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Category Archives: True Men As We Need Them

Christian Youth Must be God-Fearing and Dutiful

04 Thursday Nov 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in True Men As We Need Them, Youth

≈ 1 Comment

From True Men as We Need Them, Fr. Bernard O’Reilly, 1890’s

Whatever else our young men may be, when formed at home by good parents, and trained in Christian schools by God-fearing and accomplished masters, they will be at least conscientious and God-fearing themselves.

This is the first and greatest need of our age.

They will be also dutiful and high-minded, for the young man whose soul from childhood has been filled with that lofty sense of duty, as of a sacred, indispensable, and ennobling obligation due to the Most High God, will be disposed to discharge every office entrusted to him, as if he were immediately accountable to the Divine Majesty.

Hence everything shall be done perfectly, because done for the sake of Him who is the most loving of Fathers, and the most generous of benefactors.

High-minded must ever be the men who are penetrated with duty, and act upon such lofty motives. He who beholds the Infinitely Great and Holy in every person to whom he is bound to yield lawful obedience, will not feel himself degraded in being subordinate to those who may be his own inferiors in birth, in education, and refinement.

He will not fulfill his duty conscientiously, or go even beyond his duty in his endeavor to do well, because he is ambitious to obtain praise, or fearful of incurring blame. He is only supremely desirous of pleasing One who values the loving wish much more even than the perfect performance.

And this high-mindedness will be thus a safeguard against that baneful and tyrannical human respect, which is so apt to make old people as well as young omit the good they ought to do, and do the evil their conscience condemns, lest they should draw on themselves the displeasure, the ridicule, or the vain judgments of bad men.

The dutiful and the high-minded will ever be the faithful, the trustworthy, true to the death, because true to God and to themselves.

Pressing and Present Need of the High-Minded and Dutiful

Surely there is great need of such in our day. And because they are thus dutiful and true—they will be diligent, laborious, persevering, self-denying, and self-reliant, because placing their main dependence on the All-Mighty and putting forth to please Him, in their every work and endeavor, their whole strength and industry.

Such men are—everything taken into account—the best calculated to succeed. And such men—be they born ever so lowly—are God’s true gentlemen—the men whom all are forced to respect—because they are incapable of meanness, fraud, or untruthfulness.

These are a few only of the features of the True Man so needed in all countries and at all periods of the world’s history, but especially needed at a time when noble living will avail infinitely more to save religion and society than eloquent discoursing or the most learned and beautiful writing.

Yes, the road of true manliness and unblemished honor which we are to travel over together, leads up by steep and toilsome paths to the only reward worthy of gentle souls.

Like the maiden-knight of the ideal Christian chivalry, if we would keep our souls pure, and win the ecstatic joy of coming to close communion with the veiled Majesty of our Father, we must be ready to do and bear what the crowd recoil from.

“I leave the plain, I climb the height;

No branchy thicket shelter yields;

But blessed forms in whistling storms

Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden-knight—to me is given

Such hope, I know not fear;

I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven

That often meet me here.

I muse on joy that will not cease,

Pure spaces clothed in living beams,

Pure lilies of eternal peace,

Whose odors haunt my dreams;

And, stricken by an angel’s hand,

This mortal armor that I wear,

This weight and size, this heart and eyes,

Are touched, are turned to finest air.”  —Tennyson, Sir Galahad

The Devil exults most when he can steal a man’s joy of spirit from him. He carries a powder with him to throw into any smallest possible chinks of our conscience, to soil the spotlessness of our mind and the purity of our life. But when spiritual joy fills our hearts, the Serpent pours out his deadly poison in vain. – St. Francis of Assisi

 

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Since the father in the home takes the place of God, this book gives the ideals of true manhood and in an easy-to-read and enjoyable way. It helps the father reach those ideals. Unhappiness and home destroyers are discussed, along with their solutions. Also discussed is paternal authority. There are chapters on boyhood, matrimony and “Obstacles to true Manliness.” Finally, to make the book complete, different occupations of men are discussed to include the Laboring Man, The Business Man, “The Toilers of the Pen”, The Statesman, and The Professional Man. It is rare to find a book, written for men, that so fully helps men to reach their ideals in life. Any man will be able to profit from this excellent and instructional book designed to help one grow spiritually.

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The Home of the True Man – Fr. Bernard O’Reilly

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by Leanevdp in For the Guys - The Man for Her, True Men As We Need Them

≈ 1 Comment

From True Men as We Need Them by Fr. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894

Paradise, As Realized in the Home of the True Man

Oh! hail, my roof-tree and threshold of my home, How glad I saw thee!

Social Importance of the Sanctities of Home Life

The Catholic Church attracts those who love the simplicity of natural manners, by the harmonies of a restored creation…

The Catholic Religion is not presented to us as separated from nature, but in conjunction with it forming a grand whole, fostering all the domestic affections with manhood, gentleness, liberality, and all the virtues which conduce to the happiness of Home, banishing not more the luxuries which militate directly against the social state in general, than the false notions of spirituality which would interfere with the free action of the natural relations.

For, as a recent author says, the beauty, peace, unity, and truth of life repose on that religious equilibrium which protects the flesh against the pride of the spirit, and the spirit against the invasions of the flesh…

In truth, nothing is so natural as Catholicity—nothing so full of heart—nothing so favorable, therefore, to all the sweets of Home.

Virgins and boys, mid-age and wrinkled elders, soft infancy that nothing can but cry, all are in the secret of its charm. —Kenelm Henry Digby

Let it not be thought that we dwell at too great a length upon this notion of Home, and all the duties and charities inseparably connected with home-life.

When one looks abroad upon the nations which once constituted Christendom, and examines seriously the causes of social and political prosperity or decay, this great fact stands forth as evidently as a bright beacon-light in the darkness over a dangerous reef:

The strength or weakness, the vitality or decadence of nations, is to be measured by the purity of their home-life, by their sacred regard for Home, its authority, and its sanctities.

Take any one people among whom Home—from that of the sovereign or chief magistrate to the lowliest and poorest citizen—is protected by law, manners, and a wholesome public opinion, against everything calculated to loosen or to weaken the sacredness of the marriage tie, the rights of parental authority as sanctioned by the Christian law and immemorial custom, or the duties of filial love and reverence— and you will find the nation distinguished for private worth, political honesty, and an enlightened love of freedom.

Abuses there may and will be in the administration of the best human institutions; but where the homes of a nation are sincerely and thoroughly Christian, public corruption must find a certain and most effective remedy in a public opinion fed by the purity and honesty of private life.

The labor bestowed on describing the Home as it ought to be, and as it still is in many Christian lands, is surely a labor well bestowed, and the pains taken to make the description of home-life so enchanting, that all may feel its charm, must assuredly be blessed of God, the Author of our nature and the unwearied promoter of its highest welfare.

Guard Inviolable the Sanctity and Privacy of the Home

In the magnificent new countries in America, Asia, and—it may be—Africa, which Providence throws open to the thrifty and over-crowded populations of Europe, it is free to every man worthy of the name, to build up a home of his own.

It was, and is still, the boast of the freeman living under the common law of England and these United States, that his home was his castle, all his own in its length and breadth, and as high as the heavens.

It must be the fault of a degenerate race, neglectful of never-to-be-abdicated rights, if the inviolability of their homes and the hallowed privacy of family life, are surrendered into the hands of the policeman or given up to the lawless curiosity of the public press.

At any rate, no one may deny that it is free to every willing and true-hearted man to create for himself a home as happy, as honored, as lasting as those visited in the present or past ages by God’s richest blessings.

Every such home should be one founded on God-given love.

“No man or woman,” says a Catholic writer, “has ever felt true love without feeling a desire to become better, and to thank God for His having given therein a foretaste of the joys of heaven.”

“Where faith (says Digby) has stamped its character on the maiden’s heart, where man is reminded of the graces of her whom he delights to serve, woman’s divine air and her countenance, her words and her sweet smile, can so separate him from all evil influences, that no obstacles upon the road to truth will be able to detain his feet from pressing forward to embrace it; and then hand in hand he is led to his second home, where love and truth made one with it, will remain with him thenceforth forever.”

This is the only sure foundation of the Home—a true mutual love hallowed by the blessing of Him who made the human heart, and tempered by the fear of His dread majesty.

“The woman was given a different assignment, that of helpmeet, mother, homemaker. We apply the word helpmeet to mean the role of the wife as she offers understanding, encouragement, support, and sometimes help. Since she is biologically created to bear children, her role as a mother is unquestioned. Her homemaking role is assumed: She must nurture her young and run the household, to free her husband to function as the provider.” -Helen Andelin

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For The Guys – Love is the Mightiest Force/The Fall of Adam and Eve

19 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by Leanevdp in For the Guys - The Man for Her, True Men As We Need Them

≈ 2 Comments

From True Men as We Need Them, Fr. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894

Hallowed Mutual Love is All-Powerful for Good

Love is the mightiest force of the moral world, all-mighty for good when directed toward the august purposes ordained by Him who is the Creator both of the world of spirits and of the world of matter, and who delights, in aiding the workings of the human heart much more than in controlling the winds and the waves, the play of the lightning; or the pathways of the light, much more even than in regulating the vast and mysterious movements of the starry universe.

There never yet existed two young hearts kept pure for each other by the Great Author of our nature, and united for life-long companionship through the most ancient and sacred of His ordinances, whom He did not destine to be to each other a source of purest bliss, a mutual power toward all excellence, and the parents of a race of Godlike men and women, if they would themselves only be faithful to the light that is in them!

Here lies the secret of so much sin and misery, of so many scandals among every class of society, of the ruin of so many homes and the breaking of so many hearts. The mighty force of lawful love is placed, like every other most precious gift of God to man, in the keeping and under the control of man’s free will.

He is left free by his Maker, to use the gift or neglect it, to apply it to the divinest purposes or to pervert it to the worst.

Man has but a limited control of the mighty elementary forces of nature. The storms which sport with his best-built ships on the ocean, the inundations which yearly devastate his fields and wreck his habitation, the earthquake-power that levels the proudest cities in the twinkling of an eye and engulfs whole continents in the deep, the very fire given him for so many useful and salutary ends, all show him continually that he is not their master.

Nay, more than that, the very steam which he generates and utilizes as the agent of his most triumphant progress, annihilates him at every turn, as if to convince him that his most glorious conquests can never be achieved over elements that he was not born to subdue.

The strength of man and his chief glory lie in his mastery over his own soul, and in his power of binding to himself the souls of others. His worst sin consists in the neglect of subduing his own evil passions, of cultivating and developing the good that is in himself; in the neglect of his duties toward the souls knit to his own, given him to guard from evil, to advance in all good, to love as God has loved us, by continual devotion and self-sacrifice in favor of the beloved.

Man is Responsible for the Fall in Eden

The story of the two first human beings ought to be a lesson full of warning and most wholesome instruction for every human pair, who start in life together under the sanction of God’s blessing.

No, Eve was not the author of the transgression that ruined human happiness and sullied human life at their very origin. Eve was not the head of the race. She was derived from Adam and created for him. We stood not or fell not in her and through her. Man was the head.

In him it was decreed that the entire race should stand or fall. When the woman, whom he was bound to guard and watch over far more jealously and diligently than over his beauteous domain of Paradise, fell, in great part, it may be, because he was neither diligent nor watchful in his charge over her unsuspecting innocence and comparative helplessness, we had not yet fallen.

Her sin was her own, and was not to be imputed to us. Had Adam continued innocent, then he would not have forfeited the sublime rank to which in him all human nature had been elevated.

He fell, tempted, to be sure, by his now guilty communion; but he fell freely, with his eyes open, with a full knowledge of the consequences of his disobedience, with a lively sense of the immense debt he owed to his Creator and Benefactor, and he fell to gratify his own sensuality.

No other motive is assigned in Scripture. His fall, utterly unjustifiable and utterly disgraceful as it was, dragged us all down; and the ruin caused thereby required the coming down to our level in our assumed flesh and blood of that Eternal Son, through whom all things had been made, and by whom alone the ruin of all things could be repaired.

Even so now, let us not close our eyes to the luminous fact—the ruin of the Home comes through man: woman’s baneful agency is but indirect, accidental, at the very most, secondary or subsidiary.

The head of the Home is man, the head of society is man; the destroyer of the moral world is man; its restoration and salvation must be through woman.

At any rate, certain it is that at the head of the moral order here below is man; when he fails, then there follows disorder everywhere.

Quote for the day….

Her soul, her life, is given you “to dress and to keep” and on your appreciating her nature and her worth, on your knowing how to call forth by your love, your care, your devotion to her service, by the sunlight of your examples much more even than by your mere love and tenderness—must depend whether or not you shall have a home-garden, a paradise—or a hell upon earth. -Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894

 

The Chief Work of Every True Father Among Men is to Create a Home

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by Leanevdp in Father's Role, For the Guys - The Man for Her, True Men As We Need Them

≈ 3 Comments

 

by Father Bernard O’Reilly, True Men as We Need Them

It is clear, from all this, that after the salvation of one’s own soul, which must underlie the aims, thoughts, and actions of every Christian man, what is chiefly to be the end of every true father’s efforts, is the building up and sanctifying of a home; or the maintaining and perfecting it in all honor, peace, prosperity, and happiness, where it exists.

This is, in God’s design and under His expressly declared will, the first and chief object of a true man’s solicitude.

Thus, while the divine Architect of the universe, conjointly with the angels who are the ministers of his fatherly providence over us, and with all true men who are laboring in conformity to the divine will—is preparing in heaven a dwelling-place for all his faithful children, more magnificent than human intelligence can conceive of—even so must you, beneath His eye, blessed and aided by him and his Angels, set about rearing your home or making of it the image here below of that House of God on high.

Your House of God, where, in the words of St. Bernard, all shall be “Truth, and Love and Eternity”—truth in your faith and your life, charity in your dealings with your household and all outside of it, and eternity so far as you can secure it, in the independence gained for your dear ones, in the spirit of faith and honor which you bequeath to them, in the very homestead itself which is to be a lasting center for their children’s children.

Make the Earthly Home Like the Heavenly

Nor, in the place of Him who, true Father as He is, knows no acceptation of persons, is this primary and all-important duty of providing, maintaining, and brightening the family home, the exclusive duty of the great and the rich.

There is not a poor laboring-man, who makes it his care to procure shelter, food, and raiment for his dear ones, that is not obliged to aim at having his own home for them, and of making that home an image of heaven.

There is not a youth who takes on himself the responsibilities of husband, who binds to his own lot the young wife of his choice—who does not thereby bind himself to separate her from the whole world, to give her a home of her own, where she shall be sole mistress and queen.

Whether you be of high or of low degree, a man of wealth or a poor man depending on the earning of each day, whether advanced in years and with much experience of life’s difficulties, or just setting your foot on the path—be earnest in your resolution to work in building up your home, and with it the honor and happiness of a family, and sing in your heart as you begin the effort of each new day and hour!

This is the Golden Rule of life for all of us, men of the world, or ministers of God’s sacraments, to set our hands earnestly and joyously to the joint work God appoints us to do— To build up True Christian Homes!

Christian Homes, the Great Need of the Age

The teaching and guidance of the priest are intended also as a help to fathers of families—from those who rule States, to those who are the lowliest and poorest. The help of the governing classes, in their turn, as well as of the wealthy, is, by the law of Christian charity, due to their dependent and fortuneless brethren.

So that the whole effort of religion and of the most favored members of the social body, should aim at assisting the poor man to create for himself a home, and to adorn it with all the best virtues of fatherhood.

This is the need of the age. We must have true Christian fathers and true Christian homes. Socialism and Communism present a frightful caricature of the helpful brotherly love which is the soul and the bond of unity in all States obeying the law of the Gospel.

The earnest and successful labors of the directing classes to inculcate parental duty, to practice and enforce the sweet home-virtues, and especially to aid the laboring-man in securing for himself the privacy and the sanctities of home-life, constitute the only efficacious corrective to the pestilential errors of communistic declaimers and conspirators.

The Creation of the Home a Joint Labor

The charity which we thus urge upon the men of our day is not the exercise of a new virtue, nor the application of a new remedy to social evils unheard of till now.

The very birds of the air, the very insects in the field would teach mankind how to make of the creation of the home a joint labor, and a labor of love as well. To be sure, we know that it is the special part of a man to provide a home for his companion and their children, as well as to labor for its support and to watch over its security.

We are here talking not only of the house which shelters the family, but of the love which brightens and warms it, and of all the admirable virtues that should make its chief ornament.

Even in the building up of the material walls, the poor man’s wife will have to be most frequently his loving assistant, while in all the affections and virtues that make it a paradise, both have to contribute a generous share.

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For the Guys – To Keep the “Home-Garden”

13 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by Leanevdp in For the Guys - The Man for Her, True Men As We Need Them

≈ 3 Comments

From True Men as We Need Them by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly

To you, O man of the world, your home-garden, your paradise—the source of your purest and dearest felicity on this side of the grave, is the mind and heart and soul of your wife, your companion, the mother of your children.

Her soul, her life, is given you “to dress and to keep” and on your appreciating her nature and her worth, on your knowing how to call forth by your love, your care, your devotion to her service, by the sunlight of your examples much more even than by your mere love and tenderness—must depend whether or not you shall have a home-garden, a paradise—or a hell upon earth.

There is no delicacy, no purity of thought and word and act—no feeling of respect or reverence so exalted—no chivalrous devotion to the honor, the unblemished name, the generous and holy purposes of a true woman—to be compared with the all-embracing sentiment of God-given love in the sinless soul of a man, united, through God’s blessing, with the maiden chosen in accordance with God’s will.

Catholics, who are thoroughly acquainted with the sacred character of the matrimonial union, who know what untold graces are set apart for their whole after-life by the sacramental blessing, enter upon married life with mingled joy and fear—because they are made aware both of their responsibilities and of the mighty aids divinely given them, to make of their whole career one long day of rejoicing, because it must be one long day of generous devotion to duty.

The husband’s first duty, under God’s service, is to his wife. He must give himself to her as she has left all to follow him. His must be—from his bridal hour to his dying day—one long, uninterrupted, most loving and unstinted service to her. He must, every day that he rises, set her image higher in his heart; reverence her more, seek to have others know her worth better, and show her greater honor.

It is the death of conjugal love, where respect diminishes in the heart instead of daily increasing, and where that delicacy and courtesy in word and manner which we call outward respect, is dispensed with on pretext of nearness and intimacy and unreserve.

Make it, therefore, the law of your life, that as the years of your wedded life pass by, they shall find, beside the ever-blooming flower of love in the center of your home-garden the flower of undying reverence. One cannot live without the other.

And to the wife we must say: If you would have your husband’s love and respect

to know no fading—make it a sacred duty to God, every day of your life, to invent new methods of showing your companion that your love is ever young and fresh as the flowers that bloom on high in the City of God.

Let men of culture and position, who owe to those beneath them—much more than to those of their own level—the light of good example, read and ponder carefully every word in the following exquisite lines from a woman: “If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange

And be all to me? Shall I never miss

Home-talk and blessing, and the common kiss

That comes to each in turn, nor count it strange,

When I look up, to drop on a new range

Of walls and floors…another home than this?

Nay, wilt thou fill that place by me which is

Filled by dead eyes too tender to know change?

That’s hardest! If to conquer love, has tried,

To conquer grief tries more…as all things prove;

For grief indeed is love and grief beside.

Alas! I have grieved so, I am hard to love—

Yet love me—wilt thou? Open thine heart wide,

And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.”

A priestly voice is daily and hourly wont to guide the young amid the first trials and bitternesses of wedded life, as well as amid the storms which attend on its noon and its setting.

The reader knows also how precious and safe a refuge fathers and mothers alike find in that guidance, when worldly wisdom and worldly friendship are of no avail.

It was, nevertheless, best that these lessons should be given from the experience of persons of worldly station.

We have listened to the most intimate secrets of a true manly heart, still in death for many a year: the accents seem to come from the depths of the sanctuary. And this last wayside flower of poetry we have culled, as we seemed to pass from the altar and the awe of the cemetery, will also have its pregnant reminder.

Yes, loved and infinitely dear as are the ties of the home of childhood, when a woman turns her back upon it and puts her hand in her husband’s hand to walk the earth alone with him, it is as if a deluge had swept over her past, and her spirit, in going back in thought to the fireside of father and mother, found nothing but a ruin, with her loved ones all dead to her.

In her grief for the separation, she turns to the Ark of her husband’s home and heart like the dove sent forth by the great patriarch; has she not a right that her husband shall open his “heart wide and fold within, the wet wings” and drooping spirit of her to whom he is now all in all?

There are so many who fail, on the very threshold of their new existence, to understand the yearning of their companions for the home-life they have lost, and to make up by unselfish and unbounded tenderness for this great loss!

We crave pardon for dwelling thus at length on the necessity—so all-important, so indispensable—of this union, of hearts between husband and wife. Without it there is no home, no home-life, no true family.

We have insisted upon it, because without it there can be no life-work done to any good or meritorious purpose by the wedded pair, become thus most miserable yoke-fellows. God only grant them to say, each to the other:

“The world (our home-world) waits

For help. Beloved, let us love so well,

Our work shall still be better for our love,

And still our love be sweeter for our work,

And both commended, for the sake of each,

By all true workers and true lovers born.”

Most blessed are those who can thus look back to the parental home, and dwell with rapture on the memory of such a union between the father and mother who reared them! Still are they not to forget that this great gift of hallowed conjugal love was only bestowed for the dear and sweet work of making home a paradise not only for their children, but for their own parents, if privileged to possess them and shelter them there, for their servants, and for their friends.

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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…. -Finer Femininity

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Christian Youth Must be God-Fearing and Dutiful

04 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by Leanevdp in True Men As We Need Them, Youth

≈ 2 Comments

From True Men as We Need Them, Fr. Bernard O’Reilly, 1890’s

Whatever else our young men may be, when formed at home by such parents as we are about to describe, and trained in Christian schools by God-fearing and accomplished masters, they will be at least conscientious and God-fearing themselves.

This is the first and greatest need of our age.

They will be also dutiful and high-minded, for the young man whose soul from childhood has been filled with that lofty sense of duty, as of a sacred, indispensable, and ennobling obligation due to the Most High God, will be disposed to discharge every office entrusted to him, as if he were immediately accountable to the Divine Majesty.

Hence everything shall be done perfectly, because done for the sake of Him who is the most loving of Fathers, and the most generous of benefactors.

High-minded must ever be the men who are penetrated with duty, and act upon such lofty motives. He who beholds the Infinitely Great and Holy in every person to whom he is bound to yield lawful obedience, will not feel himself degraded in being subordinate to those who may be his own inferiors in birth, in education, and refinement.

He will not fulfill his duty conscientiously, or go even beyond his duty in his endeavor to do well, because he is ambitious to obtain praise, or fearful of incurring blame. He is only supremely desirous of pleasing One who values the loving wish much more even than the perfect performance.

And this high-mindedness will be thus a safeguard against that baneful and tyrannical human respect, which is so apt to make old people as well as young omit the good they ought to do, and do the evil their conscience condemns, lest they should draw on themselves the displeasure, the ridicule, or the vain judgments of bad men.

The dutiful and the high-minded will ever be the faithful, the trustworthy, true to the death, because true to God and to themselves.

Pressing and Present Need of the High-Minded and Dutiful

Surely there is great need of such in our day. And because they are thus dutiful and true—they will be diligent, laborious, persevering, self-denying, and self-reliant, because placing their main dependence on the All-Mighty and putting forth to please Him, in their every work and endeavor, their whole strength and industry.

Such men are—everything taken into account—the best calculated to succeed. And such men—be they born ever so lowly—are God’s true gentlemen—the men whom all are forced to respect—because they are incapable of meanness, fraud, or untruthfulness.

These are a few only of the features of the True Man so needed in all countries and at all periods of the world’s history, but especially needed at a time when noble living will avail infinitely more to save religion and society than eloquent discoursing or the most learned and beautiful writing.

Yes, the road of true manliness and unblemished honor which we are to travel over together, leads up by steep and toilsome paths to the only reward worthy of gentle souls.

Like the maiden-knight of the ideal Christian chivalry, if we would keep our souls pure, and win the ecstatic joy of coming to close communion with the veiled Majesty of our Father, we must be ready to do and bear what the crowd recoil from.

“I leave the plain, I climb the height;

No branchy thicket shelter yields;

But blessed forms in whistling storms

Fly o’er waste fens and windy fields.

A maiden-knight—to me is given

Such hope, I know not fear;

I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven

That often meet me here.

I muse on joy that will not cease,

Pure spaces clothed in living beams,

Pure lilies of eternal peace,

Whose odors haunt my dreams;

And, stricken by an angel’s hand,

This mortal armor that I wear,

This weight and size, this heart and eyes,

Are touched, are turned to finest air.”  —Tennyson, Sir Galahad

C.S. Lewis

The Devil exults most when he can steal a man’s joy of spirit from him. He carries a powder with him to throw into any smallest possible chinks of our conscience, to soil the spotlessness of our mind and the purity of our life. But when spiritual joy fills our hearts, the Serpent pours out his deadly poison in vain. – St. Francis of Assisi

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Have a Purpose in Life – True Men as We Need Them

08 Monday May 2017

Posted by Leanevdp in True Men As We Need Them

≈ 1 Comment

A very valuable book for the guys plucked out of the past and reprinted. It was written in 1894 by Fr. Bernard O’Reilly and the words on the pages will stir the hearts of the men to rise to virtue and chivalry…. Beautifully and eloquently written!

True Men as We Need Them, Rev. Bernard O’Reilly

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Have a Purpose in Life

Give us, therefore, in the conduct of life, men who have a  purpose, who know what they have to do, and are determined to succeed; whose firm trust in God above them only increases their faith in themselves:

Men who neglect nothing; who constantly discipline their own minds, their own hearts, and exercise over their own powers and passions a sovereign control: men whose watchword in all their undertakings and difficulties, in all their alternations of bearing and forbearing, is duty; and who, in their labors, their successes, their failures, find themselves superior to fatigue, to good or ill luck, to praise or to blame—because they begin and persevere and hope against hope itself, through a sense of duty—of a sacred debt due to God and their own conscience.

How Education Should Prepare for the Work of Life

Education, training, discipline, cultivation of heart and mind, at home or at school, can only aim at one thing: to prepare young men for the business of life, for conduct, self-improvement, self-control, and success in the work, which the Divine Will sets apart for every individual, as the sole purpose of his existence.

In the material world, we know what is the result of a constantly accelerating force, acting upon a body moving in a given direction, and in what an amazing ratio its velocity increases minute by minute, and hour by hour.

It so happens that the Creator, both of the moral and the material universe, has stamped them both with such marvelous and striking analogies, that the spectacle of power exhibited in any field of the inanimate and unintelligent creation, may serve as a help toward studying its counterpart in the spiritual order.

For there are spiritual forces created by Him who is the sole source of life and of power; and they are ordained to act on the souls of men from the moment these are set forth by the Almighty Hand on the path of duty, and in the direction of their eternal destinies.

Call these forces acting upon man’s rational nature, graces; they are given as light to his mind, enabling him clearly to know his duty toward God, toward himself, and toward his neighbor; given as instinct, impulse, inspiration to his will, enabling him to live up to the light that is in him.

These mighty impulses, if obeyed faithfully by the soul—which can freely reject the proffered aid and vital force, as it can freely accept and follow the divine direction, urging it ever upward and heavenward—have an accelerating character; they augment, in a constantly increasing ratio, the soul’s power of getting nearer to God—nearer to him in perfection and spiritual beauty.

They lift her with an augmented velocity to new heights of goodness, of charity, of courage, of generosity, self-denial, and self-sacrifice. They enable her to become more and more Godlike at each moment of her earthly career.

Just as in the mysterious depths of space in the starry heavens, the various bodies which eye or telescope can discern, are impelled onward in their various courses with a rapidity which appalls even the scientific imagination, even so in the world of souls are there depths beyond depths, reaching away to limitless horizons, and heights above heights of acquired holiness, merit, and glory, making great and good human souls differ from each other and transcend each other in excellence, as bright star surpasses brightest star in splendor.

Superior Excellence Demanded of the Men of our Day

Hence, whatever in the past may have been the various glories of great men—men distinguished above their fellows for Godlike virtue much more than intellectual superiority—yet must we rest well assured that it is the Divine Will, that we in our day and generation, should aim with His help, to rise higher still in goodness, in generosity, in nobility of conduct.

For—and we must not mislearn this vitally important lesson to every one of us—the formation of a great character, and the attainment of this same nobility of conduct, depend on our helping ourselves.

The experience and practical wisdom of all past ages have expressed a golden truth in the saying: “God helps only who helps himself.”

It behooves every parent, every serious-minded person in the community to weigh well the following words, written by a well-known writer on the education given in Great Britain.

How far they apply, if at, all, to our own country, our readers must judge for themselves. “There is an ambition,” says Smiles, “to bring up boys us gentlemen, or rather genteel men; though the result frequently is only to make them gents.

They acquire a taste for dress, style, luxuries, and amusements, which can never form any solid foundation for manly or gentlemanly character; and the result is that we have a vast number of gingerbread young gentry thrown upon the world, who remind one of the abandoned hulls sometimes picked up at sea, with only a monkey on board.”

Very different must be the result, if the great principles advocated in this book, and the memorable examples which illustrate their practice, are made the basis of the moral training given in families, schools, and colleges, or adopted as a guide by men of the world capable of influencing the young and inexperienced who look up to them.

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“We all work hard at being attractive, but many of us make the mistake of thinking it is stylish clothes, attractive hairstyles, or artfully applied makeup. While these outer things should not be ignored, they are not as important as your disposition, which should be sunny and bright.” -Fascinating Womanhood

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Nobility of Soul – Louis IX, King of France

04 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by Leanevdp in True Men As We Need Them

≈ 2 Comments

from True Men as We Need Them – Rev. Bernard O’Reilly

Who does not know with what incomparable tenderness and solicitude the canonized Louis IX, King of France, was reared and educated by his mother, Blanche of Castile, deemed herself, by those who knew her best, to be worthy of a place among the saints?

She had come of too heroic a blood not to value in her son the chivalrous virtues and qualities which should grace a Christian king. She saw to it during her regency, that he received an intellectual training quite extraordinary in an age when persons of high rank set but little store on literary attainments.

Louis was an accomplished scholar and statesman, as well as a peerless knight and commander. What, however, distinguished him above all others, was his perfect Christian character.

To form this in her boy, the God-fearing queen would entrust to no one but herself his instruction in the truths of religion, and his training to the practice of every virtue necessary to a Christian sovereign.

“God knows, my son,” she would often say to him, as he nestled near her heart, while a mere child, or sat near her in boyhood, “God knows I love thee as well as ever mother loved her dearest. Yet would I rather see thee at any moment stretched a corpse at my feet, than know thee guilty of deadly sin.”

How the docile child retained through all his eventful and heroic life, the molding then given to his character, we shall have more than one occasion to judge ere the end of this book.

And remembering in after-years all the pains taken for this purpose by his admirable parent, Louis was fain to bestow on his children the same loving labor.

“Before he lay down in his bed,” relates his intimate friend and biographer, “he was wont to have his children brought to him, and related to them the actions of good kings and emperors, and told them to take example by such men.

And he likewise set before them the deeds of bad princes, who had lost their kingdoms in consequence of their licentiousness, rapacity, and avarice.

‘I remind you of these things,’ he would say, ‘that you may keep your souls free from them, and draw not on yourselves the divine wrath.’

He also made them learn their prayers to Our Lady, and made them recite their Hours twice a day, to accustom them thereby to assist at the Hours (in the church), when they should have come to govern their own lands.” (De Joinville, Life of St. Louis, King of France, ch. xv.  The “Hours” spoken of here are the Canonical Hours for the recitation of the Divine Office in cathedral or collegiate churches. It was then customary for all who could do so to assist at these, or to recite them in private from their “Book of Hours.”)

Nor, in thus dwelling on the formation of character, and recalling again and again the qualities which enter into chivalry, do we for a moment wish it to be understood that our every word is not addressed to the popular masses much more than to those whom wealth, or birth, or position place at the head of the community.

It is most especially the laboring classes in town and country that we are anxious to see “generous and devoted, faithful, and indifferent to their own selfish interest, full of high honor, and not aiming to follow the erring multitude.”

The chivalry which is the very spirit of true Christian manhood, is not the character of a social class, or the distinctive quality of the highly born, or the result of the special training given to a privileged few.

The generosity, the self-sacrificing heroism, which are its primary virtues, have ever been found in the poorest and lowliest, as well as in the foremost in rank and honor.

“I can give you privileges and fiefs,” said a Christian emperor to a favorite who begged to be ennobled, “but I cannot make you noble.”

The nobility of soul, which we here hold up to your admiration, is the joint product of God’s grace and your own generous cooperation.

Parents can and do contribute greatly toward the creation of this nobility of soul and conduct; it is, however, under God, the result of one’s own fidelity to the divine Voice ever speaking in conscience, to the divine Light ever showing steadily the path of duty and honor, and to the impulse of the Divine Spirit urging the babe of the beggar as well as the son of the prince to aim high, and do nobly, and be in all things true to the light and the truth within them.

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Love and friendship are the remnants of the earthly paradise. In this vale of tears, when we encounter so many difficulties, to have people you can call friends is such a joy, such a comfort, such a gift. –Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love: God’s Plan for Love, Marriage, Intimacy, and the Family

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Our True Man Should Be a Man of Great Character

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Leanevdp in For the Guys - The Man for Her, True Men As We Need Them

≈ 1 Comment

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from True Men as We Need Them by Father Bernard O’Reilly, 1878

It may suffice to point out here the importance of character in itself and apart from conduct, and the vital necessity for parents of cultivating, developing, and molding strongly the character of their children from the very dawn of reason.

By character here we mean the firm habitual disposition to truthfulness, honor, integrity, generosity, and resolute energy of purpose, without which no man ever was or ever can be a true man.

These qualities are formed in the child by the teaching and still more by the example of his parents. Examples may best illustrate and impress our meaning on the willing mind.

Of a man who died in 1817, at the age of thirty-eight, and whose memory must ever be dear to Irish Catholics—Francis Horner—it was said by a contemporary that the Ten Commandments were stamped upon his countenance.

“The valuable and peculiar light”—adds another of his country-men—“in which his history is calculated to inspire every right-minded youth, is this. He died…possessed of greater public influence than any other man; and admired, beloved, trusted by all, except the heartless or the base.

No greater homage was ever paid in Parliament to any deceased member. Now let every young man ask, how was this attained. By rank? He was the son of an Edinburgh merchant. By wealth? Neither he, nor any of his relations, ever had a superfluous sixpence…By talents ? His were not splendid, and he had no genius.

Cautious and slow, his only ambition was to be right…By what then was it? Merely by sense, industry, good principles, and a good heart, qualities which no well-constituted mind need ever despair of attaining.

It was the force of his character that raised him; and this character not impressed upon him by nature, but formed out of no peculiarly fine elements by himself.” (Lord Cockburn)

The same author  goes on to say: “Truthfulness, integrity, and goodness—qualities that hang not on any man’s breath—form the essence of manly character, or, as one of our old writers has it, that inbred loyalty unto Virtue which can serve her without a livery. He is strong to do good, strong to resist evil, and strong to bear up under difficulty and misfortune.”

“It was a first command and counsel of my earliest youth,” says Lord Erskine, “always to do what my conscience told me to be a duty, and to leave the consequence to God. I shall carry with me the memory, and I trust the practice, of this parental lesson to the grave.

I have hitherto followed it, and I have no reason to complain that my obedience to it has been a temporal sacrifice. I have found it, on the contrary, the road to prosperity and wealth; and I shall point out the same road to my children for their pursuit.”

These examples from a Protestant source we have purposely placed first in order, that our Catholic readers may learn how carefully Providence preserves even in the lands which reject the authority of His Church, the precious home-virtues without which there can be neither true private worth nor lasting public prosperity.

More than that, we are not to forget that civilized pagan nations, living under the Law of Nature, have always shown the same appreciation of noble manly character.

All this should only shame Catholics, who boast the possession of the fullness of Revealed Truth, into the formation in their children and in themselves, of such perfect manly characters, as befit those who are, by their birthright, God’s adopted children here below.

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“Although good homemaking is an admirable virtue, it can be overdone. Create a home, not a showplace. A man appreciates efforts for his sake, but doesn’t want homemaking to take priority over him, or things he considers more important. The castle is not more important than the king that dwells therein.” – Helen Andelin

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