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The Christian Training of Children – Combating Concupiscence of the Flesh

Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M. — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:40:08 +0000

Table of contents for Mother Love

Little Book of Instructions for Christian Mothers [continued]
(from Mother Love – A Manual for Christian Mothers – by Rev. Pius Franciscus, O.M.Cap., 1926)

On the Christian Training of Children

Yes, come with me!

Chapter IV. - How the Christian Mother Should Combat in Her Child the Concupiscence of the Flesh.

The first evil inclination, the concupiscence of the flesh, seeks inordinately after all that gratifies the body, tickles the senses, and excites them to pleasure. Certainly the physical needs must be provided for and the sense activities must be exercised, otherwise life would not be worth living. But, how easily may the proper measure of enjoyment be exceeded, and thus that which might have been, according to St. Paul, a source of heavenly merit and for the greater honor and glory of God, is turned into a source of demerit, sin and punishment!

If then, dear Christian mother, you do not want your child to become the slave of sensual and carnal pleasures, you must train it from its earliest years to self-restraint and self-denial, to application and industry, to order and cleanliness. Among other things therefore a prudent Christian mother will provide for a thorough ventilation of the living and the bed rooms, so that wholesome, fresh air may constantly fill them. She will provide for the children plain, nourishing food, sensible clothing, and a neat comfortable bed; on the other hand, she will withhold from them everything that merely indulges the sensual appetite or wantonly excites the nerves. Children must not be permitted to eat as much and as often as they please, but whatever their reasonable needs demand, should be granted kindly and graciously. Cookies and candies and other palate-ticklers should not be allowed too frequently, since experience teaches that excessive munching of sweetmeats is not only injurious to the teeth and stomach but also to the general health. Try to impress upon the minds of your little ones, Christian mother, that it is a good work occasionally to give up some creature comforts and enjoyments for the love of God, that God especially loves children who act that way and rewards them for it in body and soul. Performing such little mortifications with a good intention is a powerful means of obtaining many favors from God. But in these mortifications children should be supervised so that they may not overdo them.

Playing is hard work!

A Christian mother should let her children play much in the open air, even when the weather is somewhat cold and unpleasant. She should put them to bed early and in the morning also get them out early. They should be taught to get up immediately on the first call, to dress themselves quickly and to make their morning ablutions with cold water. Each child should have its own little daily work to do according to its age and strength, and a fixed time to do it. Dresses and coats, hats and caps, shoes and slippers, as well as playthings should not be allowed to be scattered around, and for everything that belongs to a child there should be a fixed place and it must be trained to put them in the proper places itself. Dirty hands and dirty faces as well as dirty clothes must never be tolerated.

Children should always be cheerful not only at their games and recreations but also at their work and even in their little trials and hurts. As early in life as possible they should be taught that the afflictions and reverses of life, such as excessive cold or heat, slander or gossip, offenses and insults and abuse, sickness and wounds and death, are blessings in disguise and sent by God to wean us from the world and its attractions and arouse in us a greater love and desire for the eternal joys of heaven. They should also be taught to see in them a means which God provides, to atone for our sins, our faults and imperfections. Finally, they should be taught that Jesus Christ Himself was willing to endure the same or similar afflictions during His life here on earth, and that it is a mark of great love of Christ to be satisfied to live amid the same conditions as He did and to bear willingly what He was willing to bear.

Many things are sources of pleasure to children. In the first place there are the things of nature itself. These captivate the eyes of children by their beauty and variety. Naturally, the child admires them, asks questions about them and is happy in knowing them. A Christian mother will not only call attention to their beauty and variety of arrangement, but she will also show how they are evidences of God’s goodness and love as well as proofs of His infinite wisdom and power. The parish church is another source of joy to the child: its majestic appearance, its length and width and height on the outside, and on the inside its altars and their ornamentation, its pews and pictures and statues, its pulpit and confessionals. Gradually, the mother should teach the child the purpose and meaning of them all, so that it may learn to appreciate them as the means by which the salvation of mankind is affected. The feasts of the Church should give the mother opportunities for explanations and stories from the life of Christ in order to instill a greater love of Christ into the heart of her child; when occasion offers she will also narrate stories from the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that the child’s affection for our heavenly Mother may constantly grow and confidence in her tender mercy may increase. Again and again she will tell of the lives of different saints, of their zeal for their own salvation as well as for the salvation of the souls of others and of their love of God and His glory. All that was ever learned in Catechism or Bible History, in sermons or conference, in the Lives of the Saints or some other spiritual book, the Christian mother will impart to her little ones in such simple words that even the youngest may understand. Her efforts will surely be blessed by God and she will enjoy not only the pleasure of gladdening the hearts of her children by her story-telling but will also be rewarded by the earnest endeavors with which her children will try to imitate the virtues of Jesus and Mary and of the saints.

Folk dancing - wholesome entertainment

Another species of joy is derived from home-life and the intimate associations of the family-members. Home, sweet home! Oh, that every home were so sweet and inviting, so pleasant and cheery, that neither father nor children would ever desire to be anywhere else but with and around mother! In such a home every say is the herald of new joys, and certain occasions such as the nameday or birthday of father, mother, brother, or sister and the anniversary of some joyous, important event, are celebrated in a festive manner with some innocent amusements and recreation and sincere testimonies of mutual affection.

In this manner the children will be protected against the deceitful allurements of carnal and worldly pleasures which alas! are only too often the death of purity and innocence. Would to God that every mother at least realized her responsibility in this matter! It may be safely affirmed that the loss of the sense of shame and modesty, so noticeable among the youth of the present generation, is primarily due to the indifference of mothers in observing proper precautions in bathing, dressing and bedding her little ones. Other causes are frequently assigned such as the prevailing fashions of the day, the promiscuous gatherings of young people in dancehalls and amusement places and the modern dances themselves, but all these should be considered as contributing causes merely, since the seed of immodesty and shamelessness was sowed earlier in life.

I can only indicate the sowing of this seed by telling what a mother should not do. A Christian mother will never bathe a child while other children are looking on, nor will she bathe them together at the same time. She will never strip them entirely to change their underwear in the presence of others; she will always have separate rooms and beds for her boys and girls. She will earnestly reprimand even the least breach against modesty and, if repeated, she should severely punish the offender. True, the little one may not understand the indecency of its act, but it is important to impress upon it the gravity of the fault by the infliction of some punishment so that it may not in later life fall into sins which, more that all others, are the cause of eternal damnation. The girls in particular, should be trained in Christian modesty, which includes also decency in dress. Fashions change with the times, so that sooner or later we may expect some improvement in present-day styles; but a mother who today dresses her girls in fashionable décolleté and sleeveless undress, is surely not preventing the violation of the sense of modesty, and is, indeed, contributing to the moral laxity of her daughters.

As the children grow older, the vigilance of parents must become more alert, so that the boys and girls may not become victims of vicious companions who are ever ready to initiate the innocent into the clandestine and sinful methods of sex gratification. As soon as parents observe in their boys and girls a curiosity regarding sex, it would be highly imprudent to conceal from them the desired sex-knowledge, because they will not content themselves with evasions, and the danger is lest they obtain that knowledge in a crude and sinful way. Tell them briefly and frankly what they desire to know, and at the same time warn them against speaking on such subjects with outsiders and encourage them to seek all sex-information from you only-the girls from mother and the boys from father. But also, according to the age of the children, admonish them to preserve their mind[s] and heart[s] pure and chaste through an earnest devotion to the immaculate Blessed Virgin, who is ever ready to help and protect us in all unprovoked dangers and temptations.

To be continued . . .

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The Christian Training of Children – New and more Difficult Cares

Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M. — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 19:42:00 +0000

Table of contents for Mother Love

Little Book of Instructions for Christian Mothers [continued]
(from Mother Love – A Manual for Christian Mothers – by Rev. Pius Franciscus, O.M.Cap., 1926)

On the Christian Training of Children

Chapter II. – The Two Ways and Kingdoms. New and more Difficult Cares.

Through baptism the child is consecrated to the Divine Savior. It becomes His own property and possession, subject to Him and forever bound to Him, believing in Him, hoping in Him, and loving Him, disposed to live and act as He wills and as His example suggests. It is for the mother to help it on to this. If she is accustomed to follow her natural inclinations, she will find her task a most difficult one; for the life of the Divine Savior was in no way similar to that of our lower nature. It was diametrically opposed to it.

Our nature longs for temporal possessions, seeks after prosperity, riches, and affluence: but the life of Jesus was one of the greatest poverty. He possessed nothing on earth, not even a place whereon to rest His head.

Our nature loves comfort, seeks pleasures, entertainments, amusements; whereas the life of Jesus was full of privation, hardship, labor, pain, and suffering. It was an uninterrupted “Way of the Cross,” a continued martyrdom, a perpetual penance.

Our nature prizes honor and a good name, strives after authority and high places, desires to see itself in power, loves display, titles, influence, command. The life of Jesus, on the contrary, was simple, His deportment unpretending. He avoided honors. He permitted calumnies, invectives, persecution. He stood as a criminal before the courts of justice; and, after the most cruel treatment, He died in the bitterest pain upon the cross amid the triumph of His enemies.

Mary’s maternal heart suffered inexpressibly during the injuries to which her Divine Son subjected Himself; but with all that she would not have had it otherwise. She knew and she constantly kept before her eyes that such was precisely the will of God, that it was in accordance with His eternal decrees for the human race, and most necessary for the atonement of sin and the salvation of souls.

It's a long climb back up

In the same way, Christian mother, should you be disposed. A life of mortification of the natural inclinations is just as necessary for your child as for yourself. With original sin is engendered in nature inordinate concupiscence which excites to evil: the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life. By the waters of Baptism, original sin is effaced; but the threefold concupiscence, although weakened, still remains. Your child possesses sufficient grace and it will receive still more, in order victoriously to resist it; but it will have to struggle, and only by an uninterrupted succession of conflicts will it be able to hold its ground. You should stand by it, guarding, animating, and supporting it. You should steel your heart, and firmly oppose all the emotions, desires, and wishes that arise from the dark depths of its sinful nature. How will you be able to do this if you are not yourself a true follower of Jesus Christ, if you are not, as was the holy Mother of God, filled with the spirit of sacrifice and the love of the cross?

Mankind ever was and is still divided into two kingdoms, each opposed to the other, each warring against the other. In the one reigns the spirit of Jesus Christ, the spirit of self-denial and penance. Hearts are lovingly turned toward the Divine Savior. They wish on earth nothing different from Him, they allow themselves to be ruled by His grace, and they go willingly along the route pointed out to them by his providence. Baptism admits to citizenship in this kingdom, in which the fundamental laws are faith, hope and charity. They are, also, the conditions of remaining in it. Let but only love be extinct, and the bond of union with Jesus Christ is broken; union of heart is dissolved, and the way into the opposite kingdom, into the enemies’ camp, is entered upon.

The majority of mankind belongs to this Kingdom of Antichrist. They are all those that have in heart separated from Jesus Christ, have disbelieved His word, have not heard His Church, and have abandoned themselves to evil concupiscences. They are called in Holy Scripture, “The children of this world,” because loving earthly pleasures, they have renounced those of heaven. According to the same sacred authority, their leader is the devil, who incites them to the gratification of their lower appetites, and by this halter leads them along a broad road and through a wide gate to eternal perdition.

Two of the high school girls before Christmas

Between these two kingdoms, Christian Mother, your child is placed. Love and the graces it has received lead it to Jesus Christ and His Church; evil concupiscence, on the contrary, inclines it tot the world and the devil. It needs constant watchfulness on the part of the mother, even from its earliest years, to prevent the influence of such power over the soul of the child. If she fully performs her duty, them will her child, on coming to the use of reason, be prepared and ready for the combat against the snares of concupiscence and the allurements of the world. And if the mother continues to teach and to guide it, it may happen that her child, neither in its earliest childhood, nor as a youth or maiden, a man or woman of mature age, will ever seriously turn away from the love of Jesus Christ. At the hour of death, it will resign to the earth a sinless body, and to heaven a spotless soul in all the splendor of Baptismal innocence. Happy such a mother! She will with great confidence stand before the Judge to receive the magnificent reward prepared for those that have not only loved Him to the end, but that have inspired others with the same love and have confirmed them in it.

But what of a child whose mother neglects it and through gross indifference permits evil passions to grow in its soul?-There begins for such a little one with the dawn of reason, a life of sin; and it is not long before it falls mortally. Then are baptismal grace and baptismal innocence forever lost; penance is now the only way left by which it can be rescued. If, under the influence of strong passions, of great worldliness, this way of penance is rejected or adopted without a determined resolution to combat temptation,–then, alas, the child will be lost! O what a severe account will the mother have to render at the judgment seat of God when He shall demand of her the soul of her child! Where is that soul which He loved so unspeakably, which He entrusted to her in its holiness and innocence, and which she should have restored to Him in that same holiness and innocence!

To be continued . . .

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The Christian Training of Children – Early Cares

Sister Maria Philomena, M.I.C.M. — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:51:25 +0000

Table of contents for Mother Love

[Editor's note: This little gem was recently "discovered" on our bookshelves. The Sisters are giving it to the school mothers one chapter at a time at our monthly Mothers' Teas. We hope that you will enjoy it, too.]

Little Book of Instructions for Christian Mothers
(from Mother Love – A Manual for Christian Mothers – by Rev. Pius Franciscus, O.M.Cap., 1926)

On the Christian Training of Children

Chapter I. – Early Cares.

As soon as the Christian Mother becomes aware that a new being has been engendered in her womb through the power of God, she should immediately offer it up to God, and again and again commend it to His fatherly care and protection in aspirations and words which her own mother-heart suggests. During the months of its development she must carefully avoid unwholesome food, undue exertion, and still more all passionate outbursts of impatience and anger, of grief and worry, of excessive sorrow and care. She must, moreover, refrain from vain and proud thoughts as well as from inclinations and emotions not in keeping with perfect purity. On the other hand, she should constantly strive to remain calm and unruffled in all adverse circumstances, foster a devout and contented disposition, pray earnestly, and receive the Holy Sacraments frequently and worthily; briefly, she should seek to be as she expects her child to be some day. All her troubles and pains and suffers she should offer to God as so many means to draw down upon herself and her child heaven’s choicest blessings and graces, and she should gratefully acknowledge God’s goodness not only in joyous events but also in unpleasant and disagreeable affairs.

After the child’s birth she should look upon it as a gift of God and as His image, created for His greater honor and glory. She should consider herself as God’s agent to whom the child has been entrusted and, therefore, she should love it, watch over it, provide for it and protect it. All this should be done in a systematic manner and under the guidance of the moral teachings of Holy Church as well as the approved methods of pious and prominent educators.

The newborn child has at best a frail physical constitution and, if it were not tenderly cared for, it would soon become a victim of death. But its spiritual condition is even more delicate. In consequence of the original sin in which it was born, it is a child of wrath, and if it should die in that state, it would be forever deprived of the vision of God and of the incomprehensible happiness and bliss connected therewith. Surely, no truly Christian mother would endanger the eternal happiness of her child by letting it remain in this state of original sin even one day longer than is absolutely necessary.

A New Child of God

The first duty, then, of a Christian Mother is to provide for the baptism of her child within one week or, at least, within two weeks after its birth. The baptism must take place in the church of the parish in which the parents live, or in which the child is born. A godfather and a godmother should be provided according to the instructions of the Church. The godparents should be well instructed in the rudiments of the Faith and also true to its practices, because before God and the Church, they take upon themselves, together with the parents, and second only to these, the responsibility for the Christian education of the child.

The choice of a name for the child is most dear to the mother’s heart. It may be her own or that of the father, of one of the sponsors, or of any other, provided that it be the name of a saint whose life-story she knows, to whom she has a great devotion, and from whom she expects for the little newcomer every loving and powerful protection. She may look forward eagerly to the time when she will relate to her child the beautiful incidents in the life of its patron or patroness, and when she will tell of the love and care with which its powerful patron watches over all its footsteps. Even now ardent ejaculations arise from the mother’s heart-ejaculations which, later one, will form in the consecrated heart of the child and on its innocent lips those devout aspirations that will pierce the clouds.

At the time of its birth of immediately thereafter the life of the child may be in danger. If such be the case, the mother should at once insist on the private baptism of the child. The minister of the private baptism may be the attending doctor or mid-wife or a relative or one of the attendants; but if none of these would know how to administer private baptism; either the father or the mother should administer the sacrament. The proper manner is the following:–The one who baptizes should take ordinary water, pour it on the head of the child, and, while pouring it, should speak the words: “I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” If the child should recover, it should be taken to church as soon as advisable, to have the ceremonies of solemn baptism supplied. The priest, who performs the ceremony, should be informed of the previous private Baptism and also of the manner in which it was administered.

When the child has received holy Baptism, the first and most necessary thing has been accomplished; namely, the greatest evil that had befallen it has been removed, original sin had been removed, original sin had been washed away, and the wrath of Almighty God has been averted from another of Adam’s posterity. The young soul now shines with a luster and beauty that make it more like an angel than a mortal. He may now raise his eyes to Jesus Christ and call him his Friend, his Brother, and his Spouse. With Jesus’ lips and Jesus’ Heart and Jesus’ confidence, he may now call the Eternal Father his own dear Father and himself His beloved child. He is now all this in perfect truth. Is there a dignity on earth to be compared with this? If emperors and kings had jurisdiction over the whole world, but were not in the state of grace, their honor, majesty, and glory would be far beneath, indeed, would be nothing in comparison with the dignity of this little child of God.

If the child, having received valid Baptism, dies before reaching the age of reason, before being capable of actual sin,–it goes straight to heaven, there to praise God among the choirs of blessed spirits. The happiness secured to it for all eternity, no human tongue can express. The delights that earth can offer, the joys of the earthly paradise, all are nothing compared with the felicity prepared by God for His chosen ones in heaven. The difference between the former and the latter is far wider, far greater than that existing between a drop of water and the vast ocean, a ray of sunshine and the sun itself.

Whether the child be living or dead, the Christian mother does not neglect, on making her first visit to Church, to beg the priest to church her [i.e. give her the blessing after childbirth, called "the churching of women"]. In either case she owes God thanks for protection and deliverance from greater danger; and she cannot offer thanksgiving more pleasing to God than that which the priest utters over he in the name of the Church. If the child is living, there rests upon her the responsibility of providing for its temporal and eternal welfare; and for this the blessing of the Church is indispensable. Her first outing should be to the Church. The priest receives her at the entrance and sprinkles her with holy water as a sign of grace that the Church invokes upon her, and to strengthen her also to receive more efficacious blessings. She is afterward presented with a lighted taper as a sign of the good example which a Christian and a Catholic, and still more a Christian mother, should give her child and her whole family. The priest’s stole is then laid on her hand, and she is led to the altar; because the treasures of salvation, which the Church holds for her and her child, are to be dispensed to her by the hand and the power of the priest. Having reached the altar, the priest offers prayers and thanksgivings for her and her child, and ends with reiterated prayers, blessings and sprinkling with holy water. Christian mother, esteem not as unimportant this touching ceremony instituted by the Church for you alone, and which every priest will, at your request, consider it his duty to perform. Much is contained in it, as well for you as for the child.

To be continued . . .

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