There is no such thing as natural heartlessness. Cold as certain grown-up women, as well as men, seem to be by nature,—we may be certain that neither nature nor its Author is to blame for this lack of genial warmth and affection.
No child is born without the disposition to love and the power of loving warmly: this may be not so apparent at the surface in some children as in others, or exist in the same degree of energy; or, again, this coldness in some may be only such as contrasted with the passionate and impulsive fervor of others.
But let mothers rest assured that the heart is there, with its natural and essential powers of returning love for love, and of practicing, not only the virtue of supernatural charity so indispensable to the sanctity and salvation of the adult Christian, but all the other charities of private and public life, with the many virtues which never fail to adorn the soul in which true charity reigns.
Indeed were it possible (which is not so) that any human being could be born without natural affection, the Creator Spirit, coming into the soul in baptism, would most surely repair the defect.
But comparatively feeble (and we use this expression most reluctantly) as the power of loving maybe supposed to be, — it is there in the soul for the mother’s tender hand and fostering charity to nurse into fullness of life, into perfect bloom and fruitful maturity. And God’s abundant and unfailing help is secured to the mother in this training of her child’s heart.
But the real heartlessness which shows itself so offensively in the girl and in the woman is, you may be sure of it, the result of neglect in the parent, or of a training in every way vicious. For this heartlessness is but undisguised selfishness obtruding itself upon us in all its own repulsive deformity.
The mother’s eye had failed to detect this weed in her child’s soul, or allowed it to grow up during infancy and girlhood, under the delusive hope that the good qualities in her girl’s nature would choke out the bad when she grew up to womanhood. But it is the contrary which happens, unless God should interfere and perform a miracle in favor of the neglected or petted child.
Selfishness is pretty sure, when continually ministered to and nursed by all around it, to absorb and draw to itself all the vital energies of the soul.
In the tropical forests,—in the West Indies particularly, there is a formidable species of parasite creeper whose power becomes fatal to the mightiest trees in the forest. It first shows itself like a little green plant on a sturdy branch of the forest tree, or a hole in the trunk, whence it sends down thread-like feelers to the ground.
There they take root and reascend along the trunk, increasing in number and size, till not one feature of the parent-tree is visible. The whole is now enclosed in a network of serpentine forms so firm, so robust, and so vigorous, that the tiny plant has become a giant, strangling in its embrace the generous trunk which fed and supported it, and hanging high in mid-air, above the topmost branches of its dead benefactor, its brilliant clusters of flowers.
Thus does selfishness prosper and flourish!
The wise wife recognizes her need of God. Frequently she tells Him of her insufficiency. To inspire her husband, to be patient, to be unselfish and loyal, to be the dozen and one other wonderful things a desirable wife must be –all this postulates the presence of God always at her side. – The Wife Desired, Fr. Leo Kinsella
Where I discuss the dynamics of Catholic family life that helped them to form their children into God-fearing, joyful Catholics.
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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!
A very beautiful book, worthy of our attention. In it, you will find many pearls of wisdom for a woman striving to be the heart of the home, an inspiration to all who cross her path. You will be inspired to reconsider the importance of your role of wife and mother! Written by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly in 1894, the treasures found within its pages ring true and remain timeless…
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Is not this the significance of a most beautiful legend from the life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary?
Her mother-in-law, Sophia, was, at the time of the occurrence about to be related, bitterly prejudiced against the saintly wife. She neither shared nor approved Elizabeth’s charities and merciful ministrations. In her son, however, she found no sympathy. Yet one account shows how even his kind heart was overtasked.
One day a child afflicted with leprosy was brought to the hospital in the Wartburg; but his state was in the institution would neither touch him nor admit him.
Elizabeth, coming at her usual hour, no sooner beheld the little sufferer lying helpless and forsaken at the gate, than she took him up in her arms, carried him to the castle, and placed him in her own bed.
Sophia, indignant, flew to the landgrave. “My son,” she burst forth, “come with me instantly, and see with whom your wife shares your bed;” and she led him to his chamber, relating in exaggerated language the extraordinary occurrence that seemed to crown all the mad acts of his wife’s charity.
The landgrave, though he said not one word, could scarcely conceal his irritation and loathing. He snatched the coverlet from the bed, and lo! instead of the leper, there lay an infant, surrounded with a halo of light, and bearing the features of the new-born babe of Bethlehem!
This example is, however, more admirable than imitable. It is a rare thing to have to perform heroic acts of any virtue,—even that of charity. Where a miracle occurs, as here, Providence means to inculcate a lesson.
The teaching, to the Catholic mind, is a plain one: it is only the repetition, under a different form, of the Master’s doctrine, that He is represented by the persons of the poor and the suffering.
So, with this conviction firmly seated in the soul of the Christian mistress of a household, it will be easy for her to see with what reverence and generosity she must treat the poor. We say “reverence.” For if her womanly heart has schooled itself to behold Christ present in every one of the needy who come to her door, she will not have to be reminded to show to all, without exception, kindness.
Kindness is something far beneath reverence; yet let us insist upon the absolute necessity of kind looks and kind words. No one better than a woman knows how far kindness goes, or how much and how long a kind word or a look of tender sympathy will be treasured up by those on whom they are bestowed.
If you have nothing else to give,—if your purse is empty, and your bread has failed,-— open the spring of kindness in your heart and let it pour out on the hearts of the poor sweet words of compassion, often more needed and more rarely bestowed than food on the famishing or cold water on the faint and weary.
Follow the rule of the great St. Francis, therefore: Be invariably and unfailingly kind to the poor. And this precious quality in the temper and bearing of man or woman can only be secured by the habitual practice of that “reverence” just mentioned.
It is more needful than ever that in every Catholic home mothers should cultivate that ancient respect for husband and children which was inspired by a lively faith, and made every member of the Christian community view in his fellow-Christians the children of God, the person of Christ himself.
This feeling inspired the father of the great Origen,—a father found soon afterward worthy to die the death of the martyrs,— with a reverence for his infant son so deep and so sincere, that he was wont as he passed his cradle to uncover the child’s breast and to kiss it, kneeling,—knowing, as he said, that the babe was the living temple of the Holy Ghost.
Surely Catholic fathers and mothers ought to find an exquisite pleasure in such elevating thoughts and sentiments as this; surely they should so consider each other and respect each other as if they too were chosen vessels, vessels of grace, bearing about in their bosoms the Creator Spirit; and most surely ought it to be the mother’s chief delight to reverence in every child of hers a something far more holy, more precious than the chalice used in the Holy Sacrifice, or the sacred vessel shut up in the Tabernacle and enclosing Christ’s divinest gift to our souls.
Can we school and accustom ourselves so to reverence the poor as to see in them the Person of Him who is represented as evermore standing in the night, wet by the dew or the rainstorm, at the door of every one of us, and gently knocking for admission to the light and warmth of our fireside?
This said, it is not our design to say either to the wealthy or to the needy housewife what measure she is to follow in relieving the wants of the poor. Let our spirit be the royal spirit of the ancient Catholic charity of our fathers.
To the rich let this suffice. “A modern author relates that a merchant in Spain once said to him: A rich Spanish tradesman would laugh at you if you talked to him of keeping his carriage; ~but ask him for alms, and he will think nothing of giving you a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand dollars”.
The early verbalizing, the magic and romantic lyricism of love letters, and long, late-night telephone conversations — all of these are left behind. Even the constant repetition of the words of love finds husband and wife admitting to each other that words do not express what they wish them to express. Thus, verbal symbols give way to a thousand variations of concrete symbols: a surprise gift, a note on the refrigerator, an evening planned totally for the other — always designed to unlock in the other that secret closet of joy. In creating their masterpiece, truly “their life’s work”, husband and wife each look to the other’s needs. -Father of the Family, Clayton Barbeau https://amzn.to/2tnTeJO (afflink)
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The famous novelist Louis de Wohl presents a stimulating historical novel about the great St. Thomas Aquinas, set against the violent background of the Italy of the Crusades. He tells the intriguing story of St. Thomas who – by taking a vow of poverty and joining the Dominicans – defied his illustrious, prominent family’s ambition for him to have great power in the Church. The battles and Crusades of the 13th century and the ruthlessness of the excommunicated Emperor Frederick II play a big part in the story, but it is Thomas of Aquino who dominates this book. De Wohl succeeds notably in portraying the exceptional quality of this man, a fusion of mighty intellect and childlike simplicity. A pupil of St. Albert the Great, the humble Thomas – through an intense life of study, writing, prayer, preaching and contemplation – ironically rose to become the influential figure of his age, and he later was proclaimed by the Church as the Angelic Doctor.
Seriously wounded at the siege of Pamplona in 1521, Don Inigo de Loyola learned that to be a Knight of God was an infinitely greater honor (and infinitely more dangerous) than to be a Knight in the forces of the Emperor. Uli von der Flue, humorous, intelligent and courageous Swiss mercenary, was responsible for the canon shot which incapacitated the worldly and ambitious young nobleman, and Uli became deeply involved in Loyola’s life. With Juanita, disguised as the boy Juan, Uli followed Loyola on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to protect him, but it was the saint who protected Uli and Juan. Through Uli’s eyes we see the surge and violence of the turbulent period in Jerusalem, Spain and Rome.
Louis de Wohl has again created an exciting and spiritually inspiring novel for all readers of historical fiction.
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With inspiring and beautiful words, Rev. O’Reilly compares the role of womanhood in the home to the fire and warmth of the sun, which, were its light to go out, all would wither and die.
He talks about the how the “springs of true joy” will flourish in our homes if we have certain virtues flourishing within its four walls. In this short piece he talks about the first and most important virtue, faith.
The most learned men of modern times agree in saying, that the sun’s light and warmth are, in the order established by the Creator, the sources of all vegetable and animal life on the surface of our globe.
They regulate the succession of seasons, the growth of all the wonderful varieties of tree and shrub and flower and grass that make of the surface of the earth an image of Paradise.
They give health and vigor to the myriads of animals of every kind that live in the air or in the waters or on the dry land, and to which, in turn, the vegetable world furnishes food and sustenance.
The very motion given to the rain in falling, to the rivers in their course, to the oceans and their currents, comes from that sun-force, as well as the clouds which sail above our heads in the firmament and the lovely colors which paint them.
Nay, there is not a single beauty in the million-million shades which embellish the flowers of grove or garden or field, or clothe, at dawn or noontide or sunset, the face of earth and heaven, which is not a creation of glorious light, the visible image of His divine countenance in whom is the source of all splendor and life and beauty.
Even so, O Woman, within that world which is your home and kingdom, your face is to light up and brighten and beautify all things, and your heart is to be the source of that vital fire and strength without which the father can be no true father, the brother no true brother, the sister no true sister, since all have to learn from you how to love, how to labor lovingly, how to be forgetful of self, and mindful only of the welfare of others.
The natural affection by which the Creator of our souls draws to each other husband and wife, and which, in turn, they pour out on their children and receive back from these in filial regard and reverence, is the very source of domestic happiness.
We cannot estimate too highly this holy mutual love which knits together the hearts of parents and children.
It is as necessary to the peace, the comfort, the prosperity, and the bliss of every home, as the dew and the rain and the streams of running water are necessary to the husbandman for the fertility of the land he cultivates and the growth of the harvest on which depend both his subsistence and his wealth.
Let the dew and rain of heaven cease to fall on the fairest valley, let the springs of living water be dried up all over its bosom, and the rivers which brighten and fertilize it cease to flow but for a few seasons, and it will be like the vale of death, forsaken of every living thing.
Do you wish, O reader, to learn how the springs of true life, of true love and joy, may flow, unfailing and eternal, within the little paradise of your home?
Then weigh well the words of the great Martyr-Pope placed at the head of this chapter:
“Who is not struck with beholding your lively faith; your piety full of sweetness and modesty; your generous hospitality; the holiness which reigns within your families; the serenity and innocence of your conversation?” ST. CLEMENT, Pope and Martyr.
These point out the virtues and qualities which should adorn every household in which Christ is worshiped : a lively faith, a piety full of sweetness and modesty, a generous hospitality; holiness of life, serenity and innocence of conversation.
Let us examine together how much there is in every one of these.
We need not send to a great distance for one of those men famed for their skill in discovering hidden and plentiful springs of water beneath the surface of the ground.
Their mysterious knowledge and the use of their magic wand are useless here. For, here we have seven pure and exhaust-less wells of living water, created for our home by the Maker of all things, and placed ready to our hand for every need.
And, first of all, is a lively faith. We Christians are given that eye of the soul which enables us to see the invisible world, as if the veil which hides it were withdrawn. God becomes to us an ever-present, most sweet and most comforting reality.
The great patriarch, Abraham, was bidden, in his long exile, and as a sure means of bearing up against his manifold trials, to walk before God, that is, to have God ever present before the eye of his soul.
This sense of the Divine Majesty as a vision always accompanying us in our every occupation, in labor as well as repose just as the pillar of cloud went with the Israelites in their journeying toward the Promised Land gives wonderful light to us in our darkness and difficulties, cheers us marvelously in distress and adversity, lightens the hardest labor and the most intolerable burden, imparts a divine strength in the hour of temptation…
For, what can we not undertake and accomplish, what enemy can we not resist and put to flight, when we feel that His eye is on us, that we have him there face to face, that His arm is ever stretched out to support and to shield us, and that all the love of His fatherly heart sweetens the bitterness of our struggle, and rewards our generosity in overcoming all for his sake?
Joseph and Mary at Nazareth were privileged above all human beings to behold that Wisdom which created the world living and laboring daily beneath their humble roof, and growing up into the successive perfection of holy infancy, boyhood, and manhood, while concealing his quality from the surrounding multitude, and revealing only to a few like themselves his Godhead and his mission.
It is certain, that he practiced all the virtues and fulfilled all the duties of his age and station in the way best fitted to glorify his Father : he was enlightening the world, sanctifying himself, and marking out the path of life as truly for every one of us, during these long and obscure years of his abode in Nazareth, as when his teaching and his miracles drew around him all Galilee and Judea.
And what an eloquent lesson was there, exemplifying that “life of faith,” without which the existence of the Christian man or woman is barren of all supernatural merit!
Christ, in the helpless years of his infancy and boyhood, when his life was one of entire dependence and submission, glorified and pleased his Father by solely seeking his good will and pleasure in obeying those appointed his earthly parents, and in accomplishing the obscure duties of his age.
This lesson Mary and Joseph were not slow to learn and to practice. They read in the rapt charity with which their worshiped Charge offered to the Divine Majesty every day and hour and moment of these golden years of humility and toil, this all-important law of life for the children of God: ‘ That the value of what we do does not depend on the greatness or publicity of the work accomplished ; but on the spirit of love toward the Father with which it is undertaken and carried out ; and that the pure purpose and offering of the heart is what God prizes above all else.
“When we hold that tiny bundle in our arms for the very first time, a flood of hopes and dreams emerges like a great blue whale cresting to spout his spray into the air. But somewhere in the day-to-day busyness of life, encouraging words can get lost among the to-dos and not-to-dos. We need to take a fresh look at motherhood and recapture the commitment to be the great encouragers along a child’s journey toward adulthood.” -Sharon Jaynes, The Power of a Woman’s Words (Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau)
Excellent Sermon! We need to trust God as little children trust their parents….
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There’s nothing complicated or magical about learning to be kinder; it just takes greater attention to the things that you do and how you do them. The Hidden Power of Kindness shows you how to become more aware of even your most offhand daily actions. You’ll find simple, step-by-step, and spiritually crucial directions for how to overcome the habitual unkindnesses that creep undetected into the behavior of even the most careful souls.
From the thousands of personal letters by St. Francis de Sales comes this short, practical guide that will develop in you the soul-nourishing habits that lead to sanctity. This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
Cultivate the hearts of your children. This is more particularly needful in the case of your girls. It is by the right or wrong in their affections that women become so powerful for good or evil.
Not that their intelligence is naturally inferior to that of men,—on the contrary, in many respects the female intellect is remarkably superior.
Intelligence dawns earlier in girls and ripens at a very precocious age. Hence the wisdom of cultivating the judgment and forming the imagination of girls during their fifth, sixth, and seventh years.
One will often be astonished in conversing with a little girl of that age, on questioning her closely, to see (when she has been carefully watched by an intelligent and virtuous mother) how completely she will master the great scheme of the creation, the fall, the redemption and reparation, the necessity of a visible and infallible teaching authority, the beauty of the sacramental system of help toward all the purposes of the supernatural life in the individual soul as well as in the body of the Church.
All this can be made so clear and so attractive to the childish intellect, without wearying it with theological terms or definitions. The idea of God is connatural to the mind, as well as that of his providence, of moral good and evil, of rewards and punishments.
No child but can be made to ascend from the familiar notion of her father’s house, well governed by firm laws, by love tempered with justice, to the great family of nations under one almighty ruler and judge.
These and a thousand other notions are so quickly taken in by the youngest girl, that one is reminded forcibly of the famous theories about innate ideas. It is impossible in a really Christian family that the head should be wrong if the heart is right.
The teaching of the Church is so complete, embraces in one firm grasp our origin in the past, our duties in the present, and our prospects for all time and eternity; our doctrines are so positive, so clear, so satisfactory, and so comprehensive that they set the mind at rest, and thereby leave the soul free to direct and control its own affections.
Generally speaking, boys and girls in Catholic families have such a clear sense both of what they have to believe and what they have to do, that when they are led astray it is by their affections.
We have explained in the preceding chapter how mothers are to win and to keep the love of their boys and girls. This is one necessary step toward cultivating their hearts and training their affections.
You cannot repair or beautify the interior of a house unless you secure an entrance and be in so far the master in it that no one shall disturb you while you are occupied in your labor.
The heart has been endowed by its Maker with so mysterious and so great a power, — that even a babe in arms can shut its heart against its own parent, and that a child of seven can form, rightly or wrongly, likings and dislikings which may last a lifetime.
It is for the mother to study from the very beginning the dispositions of her precious charge.
We say commonly that some natures are richly endowed, and others but poorly; that some persons are all head and no heart, while others are all heart and no head.
That is to say, there are souls in which the intellectual powers seem to predominate and to absorb into themselves the affective powers; while there are others in whom the affections seem to run away with the understanding and the judgment. There is some truth and a good deal of exaggeration in these estimates which we pride ourselves in forming of the innate faculties of children as well as of grown-up persons.
Doubtless, through some physical accident of formation or birth, the brain may be affected and the reasoning powers partially or almost totally paralyzed;—but there is no instance of this total paralysis of the will or the executive and effective powers in the soul where the mind retains its full vigor unimpaired.
Some persons are less sensitive, less affectionate, less imaginative, less passionate than others; but in all persons of sane mind there is imagination and sensibility and affections and passions,—though in very different degrees of intensity.
Now where a faculty or special power in the soul is known to exist, it can be developed, strengthened, increased almost indefinitely by exercise and proper culture; just as a faculty neglected either dies out or lives on in a sort of rudimentary condition for want of proper exercise.
The hand and arm of one man becomes as terrible an instrument of destruction as the arm of the tiger, by long muscular training. While another man, though more powerfully built by nature, will have a hand as soft as a babe’s, and an arm as feeble as a girl’s, from the absolute lack of exercise.
Women, above all other persons, are familiar with the success which so often attends the cultivation and development of the voice, and how young persons, seemingly deficient in all aptitude for singing, will exhibit, under careful culture and practice, the most splendid vocal powers.
“Modern mothers have been relying on psychology books to interpret child behavior for so long now that if all the psychology books were burned to a crisp, few mothers could relax with the conviction that God’s love, the maternal instinct, and divine grace could take their place. What we all — little or big — want is God; if we do not realize it, however, we choose many ignoble things in His place. And if we want to teach children to be good with a goodness that’s lasting, we must teach them to be good for the love of God.”
Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children, 1954 http://amzn.to/2qCq6Md (afflink)
Great sermon….
Thank you, Brandi!
This journal is absolutely awesome. Thank you so very much for putting this together, it arrived just in the nick of time (by the grace of God because I am notoriously late on everything!) and now I can begin journaling my resolutions in time for Shrove Tuesday. Very excited to have this lovely companion on my Lenten journey this year! God bless you for your efforts in making this book. 🙂
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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!
A very beautiful book, worthy of our attention. In it, you will find many pearls of wisdom for a woman striving to be the heart of the home, an inspiration to all who cross her path. You will be inspired to reconsider the importance of your role of wife and mother! Written by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly in 1894, the treasures found within its pages ring true and remain timeless…
This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
The more we read this kind of inspiration, the more it sinks in just how much power we have in the home….and how much we must pray to have a right spirit within those four walls.
It is for every father, who is by the divine law of nature, king in his own family, to consider well the truth here presented to him, and to conceive of his own little kingdom the pure and lofty notion, which is that of the divine mind as well as the mind of the Church.
When a father, though never so poor, firmly believes that his little home and his hearth-stone are a thing so precious and so holy that God will have “His angel keep, cherish, protect, visit, and defend it, and all who dwell therein,” he, too, will lift up his eyes and his heart to that Father over all and most loving Master, and exhort himself daily and hourly to walk before Him and be perfect.”
But it is to his companion,—the queen of that little kingdom, the wife,—that it is most necessary to have high and holy thoughts about the sacredness of her charge, the obligations incumbent on her, the incalculable good which she can do, and the many powerful helps toward its accomplishment that the All-Wise and Ever-Present is sure to multiply under her hand.
To every true man and woman now living there is no being on earth looked up to with so pure, so deep, so grateful, so lasting a love, as a mother.
Let us look at our mother, then, in that dear and holy relation of wife which she bears to him who was for us in childhood the representative of the God “of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named.”
WOMAN’S DUTIES AS WIFE
The first duty of the wife is to study to be in every way she can the companion, the help, and the friend of her husband.
Indeed on her capacity to be all this, and her earnest fulfillment of this threefold function depends all the happiness of both .their lives, as well as the well-being of the whole family.
Hence the obligation which is incumbent on parents providing for the establishment of their children, — to see to it, so far as is possible, that the person chosen to be a wife in the new home should be a true companion for their son, a true helpmate in all his toil, and a faithful friend through all the changes of fortune.
SHE OUGHT TO BE A COMPANION TO HER HUSBAND
One half of the unhappiness of married life comes from the fact that the wife is either unfitted or unwilling to be a true companion to her husband. This companionship requires that she should be suited by her qualities of mind and heart and temper to enter into her husband’s thoughts and tastes and amusements, so as to make him find in her company and conversation a perfect contentment and delight.
Persons who are perfectly companionable never weary of each other,—indeed, they are never perfectly happy while away from each other;—they enter into each other’s thoughts, reflect (and increase by the reflection) the light in each other’s mind; cultivate the same tastes, pursue the same ideals, and complete each other in the interchange of original or acquired knowledge.
But there is more than that in the companionship of the true wife. She studies to make herself agreeable, delightful, and even indispensable to him who is her choice among all men.
If true love be in her heart, it will suggest to her, day by day, a thousand new devices for charming the leisure of her husband.
Woman has been endowed by the Creator with a marvelous fertility of resource in this respect: it is an unlimited power, productive of infinite good when used for a holy purpose and within her own kingdom; but productive of infinite evil when employed in opposition to the design of the Giver, or allowed to lie idle when it should be used to promote the sacred ends of domestic felicity.
There are wives who will study certain languages, sciences, arts, or accomplishments, in order to make themselves the companions of the men they love, and thus be able to converse with them on the things they love most, or to charm the hours of home repose by music and song.
The writer of these lines remembers, that, while a young priest in Quebec, upward of thirty years ago, he was much struck by seeing a young lady of one of the best families there, applying herself assiduously to study the sign-language of the deaf-mutes in order to converse easily with her husband—a wealthy young merchant, thoroughly trained himself in the admirable Deaf and Dumb Institution of his native city.
They were devoted to each other, and the young wife’s earnestness in making herself companionable to her husband, must have brought many a blessing on the home in which the writer beheld them so rapt in each other, so virtuous, and so full of bright hope!
It must not be concluded from this, that a woman who applies herself to acquire knowledge for the purpose of being more of a companion to her husband, should thoroughly master either a language, a science, or an art. . . .
In the case of the young wife just mentioned, a thorough familiarity with the language of signs was indispensable as a means of easy conversation with her husband.
But this is evidently an exceptional case;—and is only mentioned to show what difficulties love will overcome to be helpful or agreeable to its companion.
The word helpful, just used, will furnish to every wife the true measure of the knowledge she may be prompted to acquire.
Her husband has to know perfectly whatever he knows, because his success as a professional man or a business man depends on this thorough knowledge, whereas his wife only acquires to please and to help her companion.
But there are other things beside this scientific, literary, or artistic knowledge, which may be more needful to a wife, if she would make herself of all earthly beings the most delightful and necessary companion to her husband.
She must study him,—his needs, his moods, his weak as well as his strong points,—and know how to make him forget himself when he is moody and selfish, and bring out every joyous side of his nature when he is prone to sadness.
God, who has made the soul both of man and of woman, and who has united them in the duties and burdens of home-life, wills that they should complete each other.
Man has bodily strength, because it is his duty to labor for the home and protect it; he has also certain mental and moral qualities which woman does not need, and which fit him for the battle of life and his continual struggle with the crowd.
But she has, on her part, far more of fortitude, of that power to bear and to forbear, to suffer silently and uncomplainingly herself while ministering with aching heart and head to the comfort, the cheerfulness, the happiness of all around her.
At any rate, she has by nature the power, the art, and the disposition to please, to soothe, to charm, and to captivate.
It is a wonderful power; and we see daily women exerting it in an evil way and for purposes that God cannot bless, and that every right conscience must condemn.
Why will not women who are truly good, or who sincerely strive to be so, not make it the chief study of their lives to find out and acquire the sovereign art of making their influence as healthful, as cheering, as blissful as the sunlight and the warmth are to their homes?
Let us give an example of what is meant here—and this illustration will suggest, of itself, many other applications.
We all know—a mother more than anyone else—what a potent spell praise is in making children master whatever they are learning, and, what is far more difficult, acquire a mastery over themselves, both in repressing wrong inclinations and in gaining the habits of the noblest virtues.
A word of praise from a mother will stir the heart of every well-born child—and few children are ill-born, that is, with radically bad dispositions—to the most extraordinary exertions, and fill the whole soul with delight, when that word is sweetly spoken of successful efforts made.
We say nothing here of the stimulus which praise from the queen of the home gives to the zeal and conscientious labors of servants. We are concerned with the master of the home. Do you not know that all men, even old men, even the proudest and coldest men, are only great children, who thirst for praise from a wife, a mother, or a sister’s lips?
There are men —and they are the noblest, the most high-souled—who care but little, if anything, for the praise or censure of the crowd, even of the learned or titled crowd; but their heart is stirred through all its depths by one sweet word from the lips of mother, sister, or wife.
Why, O women, are you so niggard of a money which you can bestow without making yourselves the poorer, and which your dear ones prize above gold and gems?
Give generously, but discerningly, what is held so dear as coming from you, and which will only encourage those you love above all the world to strive tomorrow for still higher excellence, and look forward to still sweeter praise.
“We’re terribly in danger all the time of taking God’s goodness too much for granted; of bouncing up to Communion as if it were the most natural thing in the world, instead of being a supernatural thing belonging to another world.” – Msgr. Ronald Knox, 1948
Oct
The Agony in the Garden
Suffering did not come upon Christ unawares. In a very real sense, it had been on God’s mind from all eternity. The Virgin Mary had conceived a Victim. John held him as the meek Lamb of God, destined for slaughter.
Jesus himself spoke often of His death; invited others to do what He was about to do – “take up the Cross”; then deliberately went up to Jerusalem to his earthly doom.
But when that long-awaited suffering was only a sunrise away, Jesus Christ fell upon His face and bled at the thought of pain and asked that, if it were possible, the chalice be withheld.
To tremble at pain is Christlike. Suffering is not a good thing that merely appears evil. It is an evil, which human nature shrinks from – and Grace can sanctify.
This graceful necklace can be worn every day as a reminder of your devotion to the Blessed Mother. Get it blessed and you can use it also as a sacramental. Available here.
February ~ Printable Traditional Catholic Daily Planner ~ Meal Menu/Homeschool Page ~ Daily Gratitude/Spiritual Checklist/Daily Goals!
This can be used each year for the month of February.
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!
A very beautiful book, worthy of our attention. In it, you will find many pearls of wisdom for a woman striving to be the heart of the home, an inspiration to all who cross her path. You will be inspired to reconsider the importance of your role of wife and mother! Written by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly in 1894, the treasures found within its pages ring true and remain timeless…
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The best preservative against dangerous ambition in your children, is found in the supernatural notions and virtues which a Christian mother is careful to inculcate from the earliest dawn of reason in her children.
We insist once more upon it—the royal and rich poverty of Christ, of his Mother, and of his foster-father Joseph, must be made the theme of constant remark and praise in the homes of tradesmen and laboring men.
And, next to that, the mother must fill the souls of her little ones with that scorn and loathing of all dishonesty and untruthfulness, which will, with the ever-present aid of grace, render them incapable of telling a lie or wronging any person, no matter how slight.
CHILDREN TO BE TAUGHT SIMPLICITY IN DRESS AND SOBRIETY IN FOOD
A venerable lady, who died in November, 1870, in her seventy-second year, and who came of the best blood of England, wrote thus, in her last years, of her early training: “The dress of these days (about 1806) was very different to that which children have now. My white frocks were of lawn or Irish cloth, without any work or ornament; and when I went out, I used to wear a little green-baize coat. My food was also of the simplest kind, consisting principally of buttermilk and potatoes.”
The girlhood trained in these habits of simplicity and wholesome austerity led to a lovely womanhood, to a life of spotless devotion to duty, and to the exercise of these private graces and influences which enable a woman, ever living in the privacy of her home, to win the admiration, the respect, and the veneration of all who approach her.
We quote her words and her example to show how women were brought up in the days of our fathers, and how little difference, even in Protestant homes, the deep-seated Christian customs of so many preceding centuries allowed to prevail in the dress, the food, and all the external training of children in all classes.
Mothers in those days, who wished to do their duty conscientiously by their children, did not dream of having for them in the beginning any teachers but themselves. So was it with this lady’s mother; although prostrated by paralysis and consumption, she would daily teach her little girl.
“She taught me in all my lessons except French, but her weak health and bad headaches often prevented her hearing me, and many a time I had to stand outside her door waiting till I could be heard, which fretted me a good deal.
When the lessons went ill, I was sentenced to sit on the staircase till I was good, and the task perfect. I imagine that though my mother was most gentle, she was firm in her management of me.”
Some lady-friend having ” suggested my doing something because it would be pleasant”, my mother appealed to me, “I think my little girl has a better motive for it. What is it, Mia?” and “Because it is right,” was my reply.
The answer given by the child shows how early philosophers call “the moral sense” is developed in a child, in little girls especially, whose intelligence is so much more precocious than that of boys, and whose sense of right and wrong is much quicker and keener.
The sick, —hopelessly sick and infirm mother, here mentioned, while cultivating her child’s memory and understanding by teaching her the usual elementary branches, was careful to form her judgment by making her in all things act for a purpose, and to develop her moral sense by giving her in all she did the notion of duty, as her stimulant in doing both pleasant and unpleasant things.
THE MORAL SENSE IS BUT THE SENSE OF DUTY
Duty is the fulfilling of an obligation toward one’s self, or toward another in compliance with His will, who being Creator and Lord has a right to bind our wills to do certain things and to refrain from others. Duty is always toward God, even when the immediate object of the action performed is only one’s self, or one’s neighbor.
The very duty of cultivating mind and heart, which regards every intelligent being, is a duty imposed by the Divine Will; so is the obligation to keep one’s soul and body free from every defilement. We own it to be a duty to learn, to know clearly and fully what concerns our condition, our profession, or the office we may hold in Church or State, and a corresponding duty to live up to this indispensable knowledge.
But Christian philosophy teaches us that in acquiring this knowledge, and in acting up to it. we are only doing what is due to Him who has an essential right to every thought and aim and act of ours.
Uprightness is the perfect performance of duty;—and uprightness, in its Christian and supernatural meaning, is the perfect discharge of duty in view of Him who is our Lord and Judge and final Beatitude. The firm look of the soul, in every act of duty or in the gratuitous generosity with which the sons of God go beyond what is of obligation —is upward to God.
CULTIVATE THIS SENSE OF DUTY in all your children. Make them understand that they are to do certain things most unpleasant, and to abstain from other things most pleasant, because it is right to do so; because it is their duty, because this is due to their great and good God.
Experience has taught that of all characters, in men as well as in women, the most trustworthy, the most honored, the most noble in the estimation of mankind, is the man or woman who always acts according to this sense of duty, and whom no love, no fear, no passion, or temptation can turn aside to do wrong,—that is, what is contrary to duty and conscience.
If mothers will only accustom their children to act, not according to their inclinations, but in obedience to this sense of duty, pointing out what is right to do and what is wrong not to do,—they will buckle round them a suit of armor which will enable them to come victorious out of the terrible battle of temptation.
And never was this noble sense of duty more needed than in our day,—when men think little of right or wrong, and a good deal of the surest and quickest road to success ;—and when, in the estimation of our public, success once attained makes the wrong right, while failure makes right itself wrong, and the sacrifice to duty foolish sentimentality.
True happiness hides from us whenever we go after it out of egoism or devotion to our own personal convenience. But it comes running to meet us whenever we put self aside and, embracing what is noble, devote ourselves to duty, virtue, the good of our neighbor, God. – Achieving Peace of Heart, Fr. Narcis Irala https://amzn.to/2P5MiLh (afflink)
The month of February is traditionally dedicated to the Most Holy Family.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I give You my heart and my soul.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, assist me in my last agony.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, may I breathe out my soul in peace with You.
New! The Lenten Way of the Cross Picturesque and Prayer-Filled Cards with Handcrafted Wooden Card Holder ~ Family/Children Activity!
Help make Lent more meaningful for you and your family with the Lenten Way of the Cross Cards!
Follow along with your family and prepare your hearts for the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord each year at Lent and Easter using these special picturesque and prayer-filled cards to help keep your mind and heart focused each day There are 41 cards in total.
Keep the cards in a visible spot in your home as a reminder to you and your children.
Comes with the handmade wooden card holder. Cards are approximately 7″ X 4 1/2″. (The wooden card holder is made with the wood from 100 year old pews that were made by boys in a Catholic School in the 1800’s! *While supplies last on this one).
You can look up more details on the Lenten Way of the Cross here.
Lenten Bundle!
This journal will lay out some simple activities in which your children will be doing their sacrifices and will have a tangible means of “counting” them for Jesus. You, Mom, will have a place to put a check mark if that the activity is remembered and completed for the day. This journal also includes a place for you to check off whether you are fulfilling your own personal resolutions…your Spiritual Reading, your Family Rosary, etc.
Taken mostly from the letters of the saint, this masterful work gives us the consolation he offered to parents on the deaths of their sons, to a lady on the death of her father, a wife on the death of her husband, and others mourning their loved ones. Throughout he gives reason to hope, and explains how much the thought of Heaven should console us, and how agreeable it will be to parents and friends to meet again and converse together in Heaven. (Click on image for more info.)
This treasure of spirituality beautifully explains God’s love for the sinner, how great His joy is upon the return of just one lost sheep, and how God’s mercy extends even towards the damned. St. Francis encourages us to conform ourselves to God’s will, and teaches us to abandon ourselves to the Lord who so desires our hearts.
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In this article, Father is adamant about taking care to monitor what your children are reading and the companions they have. As parents forming our children in the modern world, we add on top of that the movies they watch and the internet they are allowed to dabble in. Let us pray to Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636), patron of the internet, to guide us in this daunting task…
To no one more than the child of the hard-working mother is true independence of soul,—that is, true nobility of character,—necessary and useful. Indeed, the all-seeing Author of our nature, who governs all our ways, has made every element of greatness in our souls and conduct necessary because He knew they would be useful; and He made them all the more necessary that He foresaw they would be more useful.
In what does this independence of soul and character consist? In this: that a boy or a girl brought up by a truly God-fearing mother, is so filled with the fear of that Great Majesty, in whose hands we are at every moment, and into whose hands we are sure to fall after death, that they look up to Him in everything, seek to please Him in all they do, and find it impossible to do anything which is wrong in His sight and contrary to the voice of their own conscience.
Let us understand this well. You rear your boy and your girl, from the very first moment you can make them understand anything, in the conviction that God’s truth, God’s word, God’s will is to be the sole measure by which they are to weigh and estimate everything; so that it will be practically impossible for them to do anything contrary to His truth, His law, or His will.
We say every day that such a man is a noble man, a truly independent man, because he is incapable of doing wrong to any one, of violating truth or honor or honesty, of going in anything whatever against his conscience and his known duty.
Hence it is—and this is the golden lesson which our forefathers learned so well and practiced so nobly, that they made their moral greatness and independence consist in depending on God alone and their conscience.
They were poor in this world’s goods,—for they had been stripped of everything,—they were deprived of civil and religious liberty and honor, and were thus, in the eyes of men, degraded to the level of the serf or the slave. But nothing could shake their dependence on God, or their implicit and invincible obedience to the voice of their conscience and their faith.
Now such are the noble men and women that can in our days,—in this generation as in the next,—go forth from the home of every laboring man among us, as they went forth in past generations; men attached to conscience, to honesty, to honor, to truth, to duty, to righteousness, and to God in all things and above all things, everywhere, in all employments and positions, though never so high or never so lowly.
Let us have men and women incapable of telling a lie, of wronging the neighbor in thought or word or deed, of wronging their employer in the meanest trifles or the weightiest matters, of betraying the trust placed in them, whether in the last place in lowliest office or in the highest that can be given in city, State, or Church; men and women who fear God alone, and, after Him, fear only what is contrary to truth, honor, and purity!
Dear mothers who read this, you may never be able to give your boys and girls at your death wherewith to buy a suit of clothes or to pay for their meals on the morrow. But if you labored morning, noon, and night till your dying day—because you would allow no dishonesty to taint your lives, and for the sole purpose of making of your children such godlike men and women as this,—you have left them a treasure ten thousand times more precious than all the hoarded millions of our wealthiest.
Make them Choose their Companions Well
In order to do this, you must be careful about two things: the choice of what your boys and girls read, and that of their companions at home or in the street. Choose well the books which you put in their hands, or which you permit them to bring home with them.
Public libraries are like druggists’ shops or public dispensaries; they are like them in this, that they contain all manner of poisons as well as healthful medicines; and they differ from them in this, that, whereas conscientious druggists will give what is healthful to all, they will only deal out what is poisonous in small quantities and to responsible and properly authorized persons;—while libraries and librarians have no conscience, and let the innocent child take away and devour what kills purity, innocence, and conscience forever.
Scarcely less baneful are, taken and read promiscuously, the daily and weekly papers. They are not only dangerous and hurtful to the young mind and heart as mere newspapers, because they reveal in their hideousness and obscenity what should never be known to youth, and what were better ignored by age itself; but they are still more hurtful as teachers and dogmatizers on religion and morality, either reducing the doctrines and practices of revealed religion to the same level with infidelity, and thus producing practical indifference toward divine truth; or they affect and profess to have an authority which can judge the Church of Christ herself, and enlighten her as to the way she ought to teach and to govern.
Thereby the mind is imperceptibly but inevitably filled with prejudices or preconceived opinions distrustful of the Church or hostile to her, and which act on the intelligence as the foul and poisonous air of coalmines acts on the lungs: they fill the organs with deadly exhalations which prevent the entrance into them of God’s pure vital air.
Just as you are careful of what books or papers your children read, even so be watchful over the companionships they form. It is impossible to take kindly to the low-minded, corrupt-hearted, or ill-bred and ill-mannered, without laying aside one’s own good manners, good breeding, purity of feeling, and innocence of mind in habitual intercourse with them.
There are worse consequences, as you know, which soon follow this familiarity with the low and the unworthy. Precisely because the great majority of young people around you are without sound moral education,—untruthful, intemperate, and as careless of honor and honesty as they are of decency,—it is your most pressing interest and duty to keep your treasures away from such contact.
“When we hold that tiny bundle in our arms for the very first time, a flood of hopes and dreams emerges like a great blue whale cresting to spout his spray into the air. But somewhere in the day-to-day busyness of life, encouraging words can get lost among the to-dos and not-to-dos. We need to take a fresh look at motherhood and recapture the commitment to be the great encouragers along a child’s journey toward adulthood.” -Sharon Jaynes, The Power of a Woman’s Words (Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau)
Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)
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.
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!
These fascinating dreams involve prophecy and reading of hearts, with a powerful spiritual message. Includes: To Hell and Back, Two Boys Attacked by a Monster, The Snake and the Rosary, and many more. These dreams led to many conversions and will instruct, admonish and inspire today!
With more than one million copies sold, My Daily Bread is a true Christian classic. It’s simple, yet carefully crafted daily reflections have led thousands to a drastically improved interior life and a deeper love for Christ.
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Besides it there ought to be other representations of our Lord, his mother, and the Saints, discreetly placed about the home.
Whilst the house needs not to be turned into a holy picture gallery, yet a prudent selection of holy pictures will become a Catholic home. They are indicative of faith, and of a certain gratitude for, and pride in, the faith.
In the meantime they are a continuous reminder of God and his saints, the heroes and heroines of virtue, to the family, and thus provide it with a potent stimulant to piety and goodness.
Every Catholic home should have on hand two candlesticks and two blessed wax candles to be used in cases of sickness for the administration of the sacraments; also a bottle containing holy water; and in every sleeping room there ought to be a small holy water font.
The Holy Bible
A copy of the holy Bible, of the lives of the Saints, and of some good explanation of Catholic beliefs and practices should be found in every Catholic home. It should moreover keep at least one Catholic magazine together with the Catholic newspaper of the diocese or province.
The parents are not only to make this provision, but they are also the example in the regular and wholesome reading of these books and periodicals, and cultivate a taste for them in themselves and their children, by often and prudently making their contents the subject of the family conversation.
At the same time they will be careful to shut their home to all literature of a dangerous or dubious character, even as they will rigidly prohibit in it profane and other language that is unbecoming in the house of God, namely the little temple over which they have the charge and the responsibility.
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.
Modern authors have written elegantly and eloquently about the home life which was the source of all domestic virtues and all public greatness in the powerful nations of antiquity. They describe, in every household, in the poor man’s cabin as well as in the palace, that altar set apart for family worship, on which the sacred fire was scrupulously watched and kept alive night and day.
No one ever went forth from the house without first kneeling at that altar and paying reverence to the divinity of the place, and no one, on returning, ever saluted his dearest ones before doing homage there.
There, too, at night the household met for prayer and adoration, and there again with the dawn they knelt together to beg on the labors of the day before them the blessing of the deity worshiped by their fathers.
This altar and this undying fire were regarded as a something so holy that only the most precious wood and the purest material was employed to feed the flame. Nothing filthy or defiled was permitted to approach the spot; and every indecent word uttered or act committed near it was deemed a sacrilege.
This hearth-altar, or hearth-fire, as it was called, was symbolical of the fate of the family. If it was neglected and allowed to die out, this was deemed an irreparable calamity foreboding the ruin of the home and the extinction of the race.
In the Christian home it is the flame of piety, ardent love for God, and charity toward the neighbor, which constitutes the hearth-fire that should ever burn bright.
Old Catholic homes, (how many of our readers will remember it?) were wont to have the cross placed outside as a symbol of the love for the Crucified which ruled all hearts within; and in the interior His name, as well as His image could be seen on almost every wall, informing the stranger-guest that He was in the house of the common Parent, and in the midst of dear brethren.
And how many of us may also remember the poor but cleanly cottage of the laborer, or the narrow room of city families, on whose bare but white walls there was no ornament but the crucifix, and no glory but that of the Holy Name written there as a seal of predestination?
Where the fire of divine love is fed as carefully, and the mother and her daughters watch as jealously as the Roman matrons and maidens of old that its flame shall never be extinguished, there is little fear that any conversation but what is “innocent” shall prevail.
Purity and charity are the twin-lights of every home deserving of God’s best blessing and man’s heartfelt veneration.
“Simplicity of soul is one of the prerequisites of sanctity, and it’s one of the things our children already possess. We must be very careful not to contribute to the great cluttering up. Our obligation as parents is heavy: we must raise children who are in love with God.” -Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children
“While you stood there in the chaos, Could you see past all the pain?
Past the sword that ripped your soul, To your son’s triumphant reign?
Did the sands there of Golgotha Scratch lines into your face,
Mixing with the blood of Jesus, Dearest Lady, full of grace?
While you stayed beneath his shadow, While he hung there on the cross,
Could you feel your own wounds bleeding, As his blood fell to the rocks?
As the turmoil clutched your saddened soul, Did your heart completely break?
Could you hear the soldier cursing When his hammer hit the stake?
The Prophecy of Simeon, Had it at last come true,
Where the thoughts of many people Would lay bare because of you?
Was it when the earth was quaking That reality set in,
Your son had died to save our souls, Because of all our sin?
I ask you all these questions as I’m leading up to one.
Can you forgive me, Blessed Mother, For the dying of your son?”
Take a peek at these beautiful crocheted hats made by our oldest daughter, Gin!
Little Lady’s Charming Crocheted Garden Party/Church-Going Hat! Every flower, petal and bow is hand made with care. The unique combination of colors will add the final touch of elegance to your little girls outfit! Available here.
S
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?”
To the wife’s stewardship belongs also the discharge of a most important, not to say most sacred duty—that of hospitality. It is one of the chief functions of the divine virtue of charity.
Of its nature, its necessity, and its importance we do not wish to discourse here. Few are the homes and the hearts to which hospitality is a stranger. Those to which this book may reach will easily understand what the word means without either definition or description.
We can, therefore, convey our instruction by the simplest method. Whoever is received into your home as a guest—precisely because he is your guest—forget everything else to make his stay delightful.
It matters little whether persons thus hospitably received may or may not appreciate your generosity, your cordiality, and that true warmth of a welcome like yours, inspired by Christian motives much more than by worldly reasons; it matters much for you that none should ever enter your home without finding it a true Christian home, or should leave it without taking away with them the pleasant memory of their stay and a grateful recollection of you and yours.
Doubtless some will be found whom no courtesy, no kindness, no warmth of hospitality can change from what they are,—little-minded, narrow-hearted, selfish, cold, and unable to judge the conduct of others by any other standard than their own low thoughts and sentiments.
They are only like bats entering a banquet-hall by one window and passing out at the opposite, after having fluttered blindly about the lights, or clung for a few instants to the walls or the ceiling. Let them come and let them go. The social and spiritual atmosphere of the place is not for them.
Nor must you complain of the number. It is wonderful how much place a large-hearted woman can find for her company, even in a very small house!
A hospitable spirit can do wonders in its way: it can make the water on the board more delicious than the wines of Portugal, Spain, or France or Italy; it can make the bread which it places before stranger or friend as sweet as the food of the gods; it can multiply its own scanty stores—as the Master did with the loaves in the wilderness.
For God’s blessing is with the hospitable soul to increase, to multiply, and to sweeten; to fill all who sit at her board with plenty, with joy, with thanksgiving.
“There is,” says Digby, “a castle on the Loire held by a lady of ascetic piety and of noble fame, in the latest pages of French heroic annals. There one of my friends, received to hospitality, finding many guests, supposed himself surrounded by men of illustrious condition, till he was informed that they were all persons reduced to poverty, whose title to familiarity under that roof was founded precisely on their indigence and misfortunes.”
Ah, noble France, how many other homes along the Loire, the Mayenne, the Sarthe, and the Somme do we not know which are always open to the stranger and the pilgrim from other lands, while their generous masters and mistresses deem every sacrifice a blessing, because performed for Christ present in the guest of one day, or one week, or one month!
A man does not expect his wife to neglect important duty in his behalf. He is aware of the demands of her life and wants her to give each responsibility the attention it requires. He does not want his children to suffer neglect. And he knows she is entitled to other interests and diversions. But, he doesn’t want to be less important. And he doesn’t want to be regarded as a convenience, a paycheck, an escort, a social asset, a ticket to security. He would like to feel that she married him for him, and not as a means of filling her needs or reaching her objectives. -Helen Andelin, Fascinating Womanhood
Make a statement with this lovely and graceful handcrafted “Madonna of Heaven” apron….fully lined, lace overlay….made with care. Aprons tell a beautiful story…..a story of love and sacrifice….of baking bread and mopping floors, of planting seeds and household chores. Sadly, many women have tossed the aprons aside and donned their business attire. Wear your apron with joy….it is a symbol of Femininity….”Finer” Femininity! 🌺 💗
Review: For the spiritually-conscious couple this book is a must. Written in the 1920’s by a Catholic priest to counsel married couples on sexual morality, daily problems and child rearing.
Among many wonderful lessons, it describes plainly what I needed to know about which birth-control method is moral and which is immoral, from a Traditional Roman Catholic point of view.
A Frank, Yet Reverent Instruction on the Intimate Matters of Personal Life for Young Men. To our dear and noble Catholic youths who have preserved, or want to recover, their purity of heart, and are minded to retain it throughout life. For various reasons many good fathers of themselves are not able to give their sons this enlightenment on the mysteries of life properly and sufficiently. They may find this book helpful in the discharge of their parental responsibilities in so delicate a matter.
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We must not, especially in an age which tends daily more and more to deny that man owes any account to God for the use of the wealth he chances to possess — whether that be inherited from his ancestors, or obtained by his own thrift and industry — be carried away by the torrent of error.
No matter whence derived, all that man has as well as all that he is belongs to God — his Creator and Lord and Judge; and to Him must he return to give an account of the use which he will have made of his being, his life, his time, his property.
Reason, even without the light of supernatural revelation, teaches this truth as fundamental and unquestionable.
The great and the rich will have to account for their stewardship, —for the uses to which they have put their time, their riches, their power, their influence, their opportunities, just as the laboring poor will have to account for their thrift, and the awful uses to which one may see, day by day, our hard-working heads of families put their earnings in drunkenness, gambling, and all manner of vice.
But, as we have said, it is the province of the housewife to be at home a wise steward in the use of her husband’s means, while his chief business is, outside of the home, to procure these means by honorable industry. Both are responsible to God.
The wife’s immediate responsibility however is toward her husband. She is his minister, his eye, his hand, his head and heart, in applying his wealth or the produce of his industry to the ends for which God wills it to be employed.
Of persons of royal, princely, or noble rank, we do not think it necessary to treat in this place. We speak of wealth wheresoever it exists, and of the duties and responsibilities of the wife in its home-uses.
Hers should be a wise economy. Wisdom consists in a clear perception of the ends or uses for which money is to serve, and in the careful adaptation of one’s means to one’s expenditure.
You have so much and no more to spend each week, or each month, or each year; you have so many wants to provide for: let your wisdom be proved by always restraining your outlay so as to have a little balance left in your favor.
We know of a wife,—a young wife too,—who after her bridals was made the mistress of a luxurious home, in which her fond husband allowed her unlimited control. They were more than wealthy, and his business relations and prospects were such as to promise certain and steady increase for the future.
Still the young wife did not allow herself to be lavish or extravagant. She provided generously for the comforts of her home, for the happiness of her servants, for the duties of a generous hospitality; she had an open hand for all charities and good works.
But she was also, young as she was, mindful of the future; and this wise forethought is eminently the characteristic of women.
Without ever whispering a word of her purpose to her husband, she resolved from the beginning of their housekeeping that she would lay by in a safe bank her weekly economies.
The husband, in all likelihood, would have deemed this saving an ill omen, pointing to future calamity. It was, however, only the prophetic instinct of the wise woman, who, in the heat of summer and the overflowing plenty of autumn, looked forward to “the cold of snow,” and made store for the need and warmth and comfort of her household.
The “calamity” came after a good many years ; it came by a fatal chain of circumstances in which the misfortunes or dishonesty of others brought ruin on the upright and prudent and undeserving.
One day the husband came home with heavy heart, and tried in vain to hide his care from the penetrating eyes of love. He had to break to his wife the dreadful news of their utter ruin.
She listened unmoved to his story: “All is not lost, my dear husband,” she said; “I have been long preparing for this. If you will go to such a bank, you will find enough laid up there to secure us either against want or poverty.”
In order to secure this wise and provident economy, even in the midst of wealth, two extremes must be avoided, parsimony, which destroys domestic comfort and makes the mistress of the proudest house despicable in the eyes of her cook, her butcher, and her grocer,—and waste or extravagance, which is ruinous to the largest fortunes and most criminal in the sight of God.
“Waste not—want not,” used to be inscribed on the huge bread-platters of our fathers, both in the servants’ hall and the family dining-room.
“Waste not—want not,” ought to be the rule of every housewife in all departments of household economy.
Waste is always a sin against God, against your husband and children, as well as against the poor, who have a right to what is thus thrown away: and, forget it not,—waste never fails to lead to want, as surely as stripping a tree of its bark is followed by its pining away and withering.
Another rule, which a wise woman will never violate, is to tell her husband when she exceeds her means or allowance.
It is fatal concealment to allow debts to accumulate without one’s husband’s knowledge; it tempts the woman weak enough to do so to have recourse to most unworthy and most dangerous expedients, which are sure to be known in the end, and to lower the culprit or ruin her forever in her husband’s esteem.
The equivocations and the downright falsehoods which are often used as means of concealment, cannot but be considered by every right-minded man as a greater calamity than the accumulation of the largest debt or the loss of an entire fortune.
In this respect, as indeed in every other, no concealment will be found to be the wife’s only true policy; and to secure this policy of no concealment let her make it the study of her life to have nothing to conceal.
I will announce the winner next Tuesday, June 22nd!
“Gardens are places of life, growth, rebirth. Working with plants and soil is a therapeutic experience to our stressed-out lives. You don’t have to have acres of land or an emerald thumb in order for gardening to be part of your life. Your garden can flourish in whatever space and time you have to give it.” – Emilie Barnes, Simple Secrets to a Beautiful Home http://amzn.to/2sdMPOn (afflink)
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SIn this book, Kennedy Hall explores the traditional wisdom of the Catholic Church on all things pertaining to masculinity. It is no secret that in our day it is hard to define what a man truly is, let alone how he should act. With all the modern obstacles that work against forming virtuous men, Kennedy Hall provides a solution with this book. Terror of Demons: Reclaiming Traditional Catholic Masculinity will help men of all ages and stages in life to develop heroic masculine virtue, something greatly needed in our time.
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Rooted firmly in Scripture, these pages call on husbands to stop thinking of themselves simply as bosses and breadwinners. Rather, says author Clayton Barbeau, husbands should see themselves as co-creators with God, imitators of Christ’s love for His people, high priests in the domestic Church, teachers of their children, witnesses to society, providers of spiritual and material goods, and models of holiness.
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Where I discuss the dynamics of Catholic family life that helped them to form their children into God-fearing, joyful Catholics.
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