars, according to the places, seasons, and cold climates.”
Health and Long Life
These are some obvious illustrations of how wisely the saints provided for the body—other folks’ bodies especially: they did not seem always to mind so much for their own.
Our sisters should take their teachings to heart for, as a rule, they neglect unduly the care of their bodily health. The Rev. Arthur Barry O’Neill, C.S.C., has made a thorough study of this subject and we shall follow him as a reliable guide in the matter.
We agree with him that an examination of the mortality statistics of our Religious Communities of women will probably show that the longevity of Sisters is by no means so notable as one should expect.
It may sound somewhat extravagant in the statement, but it is probably verifiable in fact, that from thirty to forty percent of American Sisters die before “their time comes,” their death being of course, subjectively, entirely in conformity with God’s will; but being, objectively, merely in accordance with God’s permission, which is quite another matter.
Now, long life is a blessing. As Spirago says, “It is a great boon, for the longer one lives, the more merits one can amass for eternity.”
So precious a boon is it that God promised it as a reward for keeping the fourth commandment, a fact of which St. Paul reminds the Ephesians, “Honor thy father and thy mother . . . that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest be long-lived upon earth.”
Accordingly, any procedure, any scheme of life, which contributes even indirectly to the shortening of one’s days assuredly needs unusually strong reasons to justify it; and, with all due deference be it said, such procedure, negative if not positive, is not uncommon in our convents.
Neglecting to take daily exercise out-of-doors may appear a small thing in youth or early middle life, but there is nothing surer that such neglect is seriously detrimental to health; and, exceptional cases apart, poor health is correlative of a truncated career rather than of normal length of days.
Underlying this disregard of the open-air exercise which all physicians declare to be essential to bodily well-being, there is probably in the minds of many Sisters an inchoate, if not fully developed, conviction that vigorous, robust health is more or less incompatible with genuine spirituality, that an occasional illness of a serious nature and a quasi-chronic indisposition at the best of times are, after all, quite congruous in professed seekers after religious perfection, incipient followers of the saints.
That is a pernicious fallacy of which their spiritual directors and confessors should strenuously endeavor to rid them.
Ill-health directly led by God is doubtless a blessing; but it is also an exception. In the ordinary course of God’s providence, men and women, in the cloister as in the world, are in duty bound to take such care of their bodies as will result in the greater efficiency of their minds and souls, and in an increasingly acceptable service of their whole being to their Heavenly Father.
Health is to be sought for, not as an end, but as an excellent means, most frequently indeed an indispensable means, of attaining the true end of both religious and laity, which is holiness, or sanctity.
Theory and Practice Among the Saints
The saints themselves thoroughly understood this truth, and their preaching frequently emphasizes it, even though the practice of some of them, in the matter of austerities and penances, does not apparently conform thereto.
Apparently, for in many a case it was precisely the superb health of the saintly body that rendered the austerities and penances possible.
Like the trained pugilists of the present day, those old-time spiritual athletes could “stand punishment” to an extent that would permanently disable physical weaklings.
It is to be remembered, also, that some of these unmerciful castigators of their bodies–St. Ignatius and St. Francis of Assisi, for instance-frankly avowed in their later years that they had overdone the business of chastising the flesh.
St. Ignatius took good care to offset the influence of his Manresa example in this matter by making due provisions, in his rule and his counsels to his Religious, for proper heed of bodily health.
Time and time again he gave, in varied phrase and amplified form, the advice stated in this, his general precept: “Let all those things be put away and carefully avoided that may injure, in any way whatsoever, the strength of the body and its powers.”
Since sanctity is, after all, only sublimated common sense, it is not surprising to find other saintly founders, reformers, and spiritual directors of Religious Orders giving the same judicious counsel. “If health is ruined how is the Rule to be observed?” pertinently asks St. Teresa.
Writing to some of her nuns who were inclined to follow their own ideas in the matter of prayer and penance, the same great Carmelite advises: “Never forget that mortification should serve for spiritual advancement only. Sleep well, eat well. It is infinitely more pleasing to God to see a convent of quiet and healthy Sisters who do what they are told than a mob of hysterical young women who fancy themselves privileged. . .”
“Govern the body by fasts and abstinence as far as health permits,” says the Dominican Rule. “I have seen,” writes St. Catherine of Siena, “many penitential devotees who lacked patience and obedience because they studied to kill their bodies and not their self-will.”
To every Religious Order and its members may well be applied the words of a Jesuit General, Father Piccolomini, to his own subjects: “It may be said that an unhealthy Religious bears much the same relation to the Order of which he is a member as a badly knit or dislocated bone does to the physical body. For just as a bodily member, when thus affected, not only cannot perform its own proper functions, but even interferes with the full efficiency of the other parts, so when a Religious has not the requisite health, his own usefulness is lost and he seriously interferes with the usefulness of others.”
Health – A Great Good
Were further testimony needed to expose the fallacy that health is something to be slighted, rather than cultivated, by a fervent nun, it could be furnished in superabundance. “Health,” says Cardinal Newman, “is a good in itself, though nothing came of it, and is especially worth seeking and cherishing.”
In 1897, Pope Pius X, then Cardinal Sarto, reported to Rome concerning his seminary in Venice: “It is my wish, in a word, to watch the progress of my young men both in piety and in learning, on which depends in a great measure the exercise of their ministry later on, but I do not attach less importance to their health.”
A distinguished director of souls in our times, the late Archbishop Porter, favored one of his spiritual children, a nun, with the following sane advice:
“As for evil thoughts, I have so uniformly remarked in your case that they are dependent upon your state of health, that I say without hesitation: begin a course of Vichy and Carlsbad. . . Better far to eat meat on Friday than to be at war with every one about us.
I fear much, you do not take enough food and rest. You stand in need of both, and it is not wise to starve yourself into misery. Jealousy and all similar passions become intensified when the body is weak. . . Your account of your spiritual condition is not very brilliant; still, you must not lose courage. Much of your present suffering comes, I fear, from past recklessness in the matter of health.”
This is merely repeating in other words what St. Francis of Sales, three centuries before Archbishop Porter, wrote to a nun of his time: “Preserve your physical strength to serve God within spiritual exercises, which we are often obliged to give up when we have indiscreetly overworked ourselves.”
What has been said should disabuse some minds of the idea that disregard of bodily well-being is a condition, if not an essential, of holiness; or the other no less dangerous prejudice that adequate reasonable care of the body, if carried out with the proper spirit and intention, does not of itself include thorough discipline of the soul.
Francis Thompson has well said in the preface to his Health and Holiness: “The laws of perfect hygiene, the culture of the ‘sound body,’ not for its own sake, but as the pliant, durable instrument of the soul, are found more and more to demand such a degree of persevering self-restraint and self-resistance as constitutes an ascesis, a mortification, no less severe than that enjoined by the most rigorous masters of the spiritual life.”
Supernaturalized as it surely will be by the purity of intention so characteristic of Sisters, such mortification will be no less a spiritual asset than a physical boon.
What Bishop Hedley says in his Spiritual Retreat for Religious is very much to the point: “There are certain things which are the best promoters of health and cheerfulness—viz., fresh air, exercise, and recreation.
They are duties, too, in a Religious Community. In such houses it is a very common thing to meet with nervous complaints which entirely arise from the neglect of these three powerful tonics of the human system.
I do not say that this is the case with all. But it is a remarkable fact that those members of a Community who have the most active duties are usually the most healthy in mind and body, while the others are the reverse.
These two things, fresh air and exercise, are of the utmost importance even from a spiritual point of view. They are not material, but really supernatural matters. The same is true of recreation. The three ought to be combined.”
“Who shall blame a child whose soul turns eagerly to the noise and distraction of worldliness, if his parents have failed to show him that love and peace and beauty are found only in God?” – Mary Reed Newland
Here is a simple outline to ensure we are carrying out our daily duties as best we can on this road we travel as Catholic women. This is my own list of what I deem the basics of a successful day. It is an ideal I strive for. You may have your own plan, and I hope you do. If this can help in any way, then I have accomplished my goal with this video…
Every minute counts! Let Saint Joseph remind you of the time with this beautiful Saint Joseph pocket watch. Available here.
Dear Young Lady, You are at a very important crossroad in your life. In the next short while your vocation will be settled and you will roll up your sleeves and fulfill God’s will in that role. This will, ultimately, be your means to happiness in this life and in the next.
The decisions you make in this short interim before that will greatly affect your whole life.
That is where this journal comes in. All of the quotes deal with your time in life….whether it is courtship, religious vocations, modesty and just a better spiritual life in general.
You will be disciplined in the next 30 days to write down positive, thankful thoughts in this journal. You will be thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people you are grateful for, etc.
This will help you to work on that inner happiness that needs to be developed even before you find your vocation. Now is the time to improve your life!
The pages in this maglet (magazine/booklet) is for the Catholic wife…to inspire her in the daily walk as a Godly, feminine, loving wife. As wives, we have a unique calling, a calling that causes us to reach into our innermost being in order to give ourselves to our husbands the way Christ would desire.We, as women, have the awesome responsibility AND power to make or break our marriages and our relationships. Let’s not wait to fix it AFTER it is broken.It is all about self-sacrifice, thankfulness, kindness, graciousness, etc.The articles in this maglet reflect these virtues and will serve to inspire and encourage. It is a Catholic maglet, based on solid Catholic principles.
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This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.
STUBBORNNESS
Most of the stubbornness among children can probably be traced to false methods of education either in the home or in the school. Many parents and teachers are forever issuing orders without once pausing to consider whether all their orders can be carried out.
Again, they will never offer a word of praise, but instead are liberal of reprimands no matter how hard the effort of the child may have been. With such treatment the child will finally come to disregard all commands and to take a peculiar delight in acting contrary to the wishes of his superiors.
But pupils spoiled in this way are not at all hopeless. Proper treatment is all that they require to be cured. They must be led to realize that they must submit to authority.
Before giving a command the teacher must make sure that she is right, but after that she must insist on obedience to her order.
The stubborn child may never be allowed to triumph over the teacher. Instead, he should be trained to spend his strong will power on the proper objectives, and he may then prove a leader among men.
The teacher should discriminate between the stubborn and the independent boy. The independent boy acts contrary to the teacher’s commands not for the mere satisfaction of following his own sweet will, but rather because he is convinced that he knows the matter in hand better than the teacher.
He feels very keenly the “humiliation” of being compelled to follow in all things the teacher’s guidance. He is eager to break away from the leading strings and to follow his own initiative.
Such a boy may be very gifted and may possess the invaluable asset of having both a keen mind and strong will power. Properly directed he will make his mark in the world or in the Church.
On the other hand, it is difficult to give him, when found in a large class, the special training required for the full development of his powers. Yet it is a safe rule for the teacher to give him as much opportunity for personal initiative as is consonant with class management.
He should not be nagged at for trifles but should be kept busy with tasks that make real demands upon his ability and industry. He should feel that the teacher is glad to assist him in his laudable ambition, yet may not demand that the teacher attend to him to the neglect of the rest of her class.
The proud pupil offers peculiar difficulties to the teacher. If his pride is only a form of vanity springing from the consciousness of good looks, pretty clothes, etc., the check will come naturally enough from his companions, who are not apt to tolerate in their midst any such priggishness.
But where the pride springs from the consciousness of superior ability, the remedy is not so near at hand. Though the boy is proud he may not be censured undeservedly, but may be reformed by exposing certain faults of which he is guilty but not conscious.
But it is rarely advisable to reprimand him in public. It will generally be more effective to direct his attention to what is truly great and admirable, and in this way he may be encouraged to make virtue and saintliness the goal of his striving.
The lazy pupil may be the despair of the zealous and ambitious teacher. But she must be on her guard lest she mistake dullness for laziness. If the Lord has not given a boy sufficient ability to pass the sixth-grade examinations, it would be wrong to punish the pupil for the lack of talent.
Again, the teacher perhaps demands too much of the children, and the less gifted are discouraged in consequence and lack the stimulus to make any further effort whatsoever. The teacher and not the pupils are to blame for their apathy and listlessness. The pupils should not be punished, but should be encouraged to try anew.
Other cases of apparent laziness may be traced to physical defects of various kinds, and should be referred to the physician rather than to the teacher. But if the laziness be real and not merely apparent, the teacher will have a hard task.
She must, first of all, arouse the pupil’s interest and thus release his energy. She must make him work and work hard. This may require some time, but if in the end she brings him to appreciate the fruits of hard labor, she has done her part to fit him for life.
Treat your boys as young men. You want them to grow up to be hardworking and confident. Is it not true, that the more productive we are, the better we feel? Then structure your children’s day to be active and busy—they will thrive under these conditions. -Finer Femininity, Painting by Mark Keathley, 1963
Lecture on raising a man in a society of boys. Modern society has effeminate males even in their 40s & 50s so how do you raise a man to be an actual man of virtue?
Penal Rosaries!
Penal rosaries and crucifixes have a wonderful story behind them. They were used during the times when religious objects were forbidden and it was illegal to be Catholic. Being caught with a rosary could mean imprisonment or worse. A penal rosary is a single decade with the crucifix on one end and, oftentimes, a ring on the other. When praying the penal rosary you would start with the ring on your thumb and the beads and crucifix of the rosary in your sleeve, as you moved on to the next decade you moved the ring to your next finger and so on and so forth. This allowed people to pray the rosary without the fear of being detected. Available here.
Most wives possess a deep, existential intuition that they bear primary responsibility for creating the home environment, in cooperation with their husbands, who protect and provide for it. When Leila Lawler started out as a young wife and then became a mother, she had no idea how to keep a house, manage laundry, or plan and prepare meals, let alone entertain and inspire toddlers and select a curriculum to pass on the Faith.
She spent decades excavating deeply rooted cultural memories that had been buried under an avalanche of feminist ideology. Lawler developed and meticulously presented these on her popular website, Like Mother, Like Daughter, and has now collected them in this comprehensive, three-volume set to help women who desire a proficient and systematic approach to home life.
The Summa Domestica comprises three volumes: Home Culture, which delves into establishing a home and a vision for raising children; Education, which offers a philosophy for the primary vocation of parents to form their children and give them the means to learn on their own; and Housekeeping, which offers practical details for meals, laundry, and a reasonably clean and organized busy and thriving household.
All at once lively, funny, calming, and complete, The Summa Domestica an indispensable how-to book on making and keeping a home that will serve your family best.
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This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.
TEACHING THE ART OF STUDY
The scholar who cherishes the love of comfort, is not fit to be deemed a scholar. —CONFUCIUS
All teachers agree with Janet Erskine Stuart that children do not know how to learn lessons when the books are before them, and that there is a great waste of good power, and a great deal of unnecessary weariness from this cause. If the cause of imperfectly learned lessons is examined it will usually be found there, and also the cause of so much dislike to the work of preparation.
Children do not know by instinct how to set about learning a lesson from a book, nor do they spontaneously recognize that there are different ways of learning, adapted to different lessons.
BOOKS ALONE ARE NOT ENOUGH
It is a help to the children to know that there is one way for the multiplication table and another for history and another for poetry, as the end of the lesson is different.
They can understand this if it is put before them that one is learnt most quickly by mere repetition, until it becomes a sing-song in the memory that cannot go wrong, and that afterward in practice it will allow itself to be taken to pieces.
They will see that they can grasp a chapter of history more intelligently if they prepare for themselves questions upon it which might be asked of another, than in trying by mechanical devices of memory to associate facts with something to hold them by; that poetry is different from both, having a body and a soul, each of which has to be taken account of in learning it, one of them being the song and the other the singer.
Obviously there is not one only way for each of these or for other matters which have to be learnt, but one of the greatest difficulties is removed when it is understood that there is something intelligible to be done in the learning of lessons beyond reading them over and over with the hope that they will go in.
In his Collationes in Hexaemeron St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, gives some helpful directions concerning the art of study.
Our study must, first, be orderly. In the second place, it must be persevering. St. Bonaventure finds desultory reading a great hindrance, for it betrays a restless spirit, which makes no progress, nor does it permit anything to take root in the memory. We learn to know a person minutely by looking at him often and by studying him, not by a mere glance.
In the third place, we must study with pleasure. God has proportioned both food and taste, so that both must correspond if the food is to be wholesome. He who finds the food distasteful, as did the Israelites with the manna, experiences but one taste. Spiritual men, however, find therein the sweetness of every taste.
Finally, says St. Bonaventure, our studies must remain within proper bounds, and must be prudent. We must be discreet and moderate, and not attempt a learning beyond our strength. The exact limit for every student is drawn by his talents. Beyond this he should not seek to go, nor should he remain below it.
The Seraphic Doctor concludes his directions with an illustration from St. Augustine. Those who do not carry on their studies in an orderly manner are like colts which gallop hither and thither, while the useful beast of burden plods securely on, and arrives at its destination, because it proceeds steadily and perseveringly.
The teacher cannot give too much attention to the subject of teaching her pupils the art of study. Any student of waste in education realizes that the greatest source of waste is found in unintelligent methods of the pupils’ work.
One of our most needed reforms is found in this field. Much would be gained if all teachers could be brought to realize that, the formation of habits, rather than the acquisition of facts, is the dominant purpose of the school.
NEW PODCAST! You see, we don’t marry Prince Charming and live happily ever after. We are humans and we have faults….many faults….Both of us, husband and wife. It takes consistent effort to make a good marriage. Every day, every hour, every minute, we need to be thinking the right thoughts, praying the right prayers, listening to the right people and doing the right things…
Establishing clear-cut family rules requires complete agreement between father and mother. Few things disturb a child more than when his father establishes one standard of conduct and his mother makes continuous exceptions to it. Once a father and mother agree, neither should change the rules without consulting the other, or the child will not know what is expected of him. And both father and mother must share in enforcing them. – Rev. George Kelly, 1950’s
Beautiful Wire Wrapped Rosaries! Lovely, Durable. Each link is handmade and wrapped around itself to ensure quality. Available here.
We live in an age characterized by agitation and lack of peace. This tendency manifests itself in our spiritual as well as our secular life. In our search for God and holiness, in our service to our neighbor, a kind of restlessness and anxiety take the place of the confidence and peace which ought to be ours. What must we do to overcome the moments of fear and distress which assail us? How can we learn to place all our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into his loving care? This is what is taught in this simple, yet profound little treatise on peace of head. Taking concrete examples from our everyday life, the author invites us to respond in a Gospel fashion to the upsetting situations we must all confront. Since peace of heart is a pure gift of God, it is something we should seek, pursue and ask him for without cease. This book is here to help us in that pursuit.
Reverend Irala here addresses ways to promote mental and emotional well-being to help increase one’s health, efficiency and happiness. He speaks on topics such as how to rest, think, use the will, control feelings, train the sexual instinct, be happy, and choose an ideal. Included are also many practical instructions on dealing with mental struggles of all kinds. This book is most useful in our present times of worldly confusion.
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This excerpt is a lesson for all educators…including, and especially, mothers and fathers. There aren’t many schools nowadays that are reputable (there are some, indeed), so mothers and fathers have had to take much of burden of educating their children, especially in their religion. Take heart, your reward will be great in heaven!
Some readers may be tempted to restrict the idea of the pupils’ success to what is seen on the night of the school commencement. But we have in mind the school commencement merely as the scene whence the graduates must pass to the larger stage of the world to play their parts.
The Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., has brought out vividly the part that the Sisters play in both phases of the pupil’s success:
Back stage, hot in heavy habits that were never designed for work among canvas wings, the Sisters, tired, flushed, but happy, watched the end of their year’s work.
The next day they too were to leave; some for the motherhouse, some for the summer courses at Catholic colleges, all eventually for the annual retreat.
The curtain dropped for the last time, and the boys and girls surged out to greet happy relatives, some with a quick good-by to their teachers, others thoughtless and forgetful of all except that for them school was at an end and they were free.
Yet, though few children came to thank them, and fewer still of that seething audience gave a passing thought to the Sisters backstage, all that was epitomized in the entertainment just concluded, and the diploma just conferred was credited by a higher Power to them.
Because of their patient drilling some boy would rise higher in life. Later on some girl would come with the man who loved her, to seek out the Sister who had kept her feet straight in her youthful days.
Some boy in the grip of temptation would remember her insistent lessons of loyalty to God and put sin ruthlessly behind him. Perhaps in some distant day a wanderer from the faith of his fathers would on his deathbed murmur the act of contrition she taught him, and by that childhood prayer open for himself the gates of eternal bliss.
And perhaps before God’s altar some young priest, in the full tide of his newly-received priesthood, would pause at the Memento to whisper the name of the nun whose lessons and prayers had first turned his eyes toward the service of the Sanctuary.
Her work, unrecognized, unappreciated, but heroic with the heroism of patient unselfishness and devotion to a high ideal, is one of the loveliest things in the Church today.
She is the greatest asset of Catholic education. I crave your thanks for the teaching Sister.
The Rev. Robert Schwickerath, S.J., relates an incident of the life of Father Bonifacio, a distinguished Jesuit educator, who for more than forty years taught the classics.
One day he was visited by his brother, a professor in a university, whom he had not seen for many years. When the professor heard that the Father had spent all the years of his life in the Order in teaching Latin and Greek to young boys, he exclaimed:
“You have wasted your great talents in such inferior work! I expected to find you at least a professor of philosophy or theology. What have you done that this post is assigned to you?”
Father Bonifacio quietly opened a little book, and showed him the list of hundreds of pupils whom he had taught, many of whom occupied high positions in Church or State, or in the world of business.
Pointing at their names, the Father said with a pleasant smile:
“The success which my pupils have achieved is to me a far sweeter reward than any honor which I might have obtained the most celebrated university.”
Father Schwickerath justly adds to this account that “not all teachers have the consolation of seeing their pupils in high positions. It happens that the best efforts of a devoted teacher seem to be lost on many pupils. Even this will not discourage the religious teacher.
He will remember that his model, Jesus Christ, did not reap the fruit which might have been expected from such a Master. Not all that He sowed brought forth fruit a hundredfold, not even thirtyfold. Some fell upon stony ground, and other some fell among the thorns, and yet He went on patiently sowing.
So a teacher ought not to be disheartened if the success should not correspond with his labors. He knows that one reward is certainly in store for him, the measure of which will not be his success, but his zeal; not the fruit but his efforts.”
It is the prospect of this reward that inspires the devoted service of our Sisters.
Not long ago, in distant Algiers, an American tourist visited the lepers’ colony out of pure curiosity. These poor lepers were cared for by a Community of Sisters. The man was attracted by one of these self-sacrificing women because of her youth, beauty, and refinement, and to his surprise he learned that she was an American girl.
Being introduced to her, he said: “Sister, I would not do this work for $10,000 a year.”
“No,” said the Sister, “nor would I do it for $100,000 nor a million a year.”
“Really,” said the stranger, “you surprise me. What, then, do you receive?”
“Nothing,” was the reply, “absolutely nothing.”
“Then why do you do it?”
The Sister lifted the crucifix that was pending from her rosary and, sweetly kissing it, said, “I do it for the love of Him, for Jesus who died for the love of them and for the love of me. In the loathsome ulcers of these poor lepers I see the wounds of my crowned and crucified Savior.”
For the rest, we believe that the very choicest reward will be meted out to the School Sisters for that portion of their work that to human seeming is generally in vain. Our School Sisters may gain honor from their talented pupils; they will earn their bread (in a certain sense) by training the vast body of mediocre children; but they will merit heaven by the patient labors they devote to the dullards in their schools.
A holy house is one in which God is truly King; in which He reigns supreme over the minds and hearts of the inmates; in which every word and act honors His name. One feels on entering such a house, nay, even on approaching it, that the very atmosphere within and without is laden with holy and heavenly influences. -True Womanhood, Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894 https://amzn.to/2PsM94w (afflink)
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Hands Free Mama is the digital society’s answer to finding balance in a media-saturated, perfection-obsessed world. It doesn’t mean giving up all technology forever. It doesn’t mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. It means looking our loved ones in the eye and giving them the gift of our undivided attention, living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions.
With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. https://amzn.to/2T06u28 (afflink)
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Every mother and every father is a teacher. How important it is to have enthusiasm for this noble profession, in spite of the bumps, which inevitably follow our instructing footsteps.
What a legacy we leave behind!
This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.
“WHY I LIKE TEACHING”
Our teachers may derive inspiration from the prize essay on this subject written by Mr. John Dixon, school superintendent of Columbus, Wisconsin:
“I like teaching because I like boys and girls, because I delight in having them about me, in talking with them, working with them, and in possessing their confidence and affection.
“I like teaching because the teacher works in an atmosphere of idealism, dealing with soul and heart, with ideas and ideals.
“I like teaching because of the large freedom it gives. There is abundance of room for original planning and initiative in the conduct of the work itself, and an unusual time margin of evenings, weekends, and vacations in which to extend one’s interests, personal and professional.
“I like teaching because the relation of teacher to learner in whatever capacity is one of the most interesting and delightful in the world.
Teaching is attractive because it i-poses a minimum of drudgery. Its day is not too long, and is so broken by intermissions, and so varied in its schedule of duties, as to exclude undue weariness or monotony. The program of each school-day is a new and interesting adventure.
“Teaching invites to constant growth and improvement. The teacher is in daily contact with books, magazines, and libraries, and all the most vital forces of thought and leadership, social and educational.
It is work that stimulates ambition and enhances personal worth. There is no greater developer of character to be found.
Also, teaching includes a wide range of positions and interests, extending from kindergarten to university, covering every section where schools are maintained and embracing every variety of effort, whether academic, artistic, industrial, commercial, agricultural or professional.
“There is no work in which men and women engage which more directly and fundamentally serves society and the state.
Teaching is the biggest and best profession in the state because it creates and molds the nation’s citizenship. It is the very foundation and mainstay of the national life.
“The true teacher is, and may well be, proud of the title, for his work is akin to that of the Master Builder, the creation of a temple not made with hands.”
In the following poem Mr. Louis Burton Woodward answers a question frequently asked but seldom as beautifully answered:
WHY I TEACH
Because I would be young in soul and mind
Though years must pass and age my life constrain,
And I have found no way to lag behind
The fleeting years, save by the magic chain
That binds me, youthful, to the youth I love,
I teach.
Because I would be wise and wisdom find
From millions gone before whose torch I pass,
Still burning bright to light the paths that wind
So steep and rugged, for each lad and lass
Slow-climbing to the Heights above,
I teach.
Because in passing on the living flame
That ever brighter burns the ages through,
I have done service that is worth the name
Can I but say, “The flame of knowledge grew
A little brighter in the hands I taught,”
I teach.
Because I know that when life’s end I reach
And thence pass through the gates so wide and deep
To what I do not know, save what priests teach,
That the remembrance of me men will keep
Is what I’ve done; and what I have is naught,
I teach.
To preserve and increase her first love for teaching the Sister must be on her guard lest her interest in her work be based on other than idealistic grounds.
It is only with an enthusiasm based upon these grounds that she will be able to bear the thousand disappointments that every teacher is heir to.
But with an abiding love for teacher all labor will be light: Ubi amatur, non laboratur; aut si laboratur, labor amatur—”Where there is love, there is no labor; or if there be labor, it will be a labor of love.”
The teacher imbued with deep-seated enthusiasm for her profession will not think of the school-room as a field to work in, but as a force to work with.
“The study of Religion should be a regular part of the curriculum and taught just as thoroughly as Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and other subjects.
The child gains a deep and reverent understanding of the principles of his faith, and practicing his religion becomes second nature to him.
Parents who believe that Sunday School instruction is adequate for a religious education would protest vigorously if their child were instructed only one hour each week in geography, history or some other subject of considerably less importance in the long view.” -Fr. George Kelly, Catholic Family Handbook https://amzn.to/2ovgHpU (afflink)
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Drawing on the experience of dozens of saints, Fr. Plus explains sure ways we can recollect ourselves before prayer so that once we begin to pray, our prayers will be richer and more productive; he teaches us how to practice interior silence habitually, even in the rush and noise of the world; and he explains each of the kinds of prayer and shows when we should and should not employ each.
We all pray, but few of us pray well. And although that’s troubling, few of us have found a spiritual director capable of leading us further along the path of prayer.
Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., is such a director, and reading this little book about the four types of prayer will be for you like hearing the voice of the wise and gentle counsellor you long for but can’t find: one who knows your soul well and understands its needs.
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A balanced approach to the subject of health written for Catholic teachers….
Lecture on raising a man in a society of boys. Modern society has effeminate males even in their 40s & 50s so how do you raise a man to be an actual man of virtue?
