BEGINNING AT HOME


THE CHALLENGE OF CHRISTIAN PARENTHOOD



by MARY PERKINS


Discussion Topics by Emerson and Arleen Hynes

Artist Virginia Broderick

"Beginning at Home" is one item in the "Popular Liturgical Library," a 
series of publications on the sacraments, sacramentals, holy Mass, 
liturgical year, Divine Office, family life, etc. The Liturgical Press, 
St. John's Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota.

Nihil obstat: William G. Heidt, O.S.B., S.T.D., Censor deputatus. 
Imprimi potest: + Baldwin Dworschak, O.S.B., Abbot, St. John's Abbey. 
Imprimatur: + Peter W. Bartholome, D.D., Bishop of St. Cloud. February 
22, 1955.


Copyright 1955 by The Order of St. Benedict, Inc., Collegeville, 
Minnesota.



DEDICATED TO THE HOLY FAMILY--JOSEPH, MARY, JESUS--IN WHOSE HOME THE 
DIVINE IDEAL OF FAMILY LIFE FOUND PERFECT FULFILLMENT.



CONTENTS

1.     The Christian Pattern

2.     Our Neighbors

3.     "...You Did It Unto Me"

4.     Things

5.     Places

6.     Work

7.     Training for Life's Work and Play

8.     Vocations

9.     Redeeming the Time

10.    Sex Education

11.    Attaining Our Ideals


Study questions and discussion topics follow each chapter.



1. THE CHRISTIAN PATTERN

Along what lines should we try to educate our children? How much of 
modern civilization should we try to bring them up to accept, how much 
to reject, how much to reform? How best can we train them for whatever 
God may want them to do for Him in the unknown world of the future?

Before one is actually immersed in the task of parenthood, the answers 
to such questions seem fairly simple. "Bring up children along 
traditional Christian lines...." "Train them in Christian 
principles..." But when one is faced with the innumerable decisions of 
daily family life, it does not seem so easy always to determine the 
"traditional Christian lines" of child training, or to see what 
"Christian principles" could or should be applied in actual practice.

How much, for example, should you let small boys follow the current 
local fashions in clothes? in toy pistols? in candy and gum? If you let 
them be as much like "everybody" as your means permit, short of 
anything obviously sinful or leading to sin, will you be giving the 
children the best preparation for not being like "everybody" in things 
that would be sinful? What is the line and where should you draw it?

In other times, society as a whole guided parents in such "drawing of 
lines" and it also backed up their authority with its own. There was an 
accepted way of going about the business of living, there were customs 
and conventions, there was a definite social pattern which was at least 
remotely Christian. Parents could usually count on the help of the 
community in which they lived in giving their children some Christian 
standards of individual and social behavior.

But today there are few "communities," in the old sense of the word. 
There are no true social patterns, there are few customs and 
conventions that will help us in the art of Christian living. We must 
try to communicate to our children the Christian way of looking at 
life, the Christian way of dealing with life.

And we must do so while we are living in the midst of a society not 
exactly opposed to our "point of view" (as an agnostic would call it), 
but so confused in its own outlook that it confuses us, making it very 
difficult for us to hold our own point of view clearly or to act in 
accordance with it consistently. We have to incarnate a Christian way 
of living in our homes in the midst of a society neither Christian nor 
truly pagan but secular, that is, disconnected from the influence of 
God or of "the gods," so far as that is possible.

The Christian culture which we parents must fashion in our homes day by 
day, then, needs to be at once strong and supple, definite and 
adaptable. For it must train our children to live as Christians both at 
home and outside the home, both now and in their future lives.

But how can we best go about such a task? If we tackle it like a 
picture puzzle, taking pieces of advice even from the most 
authoritative sources and trying to fit them together, we may find only 
a puzzle as a result. Unless we ourselves have some blueprint, some 
master-plan by which to judge whether to adopt Father A's scheme of 
family prayer, or Sister B's, whether to follow Psychologist X or the 
equally eminent and Catholic Psychiatrist Y in his ideas on child 
discipline, we shall let ourselves in for much bewilderment and little 
Christian peace.

But we do not have to look far to find such a master-plan. We have it 
right before our eyes in God's own plan for bringing up all His 
children "in Christ." As we all know, God's method of education is 
sacramental; He uses visible and tangible things to bring us to the 
knowledge and love of the invisible; He teaches us how to use our human 
powers of body and soul, how to use the visible creatures of His 
universe in His worship and in His service.

He Himself is the great "Sacrament," the visible image of the invisible 
God, who has made Himself our way and our truth and our life. It is by 
living a visible human life, by doing a man's work, by suffering and 
dying as men suffer and die, that He wrought the work of our 
redemption. And it is in a visible Church, His Body, that He prolongs 
and fulfills His work through the centuries.

In the life of the Church, Christ teaches us Divine truth through human 
teachers, by means of human words, in images and stories taken from the 
visible world and from ordinary human experience. He pours out on us 
His own life and powers by means of the sacraments and sacramentals, 
conforming the force and pattern of our lives to His.

These, again, are administered to us by other human beings; their grace 
reaches us under sacramental signs of visible things and audible, 
comprehensible words. And we are taught to respond to Him by prayer of 
our human voices and imaginations and minds and wills to take our part 
in His work, by loving and serving Him with our human energy and skill 
as He dwells in our visible fellow human beings. And, finally, summing 
up our whole lives and the purpose of our lives, we take our part in 
the visible sacramental sacrifice of the Mass.

God's master-plan, then, is to be found in the work of Christ our Lord 
Himself, God and Man, His work of redeeming mankind. And our education 
of our children should surely proceed along these same lines if it is 
to be truly Christian education. We should make it as far as lies in 
our power a sacramental education, following and fitting into God's own 
plan.

We should try to teach the children the invisible truths of the faith 
by means of the visible things around us, by means of the visible 
actions of daily life; we should try to give them the habit of seeing 
all created things as, in some way or other, signs of the power and 
wisdom and love of God. We should try to train the children to make the 
thoughts and words and actions of daily life true signs of their love 
of God, able to be offered with our Lord's sacrifice in the Mass.

Such a plan of education may seem very obvious and trite until we begin 
to think out some of its possible implications. For example: as things 
are, most of us think we have done everything possible to sanctify our 
family meals by the three-times-a-day effort to say grace. But suppose 
that we began to follow out the sacramental implications of our family 
meals...

In the holy Eucharist, Christ's own body and blood, His life and His 
grace, our gift of ourselves together in Him to God, and God's gift of 
Himself to us, are all made present under the signs of bread and wine, 
human food and drink. And, as modern scholars tell us, the basic design 
of the Mass is that of a Jewish family meal. Our family meals, then, 
are meant to teach us and our children about the banquet of the holy 
Eucharist. Our food and family meals are meant to be the humble human 
reflections of the sacred meal of the holy Eucharist, which itself is a 
reflection of the eternal feast of heaven.

In the light of these facts, imagine a meal which the father earned by 
a piece of "sharp business" in which he did somebody out of the price 
of a day's food; a meal consisting of food which the mother obtained by 
pushing in ahead of ten other people for a bargain at the supermarket; 
which she prepared in a temper and shoved onto an untidy and not-too--
clean table; food which looked like something else and contained 
virtually no real nourishment; a meal to which the children come 
completely unwashed, knocking each other over in their hurry; a meal 
eaten in uncharitable silence, or to the accompaniment of mother's 
complaints about the neighbors.

Such a meal obviously bears no relation at all to the Table of God. It 
is not a sign capable of teaching the children anything about God's 
banquet. It will certainly give them no notion at all of why heaven 
should be compared to a feast. Such a meal is a completely secular 
activity, un-Christian, hardly even human.

But think of the possibilities inherent in our family lives if both the 
bread-winner and the bread-maker were trying to make each meal and 
everything connected with it more and more fit to be a humble human 
sign and reflection of the banquet of the holy Eucharist. The cooking 
and preparation of meals, the day-by-day, year-by-year, often seemingly 
hopeless task of training the children to cleanliness and decent table 
manners would take on real purpose and point, and so would the even 
more long-drawn-out and difficult job of training them to happy and 
interesting and charitable table conversation.

Let us suppose, for instance, that the price of the meal is earned by 
the father's running a small hardware store as a real neighborhood 
service, making available to his neighbors at just prices the things 
they need for daily living; or, for that matter, by any other honest 
job that in some way honestly " contributes to human welfare. Suppose 
that the mother bought the materials for the meal from a neighborhood 
grocery and vegetable store, the owner of which was also trying, 
according to his lights, to serve his neighborhood rather than make a 
fortune.

Suppose, further, that the mother, letting the children help her as 
much as their age and ability allowed, did her best, with whatever real 
food the family could afford, to prepare a meal that would both nourish 
her family and please them. Suppose that she served it carefully and 
lovingly; that the children acted, not like little angels, but like 
little Christians-in-the-making, with standards of hand-washing, 
orderly eating and Christian behavior that they did not always live up 
to, but were at least aware of.

Suppose, too, that an attempt was made really to pray grace before and 
after the meal; that the conversation at the meal was taken part in by 
everyone, according to his age, that the children were learning to 
attend to each other's mental and spiritual needs for interest, love 
and attention, and to each other's physical needs for salt or butter. 
Such a meal would be a truly Christian family meal, a real sign in its 
own order, of the Eucharistic banquet.

No matter if such an occasion were to look and sound much like any 
other family meal where small children are present--a more or less 
messy affair, with the children occasionally spilling things, using 
their fingers instead of their forks, interrupting the parents' 
conversation in spite of rebuke, and the parents occasionally becoming 
short-tempered in the effort to eat and educate at the same time.

None of this would affect the main point, that the parents are trying 
as best they can, in the light of the sacramental significance of the 
holy Eucharist, to align everything concerned with their daily bread 
toward the requirements of full and fruitful participation in that 
banquet which is the sign and pledge of the everlasting wedding-feast 
of heaven. (In any case, God Himself has made the material signs of 
heavenly realities necessarily crude and, in a sense, unworthy of those 
realities, so that we would take them as signs and signs only and not 
as the realities themselves. St. Thomas points out that Holy Scripture 
uses crude rather than 'noble' things as the basis for its figures and 
metaphors for this same reason. We parents, then, have no need to be 
ashamed of the crudity of our living picture-language, our daily family 
life in all its messiness, awkwardness, seeming confusion and lack of 
perfection. For if we are trying to order all its elements in the light 
of what marriage signifies--the union of Christ and the Church, and 
toward our all achieving that union through our daily family lives--
then, surely, we have the 'one thing necessary.')

Trying, then, to think and act along such "sacramental" lines should 
begin to give us some real standard by which to judge the food we buy 
(and some real reason to make it worth the trouble of growing it 
ourselves when possible); by which to decide how and where to buy it; 
by which to see how best we can spend our time and energy in preparing 
it...and so on.


Now suppose that many families were to try to act in such a way. What 
vast areas of human life would, slowly, begin to be restored in Christ! 
And our children, trained in such sacramental thinking, would grow up, 
with God's help, to be far ahead of their parents in thus seeing and 
judging our whole commercial system, our whole way of life, in the 
light of Christ and in knowing how best to go about acting in and for 
that light in the foggy world of today.1

And here, surely, is the proper task of the Christian laity--to 
sacramentalize daily human living and all the materials and actions and 
occupations bound up with it. Priests "mediate" between us and God; 
they bring us the grace of Christ In the sacraments, the sacramentals, 
by their prayer, and they offer us to God with Christ in the Mass. And 
we, the "laos," the people of God, are, analogously, to "mediate" 
between the mystical Body of Christ and the un-Christened world of men 
and things. We are to help to bring not only our own children, but also 
our non-Catholic neighbors to Baptism, to Christ.

We are to build the houses that the priest will bless, and live in them 
in the power of that blessing. We are to take days and weeks and years 
and re-order them to that pattern of holy human living that the liturgy 
of the Church lays out. We are to work in all the rightfully human 
occupations of modern living and re-order them and all the material 
things they involve, to the life and service of Christ's members, and 
so to the glory of God. And thus we shall be doing our own part in 
re-establishing all things in Christ, in extending that consecration of 
the world which our Lord inaugurated by His coming.

It is not easy, of course, to see how many of the fields of modern 
human life can best be sacramentalized--how some of them can be 
sacramentalized at all. But it is not so hard to see how home life can 
be made more Christian and more "Christening," for here we are dealing 
with the comparatively simple fundamental facts of human life: eating, 
sleeping, dressing, housework, play.

If we parents begin here, as well as we can, with the light and grace 
of Christ, we shall see more clearly as we go along what can be done in 
our immediate neighborhoods. We shall see how best to unite our own 
brains and influence in Catholic family action of one sort or another. 
We shall begin to see how to extend the influence of Christ into 
streets and stores, farms and factories.

If we train our children to sacramental thinking, in sacramental 
living, we shall, certainly, be educating them along truly traditional 
Christian lines. Moreover, children so educated should be able to see, 
far more clearly than we do now, how modern life can and may be made 
holy, re-oriented to Christ. So we shall be training them both for 
their next ride in a street-car, and for their future work for Christ. 
And so we shall be giving ourselves, here and now, the plan, the norm, 
we need for judging the applicability of good specialist advice to our 
particular needs, and for making the innumerable small decisions of 
daily family life.

Let us, then, take some of the elements of daily life that have been 
made to seem most secular by the spirit of our times, and consider how 
we can best go about the work of restoring them in Christ, of 
integrating them into a truly Christian home life, and a truly 
Christian home education.

First of all, human beings. These have been thought about and written 
about and discussed from so many un-religious angles that we need, 
perhaps, to begin by re-thinking out the implications of the fact that 
our children and ourselves and all our fellow human beings are 
primarily children of God, redeemed by Christ, made to share in His 
work on earth and in His glory forever in heaven.

Next, things and places. We need to think out once more and explicitly 
what is the truly Christian attitude towards these.

That work also has been divorced from any connection with God's plans 
or providence is all too obvious as soon as we think of the ways in 
which the majority of modern men spend the greater part of their 
working lives. And from the general consent of Christians to this state 
of affairs comes the un-Christian idea that only the special chosen few 
who are priests and religious 'have a vocation'--the rest of God's 
people just 'have jobs.'

These elements of our ordinary lives, then, we will consider in the 
chapters of this book, not because they include every phase of life, or 
because considering them goes to make up a complete program of 
education, but because they are the elements which seem to need 
explicit re-integration into the whole plan of Christian life and into 
the full joy of Christian living, if we are to begin in our homes to 
restore all things in Christ.


DISCUSSION TOPICS

1. What can be done to awaken children to the spiritual significance of 
food and of meals? What methods can be recommended for getting children 
to come to meals on time and to be orderly during meals?


2. How often should religious topics be introduced during family meal 
conversation? Who should lead the prayers before and after meals?


3. Discuss the meaning of the phrase, "sacramentalizing daily human 
living." To what extent do we succeed in achieving this ideal in our 
own American community, and in what ways do we fail?


4. Is it possible to sacramentalize one's individual family life with-
out first changing the general environment in which the family lives?


5. Does the approach of the author seem too idealistic to be practical 
in our busy modern world? How does one determine what is "practical"?


STUDY QUESTIONS

1. Why is it more difficult today than it was fifty years ago for 
parents to follow a "Christian pattern" in rearing children?


2. What is the meaning of the statement that "God's method of education 
is sacramental"?


3. What is the difference in the part played by the mother, by the 
father and by the children in preparing a truly Christian meal?


4. What are some of the differences between a monastic family meal and 
a Christian family meal?


5. What is the function of the laity in a secular world?



2. OUR NEIGHBORS

We believe, of course, that every human being is, in one way or 
another, a sign of God his Creator and Sanctifier and of Christ his 
Redeemer. We ourselves, incorporated into Christ by Baptism, are meant 
in God's plan to become more and more Christ-ened all our lives long, 
increasingly perfect undimmed signs of Christ, through whom He can love 
and serve His Father and His brethren. And He has so identified Himself 
with the human race that we can recognize and serve Him in every person 
we meet, baptized or not, sinners or saints.

Every human being is made by God, called to share God's life in Christ, 
and, therefore, actually or potentially a child of God, a brother, 
co-worker and co-heir with Christ, a temple and instrument of the Holy 
Spirit. We are, in fact, to be judged as fit for heaven or not, on the 
basis of whether we have treated other people as signs of Christ Our 
Lord: "Come, blessed of My Father--when I was hungry, you fed Me..."

There is no need to go into details as to how this sacramentality, this 
sacredness of each human being, should affect our own actions, and our 
family life in general. We are all accustomed to try to act in the 
light of these truths. But we must now consider some of their 
implications in education.

On the side of self-development, each child is meant to become another 
Christ in his own individual way. Surely, then, all the long process of 
caring for his needs, physical, mental and spiritual, and of training 
him to take over his own care and development, can and should be 
ordered to this high purpose. And surely, also, the truths that God has 
told us about human nature will afford us a guide as to how to order 
all our training to this purpose of forming 'other Christs.'

The children, as they are given to us, are, first of all, signs of God 
their Creator; they are God's creatures, made to His image and 
likeness. Their bodies and souls and all their powers are then 
fundamentally good, planned by God to be used for good. Consequently, 
as the children become aware of their own bodies and of their physical 
prowess and powers, we can teach them to reverence and admire God's 
workmanship, and to want to cooperate with God's purposes.

When the children want to know, for instance, what happens to the food 
they eat, we can tell them the basic scientific facts in simple 
language, and lead them to praise the Maker of these marvels. We can 
also lead them to see the reasons for eating proper food, for taking 
reasonable care of their health so as to cooperate with His plans.

Such a habit of mind fostered all during childhood should likewise 
prepare the children for a real appreciation of our remaking in Christ. 
These bodies, so wonderfully made to begin with, have been re-made by 
Baptism, Confirmation, the reception of the holy Eucharist, to be 
Christ's own members, the temples and instruments of the Holy Spirit. 
And if we should use them and develop them properly because they were 
made by God, how much more since He has given them this added wonder 
and sacredness.

In the same way, as the children come to be aware of their own 
emotions, and of their own spiritual powers, we can teach them what God 
actually intended these powers for--that Tommy's explosiveness, for 
instance, was given him by God to be harnessed as a driving force to 
help him overcome obstacles in doing God's Will. He has to learn to 
control this power with God's help, but in itself it is as good and 
necessary as is the explosive power of gasoline in making a motor run. 
And, along the same lines, we can show the children gradually what the 
graces of the sacraments do, and will do to bring all their powers to 
perfection.

But our children are, as is only too evident, fallen children of Adam, 
even as we are. (If anyone of us did not believe in original sin, 
surely the experience of being a parent would soon convince him of its 
truth, so evident are its effects not only on the children but on 
ourselves!) Even when God's life has been given us in Baptism, even 
with the grace of the sacraments, we all still have weak wills, tending 
to sin, uncertain minds, tending to error, emotions tending to run away 
with us rather than work for us.

But our incorporation into Christ by Baptism means that we can share in 
His victory over sin, sinfulness, and the devil who would lead us into 
sin. By the grace of His Passion and Cross, even our weakness and our 
tendency to sin can work for our good and His glory. We can be brought 
in His strength to the glory of His Resurrection.

As the children, then, become aware of their own weaknesses, of their 
own tendencies to sin and sinfulness; as they begin to realize how much 
easier it is to do the wrong thing, or the less good thing than the 
right one, we can try to show them that all this is no cause for 
surprise or undue alarm or worry. Every human being has these 
tendencies because of Adam's sin; they can somehow, in God's love, 
finally work for our greater happiness; our job is to try to accept the 
hazards of our special weaknesses patiently, to ask God's help in 
overcoming them; to realize that overcoming them perfectly a long, long 
job, but that God has promised the victory if we hope in Him and keep 
on trying.

But any parent who tries to teach the children self-control and 
self-discipline and to deal with their faults along these lines, soon 
discovers that it involves a great deal of discipline for him (or her) 
also. We find that we have to discard those handy parental weapons of 
"How could you...!", "To think that a child of mine...!", "Well, I am 
surprised!" Why in the world should we, fallen children of Adam 
ourselves with all our own so evident failings, have any right to be so 
surprised that our children take after us also in having faults? Yet it 
is a rare parent who has never said something similar!

And we have to discard also those other easy lines of attack, "Where is 
your self-respect...?", "What will people think?--", and try to work 
instead along the lines of respect for God's making and re-making, 
recourse to God's help and His love, the desire to carry out His plans 
and do His work.

Again, the effort to direct all our teaching and training of the 
children along these lines soon shows us the reasons for positive 
discipline and training. We see that we not only have to try to keep 
our tempers with the children--which is hard enough, God knows!--but 
that, on the other hand, we have no right simply to make ourselves the 
servants of their impulses and whims.

We see that we need to learn to serve Christ in each child, not by 
giving in to him in his various phases of growing up, but by helping 
him to develop the raw material of his nature into the image of Christ 
that God intends him to become. We have to make ourselves the 
intelligent servant of his true needs as a Christian-in-the-making, and 
this includes the need for discipline and necessary punishment as well 
as for positive training in obedience, self-control, and self-devel-
opment.

There is, of course, no hard and fast line between the individual and 
social development of a child; for to develop oneself is to develop 
one's possibilities of serving others; to develop skills in serving 
others is to develop oneself. And, in general, it seems that most 
children find the idea of self-perfection a rather static and 
unappealing motive, whereas the idea of fitting oneself both by 
discipline and development to be someone's fellow-worker, therefore to 
help Christ to win His victory, build up His Kingdom, help other people 
come to His happiness--all this makes good sense.

It would seem better, therefore, both for supernatural and obviously 
utilitarian reasons, to consider the child's personal, individual 
development as only one aspect of the whole process of his growth as an 
interdependent member of the mystical Body of Christ.

But with regard to what is usually called "social adjustment" as such, 
we can begin, as soon as a child is becoming aware of other people as 
people, to show him that they are sacred because they are God's, and 
related to himself in that sacredness because he is God's also.

A small child is aware of himself as a maker--of block houses, mud 
pies, sand castles, peggy-toy guns, etc.--before he is explicitly aware 
of himself as a child in relation to his parents, and long before he is 
explicitly aware of himself as a person.

He can be taught very early, then, to realize that people are things 
that God made with special love and care for very special reasons, 
things that He wants us to learn to treat properly and to use as He 
meant them to be used. "God gave Johnny a dark skin and you a lighter 
one.... Wasn't He clever to think up such a lot of different ways of 
making people!" "You know you didn't like it when Tommy knocked down 
the house you built; well, God doesn't like it when you knock Tommy 
down, because He made Tommy...."

Soon the children can also begin to realize and act upon the 
implications of the fact that people are not only things that God 
specially made, but also His children that He specially loves. They can 
learn that all children are brothers and sisters of God's Son who 
became a human child like themselves. They can learn that some of us 
already have the great privilege of belonging to His special family, 
the Church. "Bobby is so nice because God made him that way.... You 
look a little like Daddy, don't you? Well, all God's children look 
something like Him, and that's one reason why we love them." "You 
wouldn't let anybody hit little sister while you were around. Well, we 
all ought to feel the same way about everybody in the world, because 
God has made them all our Lord's brothers and sisters and ours too."

As the children begin to be aware of other people's failings and 
weaknesses and failures, we can show them here also that mistakes and 
faults and sins are nothing to be surprised at, that only God is 
perfect and always to be counted on; that people are to be loved and 
cared for and served even though they are not perfect, since God made 
them and loves them and redeemed them and wants their company in heaven 
forever.

So we should help the children as they grow up not to become 
"disillusioned" by any fact that they learn about human nature or by 
any experience that they may have of other people's weakness and 
sinfulness. We should help them to be properly on their guard against 
other people's weaknesses as well as their own, while at the same time 
hoping for the best from other people as being redeemed in Christ 
together with themselves.

In the light of the full Christian truth, we can also show the 
children, as they become increasingly aware of their own reactions to 
other people and of theirs to them, that true affection, friendship and 
love are reflections of God's own love, and that they mean wishing and 
working for the other's true good, ultimately for his Christ-likeness 
on earth and his eternal happiness in heaven. We can help them to see 
in the mystery of true human attractiveness and lovableness, a shadow 
and sign of the infinite attractiveness of God, a sign that is meant to 
lead us beyond itself to Him.

So we can help them to begin to watch their own motives in their loving 
and giving, to learn to love and give for the sake of the other person, 
and, ultimately for Christ, rather than for the sake of making 
themselves feel good or excited. We can help them to judge whether 
another person's affection is real, and therefore leading them toward 
God, or false and leading them away from Him; and so with their own 
feelings for others. And with God's help, we can give them some sort of 
real chart to guide them toward God and the Christlike service of 
others amidst all the surprise, pain, bewilderment, comfort and 
happiness involved in their future relations with other human beings.

Such a "sacramental" way of looking at our children and their 
development will, incidentally, make more endurable the inescapable 
drudgery involved in caring for small children, and even more, the 
almost sickening effort often required by the disciplining and training 
of children in the essential habits and basic skills of ordinary human 
life.

And such a "sacramental" way of looking at themselves and their 
neighbors should make it much more interesting to the children to take 
over the work of their own self-discipline, of keeping up and 
developing their own good habits, physical, mental and spiritual. Such 
things as remembering to brush one's teeth twice a day, to keep one's 
clothes reasonably clean and neat, to make oneself reasonably 
attractive, to eat real food rather than candy and ice cream, etc., can 
be shown as jobs to be done for God, part of taking proper care of His 
instrument, His temple, one's own body.

In the same way, we can show the children that learning how to choose 
their own reading or movies or television shows, to study lessons 
thoroughly, to control their daydreams, all such things, are part of 
their responsibility to God for taking proper care of the member of 
Christ, the instrument of the Holy Spirit that God wants each child to 
become. And, again, we can teach them that learning how to sweep a 
floor or read a book thoroughly, how to cook, how to drive a nail, how 
to do arithmetic, are not simply tiresome necessities, but are part of 
their present or future service of Christ in others.

This does not mean, of course, that whenever mother tells Suzie to sit 
up straight, she must always add "because God's child oughtn't to 
slouch"; or that whenever father stops Tommy from beating up his little 
brother, Tommy should be reminded that "Johnny is God's child too." 
Such a course would be likely to turn its victims away from all 
religion! But it does mean that we parents should keep before our own 
eyes the sacramental vision of what people are and are meant to become, 
that we try to act upon it ourselves, and that we communicate it in 
words to the children as their interest, curiosity or special needs 
give us the opportunity.

In other words, we should try to think and act ourselves, to teach the 
children to think and to act, in such a way that the explicit doctrinal 
teaching about what human nature is and is meant to become, as the 
children learn it in formal religious instruction, will be merely the 
formulation of truths already to some degree realized and acted upon.

None of our training, of course, can substitute for the children's own 
free wills. We cannot save them without their own consent--God Himself 
does not do that. We cannot force them to become saints, nor even 
passably good Christians. All this is, ultimately, up to God's grace 
and their own freedom; our part here is that of prayer.

But God has entrusted the children's training to us during the years of 
their growth. We cannot help training them somehow--if only in 
self-defense. Let us, then, try to train them in accordance with His 
own plan, for His own plan, not stopping at any lesser plan or purpose. 
And then surely He will supplement our feeble efforts and help our 
children to become by His grace, what He Himself wishes them to be.



STUDY QUESTIONS

1. How will we be judged by God as fit for heaven? (Read aloud the 
Gospel according to St. Matthew 25:34-46)


2. What should we teach our children as being the reason for taking 
care of our body and for being proud of the body?


3. What importance does the doctrine of original sin have for parents 
in the task of rearing children?


4. How should children be told about the rights and failings of other 
people?


5. What is the basic reason for discipline of ourselves and of our 
children?


DISCUSSION TOPICS

1. "Each child is meant to become another Christ." How can this idea 
influence an other in her daily work of feeding, clothing, and training 
her children?


2. List the principal failings common to parents in dealing with their 
children. Show how these defects could be modified by the development 
of a deeper religious understanding and motivation.

3. Discuss the typical reactions in our community toward peoples of 
different races, colors, nationalities, and religions. How can we, in 
our own particular environment, teach our children to practice 
neighborly love toward members of other groups?


4. What qualities should a "model child" have at the age of 7? at the 
age of 12? (Would he ever show anger? would he be instantly obedient in 
all things? would he consciously have a religious motivation for every 
act? how advanced would he be in awareness of social obligations?)

5. Discuss the extent that parents should regulate their children's 
recreational interests, and the means that they should use. What 
responsibility have parents for controlling the time and judging the 
quality of movies, radio and television programs, and reading 
materials? Is it sufficient merely to censure what is bad? How can 
positive Christian standards of judgment regarding recreational outlets 
be developed in children?



3. "...YOU DID IT UNTO ME"

But everyone we meet is not a sign of Christ in exactly the same way. 
How, then, can we best help our children to recognize, love, serve and, 
in turn, be served by Christ our Lord as He comes to them in special 
ways in special kinds of people?

Let us begin with those of our fellow beings who most directly and 
objectively represent Christ to us: His priests. How can we best help 
our children to recognize, reverence, love, and be ready to serve 
Christ the Priest in every priest they may meet?

To recognize Christ the Priest in every priest means to recognize the 
Mediator between God and man, who teaches God's truth to us, brings 
God's life to us, leads us to serve and love God and to be happy with 
him forever.

To reverence Christ the Priest in every priest means to honor him as 
sacred to God, set apart, consecrated and empowered for the holiest 
work in the world; to honor him for God's choice of him and for his own 
correspondence with that choice.

To love and be ready to serve Christ the Priest means to have our wills 
in tune with Christ's priestly work, eager to have our priests be truly 
priests to us. It means being ready to help them in their work in 
whatever form of parish activities or Catholic action they suggest; to 
help them for their work by supporting them, not only with money, but, 
as we find the opportunity, with all those less tangible forms of as-
sistance that all men need, however exalted their office and station--
appreciation, the affection of charity, cooperation, opportunities for 
due relaxation, and so on.

Obviously, a first necessity here is that priests be made realities in 
our children's lives. If the priest is little more than a figure up at 
a distant altar once a week, and a voice in the confessional once a 
month, the children will have little chance to build up any attitude to 
the priesthood beyond that of vague respect.

Let us, then, give the children every possible opportunity clearly to 
see and hear the priest when they attend Mass--there is usually room up 
in the front of the church when there is any room at all!--to witness 
baptisms and ask questions about what they see, to be present when the 
priest comes to our houses to visit someone who is sick, in short, to 
see their priests as they go about their highest priestly work.

Let us also give our priests every possible encouragement to come to 
our homes as priests, to bless our houses, give special blessings, to 
visit the sick, and so on, as much as the size of our parish and 
circumstances permit. And on such occasions let us try to take our 
part, and the children with us, in making the correct preparations for 
the priest's visit, and the right responses to his prayers.

Moreover, if our children are to receive from us any idea of working 
under and with their priests in helping to bring about the kingdom of 
God on earth, we shall have to take part ourselves in whatever form of 
parish activity and Catholic action our circumstances and talents are 
best suited for. Then the children will have the chance to see us 
making practical applications of the distinction between office and 
person, so necessary in all Catholic life. They will see us striving to 
exercise that humorous and humble charity which does not blind itself 
to "Father's" imperfections and foibles, realizing that we have just as 
many and more ourselves--and that Father is trying to be patient and 
charitable with us.

Finally, we could try to make it as easy as possible for priests, 
especially for our own parish priest and his assistants, to visit our 
homes, and to feel at home there. Every Catholic family should surely 
pray for the grace of having real friends in the ranks of Christ's 
priests. There is no simpler, or surer (or more enjoyable) way to give 
our children the opportunity to know and love and serve Christ in his 
priests than actually to have priests as honored, loved, and familiar 
guests in our homes--guests with whom we do not "stand on ceremony," 
but whom we do treat with the respect due their priesthood; guests in 
whom we can most obviously care for Christ Himself; guests who will 
argue with the parents and play with the children, but to whom we all 
kneel for Christ's blessing at the end of every visit.

If every Catholic home were to do all that it could along such lines as 
these to make and strengthen the bonds of common interest in God's 
work, of unselfish helpfulness, of real charity between people and 
priests how far-reaching would be the effects on the future generation 
in vocations to the priesthood, in fruitfulness of the Church's work, 
in the vitality of the Church's life!

Many of the same general means, obviously, are also to be used in 
helping our children to come to honor and to be ready to serve Christ 
in His religious, to bring them to recognize religious as men and women 
especially dear to Him, who have undertaken at His call to live 
explicitly, full-time, and by set rules of life, in that bridal 
relationship of love and total dedication to God which the rest of us 
must work towards by far less direct methods.

By personal acquaintance and friendship, common work and interests with 
religious; by reading, by correspondence, by contributions, however 
small, to the Propagation of the Faith and to contemplative Orders, and 
so on, we can try to make the manifold forms of religious life a 
reality to our children. We can help them to grow in gratitude to all 
religious and in appreciation of the special part religious take in 
carrying on the great work of Christ.


In this age of widespread vague knowledge about "depth psychology," 
many of us parents are continually harassed by fears of what we are 
doing to our children's present and future psychic set-up, by fears of 
what our children are going to think about us in future years. Whatever 
measure of truth there may be in the various theories of psychology 
current today it is all too obvious that our children do obtain from 
our behavior to each other and to them, the material for their primary 
ideas of, and attitudes toward, authority, parenthood, marriage, 
fatherly love, motherly love, and married love. And we also realize, 
all too clearly, that, in spite of our efforts, our own conduct is not 
a perfect model of fatherhood, motherhood, or marriage.

We do, certainly, believe on faith that God will give us, if we pray 
and work, the graces necessary to bring up our children. But is there 
anything that God means us to do besides praying that He will somehow 
bring our children out all right in spite of the psychic dangers 
seemingly inherent in family life and childhood among fallen mankind?

Here again the Christian and sacramental pattern is the answer to this 
most modern need. We parents are, it is true, imperfect as images to 
our children of God's perfect love, perfect parenthood, perfect 
authority and care; but we are His images nonetheless, by virtue of our 
office as Catholic parents. We can, then, in accordance with our 
children's needs and development lead them to an appreciation of both 
the positive and negative implications of this fact.

Our love and care are only sketchy pictures of God's love and care. 
Whatever is good and real and right in them comes from God. As parents, 
we are instruments of God's love, of His care and His will for the 
children while they are young, and as such we are meant to have their 
respect and obedience, as well as their love.

But our imperfections and limitations show that we are not God; that we 
are not meant to be and do not expect to be the most ultimate term of 
our children's interest, or respect, or filial love. These should go, 
and the sooner the better, through us and around us and beyond us to 
God Himself.

"God loves you even more than Father and Mother do. He had to give you 
both a Father and a Mother to show you something of how much He loves 
you, and He gave you our Lady too, His own Son's Mother, to be your 
Mother in heaven..." "He gave Father and Mother the job of taking care 
of you and bringing you up as He wants, so that you can do great things 
for Him when you grow up, and be happy with Him forever. That's why we 
have to tell you not to do things that we know would be bad for you, 
and to do things we know are good for you, till you are old enough to 
know what God wants yourself...." "God wants you to obey us now as 
practice for obeying Him directly when you grow up, just as our Lord 
obeyed our Lady and St. Joseph when He was a boy on earth...."

And also, when it is clear to the children as well as to us that we 
have made a mistake or been unjust or lost our tempers, let us use such 
occasions too, as impersonally as possible, to help to establish our 
children in the right relationship to God's perfect Fatherhood:

"Yes, Mother was wrong. Isn't it wonderful that God can never make any 
mistakes, and that He loves you and is taking care of you all the time, 
whatever happens, and however wrong things seem to be...." "Yes, I lost 
my temper and I shouldn't have. Daddy and Mother have to try to be 
good, just as you do. But God never loses His temper, however bad we 
have been, and as soon as we are sorry He gives us another chance. 
Let's both tell Him we are sorry and ask Him to help us try again...." 
"Yes, Mother just didn't understand. Isn't it a good thing that God is 
never too busy to listen and always understands, and our Lady does too 
and can help you much more than Mother could...."

By thus using the occasions of daily living to point the children's 
attention and affection through us to God, we shall be doing a great 
deal to avoid any evil and unbalancing consequences of our own 
imperfection as parents and of the children's imperfections as growing 
human beings. Such a sacramental attitude toward our own parenthood 
should also help us, with God's grace, to avoid both the danger of 
over-possessiveness and that of neglect.

It should also help the children to avoid the emotional repressions and 
complications that arise with trying to think that their parents are 
perfect when obviously they are not. And, such an attitude should also, 
with God's help, lay the human foundations for that trustful, truly 
childlike attitude to God which is the essence of spiritual maturity, 
that attitude which is so much easier to maintain and develop from 
childhood on, than to establish for the first time in later life.

In the same "sacramental" way, as our children come to adolescence and 
to a growing realization of the implications of human love, we can use 
even the imperfections of our own example to show the children what 
marriage is and should be. We can help our children to realize that the 
ideal of marriage, of love, of self-sacrifice, of perfect union, is 
more true and more real than imperfect human beings; that human 
imperfections are allowed for in God's plan, and do not spoil or mar 
the Reality of love and happiness in love for which we all were made. 
And, in doing so, we do much to establish our children in true 
Christian realism, to save them from "disillusion," to help them grow 
straight and unhampered toward fruitful Christian maturity.


We all know the beautiful statement of the truth, Hospes venit, 
Christus venit, "When a guest comes, then Christ comes." What is 
difficult is to show our children by our daily example that we are 
always happy to have guests of all kinds, because each of them gives us 
the opportunity to welcome and serve Christ our Lord. We need to try to 
be happy, at least with our wills, not only to welcome a beloved 
friend, or an influential acquaintance, but also the bore who is only 
going to waste our time, and the salesman whose product we do not want 
and cannot buy.

In all these people equally, Christ the Guest is asking us for the best 
hospitality that we can give him under the circumstances--say, ten 
minutes full attention to the bore, and a human smile and word about 
the weather to the salesman. For the more that we can so manage to give 
our best to everyone who comes to our door, the more our children will 
be prepared to realize that it is the One Christ who is coming under 
all these various guises.

And the other aspect of helping our children to learn true Christian 
hospitality is, surely, to make it a happy and natural and frequent 
event in our homes. If the children see that "having company" is a 
strange, unnatural, infrequent affair, requiring all sorts of elaborate 
preparations, short tempers and stiffness, they can hardly be taught 
the theory that we are doing such things to welcome the Christ who 
loves them. On the other hand, they themselves should take part in a 
reasonable amount of happy, special preparation for expected guests, 
and so acquire the habit of doing whatever can best be done to honor 
Christ as He comes to them in our guests.


The sacramental plan of things gives us also the key as to how to help 
our children to achieve the truly Christian attitude towards those who 
suffer and towards suffering itself. Since our Lord endured the 
suffering of the Cross for our redemption, human suffering possesses an 
objective dignity of its own from this very fact, whether the sufferer 
himself realizes it or not. And, from our Lord's own words, we know 
that it is He whom we serve in trying to help the needs of any human 
being.

In anyone who is suffering, therefore, we may find Christ Himself in 
His Passion, giving us here and now the opportunity to care for Him, to 
wait on Him, to sympathize with Him. For these reasons, personal care 
of the sick is a privilege; for these reasons, the vocations of doctor 
and nurse are greatly to be honored. Any serious illness or affliction 
in the family or the neighborhood or among our friends can offer us the 
occasion for talking over these facts with the children, and for doing 
whatever we can to act on them.

On the other hand, suffering itself patiently accepted in union with 
Christ's sufferings, shares in the value of His suffering and is 
positively valuable for the eternal salvation of souls. As the 
practical St. Therese says, to accept suffering in this way (and all 
forms of hardship, trial, and inconvenience) is, as it were, to earn 
token money which we can give to our Lord to change into real currency 
by the value of His sufferings, and to use to ransom souls from sin, to 
free souls from purgatory, to win graces and blessings for those who 
need them. When our children have to undergo any severe pain, or dis-
agreeable illness, we can begin to give them such a simple and 
practical view of the possibilities of suffering, and so teach them how 
to endure it without self-pity, stoicism or softness, with at least the 
makings of true Christian heroism.

But, in connection with all these truths, whenever we have occasion to 
talk with the children about our Lord's sufferings, the value of 
suffering and so on, we should take great care to bring out the fact 
that it was original sin and, in its train, the effects of the actual 
sins of all the generations of men, that are responsible for all human 
suffering. God the Father does not enjoy seeing us suffer; He did not 
enjoy seeing His Son suffer. But His wonderful ingenuity, so to speak, 
by means of the sufferings of Christ has enabled us to make use of all 
this suffering which we brought upon ourselves, to use it in helping 
Christ with the very work of effecting our redemption.

All modern techniques of helping the handicapped now use the principle 
of self-help above everything else; when the children are of an age to 
appreciate such facts, we can point out how wonderfully and how 
lovingly, "even to the death on the Cross," God Himself has been using 
this very principle in the work of our redemption. Even small children 
can appreciate the thought and skill needed to make use of otherwise 
useless things, and so to appreciate what Christ has done in His 
suffering, for our sufferings.

And, of course, we must also show them that no human wisdom can fathom 
all the aspects of suffering; we can only know that God is infinite 
Love and infinite Goodness, and that somehow He will bring a greater 
good, far greater happiness for more people forever in heaven, out of 
all this seeming evil.

Along the same lines, we can give the children the foundations of a 
truly Christian attitude toward the handicapped. Any form of physical 
or mental affliction shares in the objective dignity which our Lord's 
Passion has conferred on all human suffering. In any form of special 
consideration or service which a handicapped person may require, we can 
find a special opportunity of serving our Lord. Moreover, only God 
knows the degree to which any particular person's particular sufferings 
or handicaps are of positive value in the great work of the redemption, 
but we do know that such a person has, at the very least, a special 
opportunity to help our Lord in a most valuable and difficult way in 
the work of building up His kingdom.

A person so honored is not, then, to be pitied: for pity implies 
superiority, and who are we to be superior to Christ? But he is to be 
sympathized with, as our Lord allows us to sympathize with Him in His 
Passion. Not, of course that we can expect every handicapped person 
necessarily to be a saint, (or, for that matter, that any great 
affliction or hardship will necessarily make us saints!), but that he 
has been given a special opportunity to become so.

When our children are going to meet, for example, a man who is blind, 
we should discuss quite frankly with them all the handicaps of 
blindness, so that the children can begin to sympathize with ("suffer 
with") their future friend. But we should not end up with "Poor Jack, 
isn't it dreadful that he is blind!" Rather, "God must think a lot of 
Jack to give him such a tough thing to bear for Him. That's why it is a 
great privilege to have Jack with us, and let's try to give him as good 
a time as we can."

Along the same lines, we can show the children how best to help and 
serve Christ in the handicapped or needy. Obviously, this will not 
consist in doing what we would like to do for them, but what will help 
Christ to live more fully in and through them. In the case of a blind 
person, again, the greatest kindness is to help him to independence; to 
let him realize that we accept him as a normal human person. So we need 
to learn to restrain ourselves from the fussy rushing to his assistance 
that bolsters up our own cozy feeling of helpfulness, to find out 
instead what kinds of help are really needed, and to accept help from 
him in our turn whenever possible.

If we thus try to think out and practice consistently the implications 
of the truth of Christ's special presence in those of our neighbors 
with special needs and afflictions, our children may be able to learn 
from us what true Christian charity means. But if we only try 
thoughtlessly, spasmodically, and sentimentally to "be kind to" the 
poor or handicapped, our children will be in danger of contracting that 
sentimental pity, and fear of all forms of affliction which is the 
modern caricature of the true Christian attitude.

We need also to try to get across to our children the correlative 
aspect of these truths which concern their own acceptance of help, of 
Christian charity in every form. One of our great modern vices is to 
feel disgraced by any need for help, to feel that we must be able to 
pay in some immediate and concrete way for everything, even for 
kindness.

Such an attitude is obviously a barrier to the free flow of the warmth 
and vitality of mutual charity among the members of Christ's Body. For 
it is, ultimately, a form of selfishness to try to seize every 
opportunity of serving Christ in one's neighbor and yet to refuse to 
others that same opportunity as far as one's own needs are concerned. 
So St. Thomas says that it is itself an act of charity to receive 
charity--of course in the proper sense of that wonderful word: love 
shown in loving service of God and neighbor.

We need, then, to try ourselves to give the example and to teach our 
children how, graciously and gratefully, to accept help of all sorts as 
coming, somehow from Christ Himself. Such training begins with the 
inculcation of the simple "Please" and "Thank you" which curiously is 
so difficult to make habitual with many children. For such ordinary 
politeness involves a certain amount of true humility, recognizing that 
one does need things from other people, but that one does not have a 
right to anything, and that gratitude is only decent.

We want, of course, to bring the children up to be as properly 
independent as possible, especially of us, in the sense that they gain 
the habit of trying first to figure things out for themselves before 
they ask for advice, and the habit of doing what they can for 
themselves before they ask for help. But we need also to teach them 
when and how it is sensible and Christian to ask for advice or help, 
and to accept it, not as one's due, not as if one had been disgraced by 
needing it, but simply and gratefully in the spirit of true humility. 
For the spirit of humility is basically a realistic sense of what we 
are in relation to God and to each other; and, in relation to each 
other we are all needy in one way or another; we all need others' help; 
we all need to give and also to receive.

Only many volumes could begin to cover the whole field of human 
relations and their wonderful possibilities to the eye of Christian 
charity. We have to show our children how to be truly neighbors to 
Christ in the people who are our actual neighbors by physical location 
in our community and parish; how to be neighbors to Christ in needy and 
suffering men all over the world, to the holy souls in purgatory, and 
to all the host of heaven. And we need to show the children also how to 
accept help themselves gratefully and graciously, as coming somehow 
from Christ.

But, surely, the sacramental view, the effort to recognize and serve 
Christ as He comes to us in person, is the Christian key to "human 
relations" of all kinds. All sound knowledge of how human beings act 
and re-act, about our bodies and nerves and minds and souls, all 
rightful "techniques" of dealing with people and helping solve people's 
problems, all this can thus be ordered to the love and service of 
Christ in our neighbor. And, if we try to begin at home, we can help 
our children to form the fundamental habits of true Christian charity, 
capable of taking up all such modern knowledge and equipment and 
putting it all to the service of Christ.


DISCUSSION TOPICS

1. Discuss the ways in which parents can foster religious vocations 
among their children. What methods are objectionable?


2. Discuss methods of discipline and of punishment of children in the 
light of the fact that parents are images of God's perfect love, 
perfect authority, and perfect providence. What are some practical 
means of balancing love and justice toward children? How can parents 
tell if they are too indulgent or too stern? if they are inconsistent 
and arbitrary?

3. Make applications of the principle: "When a guest comes, then Christ 
comes." Can this spirit be maintained toward all who come to our front 
door, including salesmen, baby sitters, neighborhood children, and 
visiting teenagers? Should we make an attempt to invite people to our 
homes as guests if we think they need help, although we would prefer 
our privacy?


4. "It takes as much charity to receive as to give." Explain this 
statement and show how it applies regarding aid and gifts to us from 
relatives, friends, and neighbors.


5. Discuss the Christian attitude toward pain and suffering as it 
affects the lesser ailments of daily life. Should parents complain 
about their ill health in front of their children? Should they act as 
though they never had pain or discomfort? Should children be encouraged 
to put up with pain and suffering? What should be the parents' attitude 
toward the bumps and pains the children suffer?


STUDY QUESTIONS

1. In what ways does a priest particularly represent Christ?


2. List suggestions for making priests "realities in our children's 
lives."


3. Since children obtain their ideas about authority and parenthood 
from their parents, does this mean that parents should act as though 
they think they are perfect and infallible?


4. What part does original sin play in suffering?


5. What is the Christian attitude toward suffering? toward those who 
suffer?



4. THINGS

Thinking next over the question of how to help our children to grow up 
with a "sacramental" attitude toward things proves to be a somewhat 
startling experience. For when one begins to consider the 
specifications of this Christian attitude, one realizes with dismay how 
different it is both from the attitude of previous generations, and 
also from the modern attitude which is now, unawares, forming our chil-
dren's views and re-fashioning our own.

The old attitude was one of appreciation of the value and quality of 
things as satisfying needs, providing luxuries, and laying the 
ground-work for the "finer things of life." Human prudence, thrift, 
foresight, carefulness with regard to possessions, were among the 
highest virtues known to this attitude; wastefulness, prodigality, 
taking no thought for the morrow, lack of ability to make a living, 
were considered the worst of vices. God was the source of all 
blessings, but He only helped those who helped themselves, and solid 
worldly success was a sign of His approval.

Our own parents and the Christian teachers of all ages have warned us 
against the danger of this attitude. It encourages selfishness, for it 
makes it seem a positive duty to amass things for oneself and one's 
family even at the expense of other people and other families. It leads 
people to overvalue physical comfort, luxury, as well as "refinement," 
and either to despise or to envy and over-value the "finer things of 
life" like music, art, literature. Above all, it leads people to see in 
earthly possessions the guarantee of security and the reward of right 
living, as did the rich man in the Bible whom our Lord called a fool.

The basic assumption of the modern attitude, on the other hand, an 
assumption sanctioned both by modern science and by the existence and 
operation of the mass-production system, is that things really have no 
permanent form or value in themselves. The form in which we find any 
object at the moment is accidental; the thing can be junked tomorrow 
and turned into something quite different and also much better than 
what we have now, for "progress" is seeing to it that the products of 
our civilization are inevitably improving year by year.

There is little use, then, in learning to appreciate anything for 
itself, in learning to value the quality of anything, taking great care 
of It, especially as there are in existence millions of other objects 
just like this one, turned out by the same machines on exactly the same 
pattern. What we can get out of a thing right now is all that really 
matters, since, however we treat it, we can either get another, or turn 
it in for something even more modern and more efficient.

Again, ours is, strictly, a "consumer" civilization, one which 
literally consumes things, uses them up. Science has not yet discovered 
for practical purposes how to turn everything into everything else--how 
can we now make use of the component parts of the crude oil consumed in 
the last twenty years, or the coal, or all the metals in our myriad 
junk piles?

But we vaguely feel that science either has made such discoveries, or 
soon will. And so we feel justified in continuing to use up raw 
materials in making things designed to be used up and discarded in 
order that people will buy new things and thereby keep the system 
going. And the system must be kept going, because the mass-production 
machines which are its focus and its fetish must be kept going or money 
will be lost, men will be thrown out of work, fewer people will be able 
to buy, panic and depression will follow soon.

The claims of these machines, in other words, have been allowed to 
reign supreme over true human welfare, let alone the claims of God. The 
real criterion of value has now become, not the satisfaction of 
people's real need or what provides them with real pleasures, even on 
the sensory level, but rather what people can be persuaded to buy in 
order to keep the system going. For the real needs, and the desires for 
legitimate pleasures of ordinary people do not provide the 
ever-expanding market our system must have in order to keep going.

The only way out then, in times of peace or comparative peace, is 
continually to "create" new "needs," to persuade people that they need 
ever-new models of their present possessions as well as new things of 
whose existence they never dreamed. And the means of persuasion 
necessarily appeal, not to real human needs (which are, finally, 
self-limiting2), but to the unlimited and illimitable desires that can 
be awakened in fallen man by appealing to his emotions through his 
imagination.

If we contemplate soberly the implications of Fr. Vincent McNabb's 
statement: "Every act of self-denial stops some wheel from turning," it 
is startlingly clear that our system could not continue as it is 
without the deliberate discouragement of self-denial, of Christian 
trust and detachment; without the deliberate encouragement of anxiety, 
fear, and of what theologians call the lust of the flesh, the lust of 
the eyes and the pride of life, that is, of fallen man's inappeasable 
itch for sensations, for acquiring things and "experiences," for being 
up-to-date, "hep," just as good as the neighbors, secure, successful, 
etc.

Again, since things are made primarily to be sold, not to be or to do 
what they are presumably supposed to be or to do, the practice of good 
workmanship is, generally, accidental, even where the mass-production 
system still leaves room for its possibility. Things are not, then, 
generally made as God Intended them to be, for somebody's special 
needs, out of the proper materials, by an intelligent and skilled 
workman who knows what he is doing and intends to do it for the love of 
God and man.

Rather, incalculable quantities of God's inanimate and animate 
creatures are being misused to provide raw material for junk,3 and 
millions of men and women are either not using or are misusing their 
human facilities to design, produce and distribute goods which, 
whatever the individual workers good motives, actually promote not the 
common good, but the common ill--increasingly widespread selfishness, 
pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth.

Obviously, then, the modern attitude toward things does not simply 
contain dangers against which we could warn and fortify our children. 
It is essentially wrong in itself, for it necessarily fosters 
intemperance in the acquisition and use of things, false solicitude 
about imagined "needs," the abuse of human work and of God's materials. 
It necessarily discourages the Christian spirit of detachment, poverty, 
and the right use of creatures.4 If it did not, it would break down.

Yet we and our children have to live, work and trade in this 
civilization. We cannot transform it over-night. We can only do what we 
can, in an infinitesimal way, to join with others of like mind, and to 
begin thinking, studying, praying and working towards such a 
transformation, and, at the same time, help to prepare our children to 
carry on the transformation according to their future vocations. For 
this purpose, obviously the first thing to do is to become consciously 
aware of the Church's whole teaching about creatures and their use, and 
to try continually to rectify our own attitude by this teaching. Then 
we will be in a position to communicate the Christian attitude to our 
children and to prepare them for their life-work in the world.

Where we can best, for our purposes, find the Church's teaching about 
things and their use, is in Holy Scripture and in the liturgy and in 
the social encyclicals of the recent Popes. From all these sources, we 
find, to summarize roughly, the following:

1) God made everything for His glory and to be useful to man.

2) God made all things in wisdom, to the image of His Son, and, 
ultimately, also for the sake of Christ. The vast diversity of 
creatures was planned by Him: each thing gives Him glory by being and 
acting according to the nature He gave it, taking its part in the great 
harmony of creation and the drama of the history of the whole cosmos.

3) God gave to man, whom He made in His own image and likeness, a share 
in his power of making and ordering created things. He made various 
"raw materials" so that men could re-fashion them in various ways, 
according to their natures and potentialities, and He gave man the 
intelligence and potential skill to re-fashion such things. He also 
gave man the power of "ruling" living and non-living created things, 
that is, of ordering them. By making and ruling things, man was to 
perfect his own nature as an individual and social being, and thus 
fulfill the purpose for which God made him; so to live on earth as to 
prepare for eternal life in heaven; and, in a sense, to complete and 
perfect God's creation by acting in the capacity of His vice-regent 
over it.

4) By the Fall, man handed over to the devil, so far as God permitted, 
his own over-lordship of material things. This satanic power needs to 
be exorcised by the power of Christ in order that Christians may be 
able to use and order things for Christian purposes.

5) But, as all things were first made through the Son, made 
fundamentally good and holy and given their proper degree of life 
through Him, so by His redemption they have been, in principle, 
redeemed from the devil's power so that they can be blessed by Christ 
and given to us, who have been re-made to His image, to use through 
Him, with Him, in Him, in the love of the Holy Spirit, for the honor 
and glory of the Father.

6) God made things to be useful to men in two ways: a) by serving their 
complex physical, mental, and spiritual needs, individually and 
socially (the very complexity of these needs forcing men, even on the 
natural level, to specialize in serving one or another, and to serve 
each other's needs as well as their own), and thus enabling men to grow 
up and live and work together on earth, according to God's plan, and 
prepare together for eternal life in heaven.

b) Things have been made, and used by God in the course of history, to 
serve also as signs of spiritual realities, so that in the very use of 
those material things which necessarily take up so much of our time and 
energy, we can raise our minds and hearts to God, and to the wonders of 
our creation, redemption, sanctification and eternal life.

Our Lord's own words, and Christian teaching throughout the ages, add 
several conclusions to these general principles.5

1) God only gives us things and lends us power over them to use them 
according to their natures, to enable us to live according to our human 
and Christian nature. We have no right to abuse anything.

2) Material goods have been "lent" by God to all mankind, to serve the 
good of all mankind through all the ages of its history. We have the 
right to private property only in so far as such an arrangement enables 
us more effectively and fully to provide for our own needs and serve 
those of our neighbor. We have no absolute right to anything, in the 
sense that we are free to destroy it, or to use it wrongly.

3) We have no right, then, to own or to try to acquire more things than 
we need to provide for our own needs as individuals or families 
according to our state of life, and to enable us to satisfy other 
people's needs according to our own special talents and capabilities. 
We have no right to anything, in other words, which we cannot really 
use to help us to take our own part in building up the kingdom of God.

4) Anything we have or acquire beyond this norm belongs, in charity if 
not in justice, to others who do need it or could use it.

5) We shall be judged by our Lord on the last day primarily by how we 
used material and spiritual goods to satisfy each other's fundamental 
physical, mental, and spiritual needs; by how we used all these things 
to serve Christ in our neighbor. Therefore, obviously, one of the most 
important aspects of Christian education, to put it mildly, must be in 
the intelligent and skillful and habitual use of material and spiritual 
goods to serve other people's needs.

6) We are not to be "solicitous" about providing for our own needs, 
that is, to be at all anxious about it, or to spend any more time and 
strength on it than necessary. If we seek first the kingdom of God and 
His justice (that is, if we are trying primarily to take our part 
according to God's will in building up the kingdom according to our 
vocation), then God has pledged Himself to provide for our needs (Matt. 
6:24-33)

7) If we are thus seeking His kingdom, and yet our physical, mental, or 
spiritual needs do not seem to be provided for, we can be sure that God 
sees that we have a greater need to share in the poverty and suffering 
of His Son in His passion, in order to share in our Lord's work in the 
special way He has planned for us, become the particular 'images' of 
Christ that He wants us to become, and share in the special way He 
intends in His happiness forever in heaven.


Now, if we set side by side the main characteristics of the Christian 
attitude with those of the "modern," we shall see, perhaps, some ways 
in which to go about our attempt to establish our children in the 
Christian attitude, to strengthen them against the "modern" one, and to 
prepare them to take their parts according to God's will in 
transforming civilization.

First, the Christian tries to find out, to fit into and to take his 
part in carrying out God's whole plan for the use of himself and all 
creatures; while the modern attitude considers everything as man's, if 
he can make it so by "science," to be used in any way he wants. Our 
first effort, then, should be by the prayerful reading aloud and study 
of Holy Scripture and of the blessings of the Church, to make ourselves 
aware of God's whole plan, and of how material creation is included in 
it.

And our second effort should be actually to go about using things, as 
far as possible, according to the Church's plan as outlined in the 
blessings, and to use the blessings themselves,6 asking our priests to 
administer them when possible, and otherwise we ourselves, father or 
mother, saying the words of the blessings and making the sign of the 
Cross with holy water.

We need to make a continual effort, then, to establish and maintain 
ourselves in the Christian attitude. One of the best ways of going 
about it is to read and study and think about the blessings of the 
Church and the events in Sacred History to which the blessings, 
indirectly or directly, refer. Then we should have things blessed, as 
occasion arises, by a priest. And, lastly, we should try to use things 
according to God's plan as it is shown to us in the blessings.

For example, if the family is about to acquire a new car, we could take 
the opportunity to study with the children the Blessing for an 
automobile. We could read over with them the passage from the "Acts" to 
which the blessing refers. We could discuss our obligation to drive 
carefully and so make ourselves worthy of the angels' protection. We 
could also discuss the idea that every journey we are going to take in 
the new car is a kind of 'sign' of our whole life's journey to heaven.

Then, when we get the car, we could begin our use of it by driving it 
to the rectory of our parish and asking our priest to bless it. Again, 
the occasion of a journey by train or boat or airplane could be used to 
study the blessings for all these means of transportation. Or, lacking 
a journey, books about trains or planes, cutting out pictures of them 
and so on, could be used as the spring-board for interest in and 
familiarity with, the blessings the Church has provided.7

In this connection also, since the Christian tries to find out what God 
made things to be and do, to praise and thank Him for them, and to use 
them rightly, we can try to be as conscientious and patient and 
intelligent as possible in the never-ending task of teaching the 
children to look at things as they actually are; to appreciate them for 
what they are, and not for something else; to judge man-made products 
by how well they imitate God's making in being well-made and in 
fulfilling the needs they are supposed to fulfill.

Such training will involve, as any parent realizes with dismay, a 
continuous process of "debunking" what the children are told by 
advertisers everywhere, including their own friends; such debunking, 
moreover, needing to be carried out as matter-of-factly, humorously and 
unheatedly as we can manage. On the positive side, this training will 
involve training the children's senses, to taste, smell, touch, see, 
and hear what is before them vividly and discriminately, as the 
indispensable prerequisite and accompaniment to training the children's 
powers of appreciation, judgment, self-restraint and proper use with 
regard to toys and tools, food and clothes, furniture and means of 
transportation, as well as books, music, and pictures.

Then, since the Christian tries to use things as God meant them to be 
used, while we are training the children to appreciate things rightly, 
from God's point of view so to speak, we need to be training them to 
use things rightly. Such use involves taking due care of things, using 
them for what they were meant to be used for and not some other way. It 
also involves constant care to avoid our great American vice of waste, 
showing the children that it is foolish and expensive, but still more 
that it is wrong, for it means not using something for what God meant 
it for.

Children of bicycle age, for example, can be shown that a really 
well-built bike, made to fulfill its purpose of carrying somebody 
swiftly and easily from one place to another, is not necessarily a 
bicycle with many gears, or complete with glittering accessories, but 
one whose essential parts are strong, well-designed, well-put-together. 
The children also can be shown that the right use of a bicycle is to 
learn first to control it, then to ride it swiftly; but that to misuse 
it by making the tires squeal, loosening the handlebars and so on, is 
both silly and wrong, as doing an injustice to the nature of the 
bicycle.

In all this, we will, of course, be working not only against the 
children's natural carelessness and destructiveness, as parents have 
always had to do, but against the whole spirit of the times, the spirit 
of pretending that one thing is just the same and just as good as 
another which costs more or is harder to make or obtain (why "butter 
substitutes," for instance, why not simply "margarine?") and the spirit 
of acquiring and using things for some entirely irrelevant or 
non-essential reason or purpose (buying a brand of soap, for example, 
because you get coupons with it to buy something else, admiring a car 
for its "modern lines," using a college education to "get ahead").

All this training in rightful appreciation and rightful use may often 
seem unendurably common-sense, old-fashioned and prosaic, as well as 
difficult. Let us remember, then, that its purpose is not to turn our 
children out as Horatio Algers or "solid citizens," but rather to give 
our children as complete a training as we can give them in using the 
things of this world rightly so as to achieve life eternal for 
themselves and their fellow-men.


But by far the most important aspect of our training of our children in 
the right use of things, is to train them in making things, especially 
in making things for other people's needs; and this for many reasons. 
First of all, such training in making is education of the whole child, 
body, mind, and soul, towards perfecting him in the image of God the 
Creator that God wants him to become.

Secondly, no other training is so efficient in inculcating true 
appreciation of materials, tools and skill in the products of the 
workmanship of both God and man. If you have once really tried to make 
a table, you have an insight into furniture-making and a basis for 
judging good furniture that no amount of book-learning alone can give. 
And if you have tried to make a table for the use of someone who really 
needs it, then you have had a full experience of mature craftsmanship.

And, finally, since doing things and performing actions are also forms 
of making in the widest and truest sense, the children should be 
trained to "make" a dance, a play, a tidy well-swept room, etc., as 
well as being trained to make actual things, according to their age and 
capacity. And a higher reason for all this training in making is that 
the bread and wine used in holy Mass are artifacts of man's skill; if a 
person had never made anything, it is much more difficult to show him 
why and how the bread and wine can stand for us, for our human work, 
for all we have and do and make and are.

In our encouraging and training of the children to make whatever they 
can learn to make reasonably well, let us then try as far as possible 
to lead them to make things that somebody really needs (rather, for 
instance, than things that are easy and effective to make so that kind 
grandparents will pretend that they like them). And let us try to show 
the children by any means our ingenuity may suggest that these products 
of their making are to be offered to God, with our Lord's offering in 
the Mass, as their work is to be offered with His work, their very 
selves with Him.


Obviously, also, if we are to train our children in the Christian 
appreciation and use of things, we must take as much care to give them, 
and to see that they learn to make and buy for themselves, things that 
are well made and well designed, of good materials. How can we invite 
the children to raise their minds to the true Bread of Life, and their 
hearts in thanksgiving to God, how can we urge good craftsmanship, if 
we sit down every day at a table made of some plastic that pretends to 
look like marble, covered with a plastic cloth intended to look like 
lace; when on the table is the white bread of commerce that has had 
some small amount of nourishment "added" to its essential constituents, 
a breakfast food that amounts to slightly sweetened air, and only 
nourishes because of the milk and sugar put on it...?

Of course, it is simply not possible for most of us to be perfectly 
consistent about buying real things today, but we can at least do our 
best. It would be quite possible for some of us, for example, to find 
out where the nearest furniture factory is, visit it, and buy the 
furniture we need unfinished, and perhaps, with slight flaws in it 
(much more cheaply than we could buy the finished product in a store). 
Much good furniture is ruined only by the finish which tries to make it 
look like something other than the original wood it is. In any case, we 
can make it a habit to look for things that are well-made and not 
pretending to be other than they are. And we can also point out 
occasionally our own unavoidable inconsistencies to ourselves and the 
children.


Another characteristic of the Christian attitude towards things is to 
enjoy the perfections that God, or man, His image, has put into things-
-whether or not one actually owns the thing and can profit from or 
enjoy its use. We can, then, encourage the children to appreciate and 
rejoice in the qualities of other people's things: gardens, lakes, 
lovely china or furniture or houses, cars, and achievements.

A third characteristic of the Christian attitude as opposed to the 
modern is that the Christian sees the use of things as a trust, a 
"stewardship," to be exercised for the love of Christ, for the good of 
one's neighbor and the whole mystical Body of Christ. We should, then, 
when the children want us to buy things for them, or want to buy things 
for themselves, help them to consider not only the quality and price of 
the things, but also how it fits into the whole picture of their daily 
lives as Christians: Can you really use it, or learn to use it rightly? 
Can and will you take proper care of it? Will it cause unnecessary 
trouble in the family or among your friends? Can you somehow share or 
enjoy it with other people?

Obviously, this is a habit of mind to be established, not a puritanical 
check-list. We and the children need things that are just for fun, need 
to do things just for fun without always consciously adverting to 
ultimate significances. But such significances do need to be in the 
back of our minds, to have been thought out at some time or another, or 
the fun will cease to be fun and become distraction and escapism.

So, in the same way, for major family purchases at least, we can call 
the children into consultation: Will this laborsaving device, for 
example, that we can now afford, actually give us more time and energy 
to praise God better, to love and serve one another in Christ, to serve 
our neighbors more effectively? Will this relatively expensive means of 
entertainment really re-create us, or will it simply wear us out and 
make us less fit to carry out God's will?


Again, the Christian realizes that he has no right to more things than 
he can really use. We and our children, then, might well have a yearly 
examination of conscience on our possessions, perhaps at the beginning 
of Lent, or perhaps in connection with the Bishop's Thanksgiving 
clothing drive, or some other special opportunity to give things away.

Should father keep that old dress suit he hasn't been able to get into 
for twenty years? Should mother keep that old extra coat just in case--
when so many people don't even have one? What about those half-worn-out 
shoes that John says he can't get into? Should we keep them for five 
years till Tom gets that size? Or give them to somebody who needs shoes 
now?

Such questions are not always at all easy to answer with due prudence 
as well as charity, and both virtues have their claims. But it does 
seem from the lives of the saints as if the Lord preferred us to err on 
the side of generosity when there is any real doubt as to which virtue 
should be followed!

Again, we can try to show the children both by example and words that 
giving is an essential part of living, that actually doing without 
things in order to be able to give to those in need is a normal 
Christian thing to do, especially in times of penance, Lent and Ember 
days.

But, since Christians are not to be solicitous or unduly worried about 
their needs, while we must encourage the children in habits of 
prudence, foresight, reasonable budgeting and so on with regard to 
money and to possible future possessions, let us discourage them in any 
undue amount of planning, worrying, working to acquire things for 
themselves, especially things that are simply means to personal 
recreation.

And, finally, since we are followers of Christ, let us try to realize 
ourselves and to communicate the realization to our children that we 
have no "right" to freedom from want, that if we lack even necessities, 
we are sharing our Lord's Passion to some small extent. Grumbling about 
a lack of comforts, complaining about having less than our neighbors, 
about not being able to buy things we want and that other people have, 
all this is unworthy of soldiers of Christ, to whom hardships, doing 
without and suffering are not important--so intent should we be on 
accomplishing our mission, doing our job, taking our part in the 
battle, looking forward to the final victory of Christ.


STUDY QUESTIONS

1. What does the author mean by the "old attitude" toward things?


2. What does the author mean by the "modern attitude" toward things?


3 What are the principal points from the Church's teaching regarding 
things and their use?


4. What does the author mean by the "right motive" and the "wrong mo-
tive" for buying such things as bicycles and soap?


5. Why is it important for children to make things?


DISCUSSION TOPICS

1. Read the Gospel of St. Matthew 6:25-34. Discuss how this teaching of 
Christ gives us a guide for determining a Christian attitude toward 
things. Is a housewife materialistic if she wants an automatic washing 
machine? if she wants new furniture? if she wants a fur coat? a picture 
window installed in the living room? Does the parable of Christ mean 
that parents are not supposed to be "solicitous" about things for their 
children? Should parents practice thrift? have insurance?


2. Discuss ways and means for increasing the use and the appreciation 
of blessings of things in the home.


3. What things can and should children make at home? About what percent 
of their time should children be "making things" as compared with the 
time they spend "being entertained" by watching others perform? Suggest 
ways in which the average home could be expanded in opportunities for 
the children to make useful and functional things.


4. Discuss ways and means for aiding children to increase their respect 
for property--for clothes, family furnishings, other people's property 
and community property. At what age should children begin to buy and 
take care of for themselves the more expensive items of property? What 
standards should we teach them to employ in buying one item rather than 
another?


5. Discuss the "proper" amount of things that children should have at 
the various age levels. Do children get too many toys or get them at 
too early an age? How might the amount of things children have today 
affect their idea of "stewardship" of property? Are the amount and 
value of gifts given at Christmas or for birthdays an aid or hindrance 
to children for developing a Christian concept of goods?



5. PLACES

The modern attitude toward the universe as a whole, toward our earth, 
toward places made by God or man is, naturally, as secularist as the 
current attitude toward individual things and possessions. Few people 
are brought up to look for the power and wisdom and love of the Creator 
in His creation; even those scientists who recognize the "great 
Mathematician" or "the great Architect of the universe" usually do not 
recognize Him as a Person who is interested in mankind. To the majority 
of people today, the heavens do not declare God's glory, but only man's 
littleness and impotence; the wonders of heaven and earth do not invite 
them to praise, but to a pagan sense of "lacrimae rerum," the tragic 
fragility and passingness of all things, or still worse, to a kind of 
wondering despair at the purposelessness and chanciness of nature in 
all her manifestations.

As St. Bonaventure says, creation was meant to be for mankind a great 
book in which we could learn about God. Civilizations other than ours 
have realized in the main that this book was made to mean something, 
even if they did not know the alphabet or the language. Ours, alas, is 
the first to hold, as a general assumption of ordinary people, that it 
is only a meaningless scrawl or, at best, a cold-blooded mathematical 
report.

We need to arm our children against this assumption as they will meet 
it in their friends, in popular magazines, in literature, and even in 
education. We want to equip them not only to possess, but to share with 
other people the true vision of creation. The sense of the presence of 
God in His universe which we try to give them must, therefore, be full 
and deep and mature, rooted in faith and knowledge as well as the sense 
of awe and wonder native to unspoiled childhood.

Our aim, then, is to give the children a positive sense that the 
heavens are telling the glory of God. We want to give them the habit of 
going from "When I consider the work of Thy hands, the moon and the 
stars that Thou hast set up..." to the mystery of "What is man that 
Thou art mindful of him," a mystery not of doubt that God could be 
mindful, but of wondering love that He is mindful, even to making His 
only Son the Head and Redeemer of mankind.

We want the children to come to appreciate all the wonders of nature as 
signs of God's creative power, wisdom and love, and of His redemptive 
and sanctifying love as well. We want them to learn to give God the 
intelligent and loving praise for His marvelous work that only a man 
can give, and to give that praise as part of the great praise which our 
Lord is continually giving to His Father in the joy of the Holy Spirit.

Our special task as parents, here, is to lay in childhood the 
foundations for such an attitude, and to be always ready to show the 
children how to integrate into this attitude all the different kinds of 
information they may acquire about the make-up of the world and the 
universe.

For this purpose, we need first to see to it that the children actually 
have sufficient opportunity to see God's works: the night sky, for 
instance, and trees and fields and grass, and, when possible, hills and 
lakes, the sea and mountains. (Here is an excellent argument for at 
least some rural life for families!) Then, we need to equip ourselves 
with an elementary knowledge of the natural sciences dealing with the 
make-up and functioning of the universe, the solar system, our earth. 
We also need a good working knowledge of the nature of Psalms, in 
particular, 8, 18, 28, 64, 95, 96, 97, 103, 147, 148 and the Canticle 
of the Three Children in the fiery furnace.

Equipped with such knowledge, we may be able to lead the children from 
their initial wonder at, say, the sky full of stars, to a greater 
wonder resulting from some real knowledge of what the stars are, their 
distance from us and each other etc., to the praise of God as expressed 
in human words by the Holy Spirit Himself. And if we can make it 
habitual so to proceed from the observed facts of nature to the praise 
of God, whenever the children's interest, some new view or piece of 
knowledge, some startling event like a big storm, make it natural to do 
so, then we will be laying the true and right foundations for a 
life-long attitude toward all natural science.

And, as the children grow older, we can continue to deepen and broaden 
the scope of this habit in all its dimensions. We can encourage the 
children to observe accurately, to study and think about natural 
science of all kinds (even by making collections of odd bugs or 
butterflies); we can find out from bookstores or libraries where to get 
more detailed scientific information about whatever most interests the 
children; we can absorb enough of this information ourselves to give 
the children the habit of looking first for the purpose for which God 
made anything and made it the way it is; then to admire how marvelously 
the design, material and functioning of the thing is adapted to this 
purpose.

We can continually try to complement the children's experience and 
growing knowledge of nature and natural things with an ever-growing 
appreciation of the way in which these things are used by our Lord and 
in Holy Scripture as signs and "types" of His relations with us, of His 
life in the Church, and of our lives with Him hereafter.

For example, Christian tradition has always seen the sun as a "type," a 
sign of our Lord. Any child's spontaneous reaction to the wonder of a 
sunrise, or of a glorious sunny day after many dark ones, can be made a 
basis for some growth in the knowledge and love of our Lord as the Sun 
of our lives. And any scientific knowledge about the action of the sun 
on all the water of the world, for example, or in photosynthesis, can 
be used as material to fill out and expand the analogy, to lead the 
growing and grown-up mind and heart to God.

Perhaps our whole aim in all this can most powerfully and beautifully 
be summed up in one paragraph from St. Bonaventure's "The Journey of 
the Mind into God." For we want to train our children so that they will 
always be free from the blindness, deafness, dumbness and stupidity he 
speaks of, and train them so that they may be able to awaken others to 
use all material creation as 'material for glory', for praising the 
glory of God and so achieving glory themselves:

"He must be blind, then, who is not enlightened by the great splendors 
of created things; he must be deaf who is not awakened by such loud 
outcries; he must be dumb who does not praise God for all these effects 
of His power; he must be stupid who is not led to the First Principle 
by all these indications in His work.

"Open your eyes, then; listen attentively with the ears of your spirit; 
move your lips and direct your heart, so that in all created things you 
may see, hear, praise, love, serve, magnify and honor your God; if you 
do not, the whole world may rise together against you.

"For it is for this reason that the whole world will fight against the 
unwise. But for those who are wise, the world will rather become 
material for glory, for those who can say with the Prophet: 'Thou hast 
delighted me, Lord, with Thy making, and I will exult in the work of 
Thy hands. How wonderful are Thy works, O Lord, Thou hast made every-
thing in wisdom, the earth is filled with Thy possessions.'"


But we need to show our children also how the great works of man's 
hands are meant to lead our minds and hearts to God. A Christian is 
crippled for God's service if he cannot see what is good and wonderful 
in a great city, a great bridge or dam, a great building; if such 
things do not give him material for thinking of and loving and praising 
God, as well as reasons for shrinking from evil.

Of course, we need not try to blind ourselves or the children to the 
evils involved in the very existence of a big modern city, of a 
skyscraper, of a great factory. But the thrill that comes to anyone at 
the sight of the New York skyline, or the Golden Gate Bridge8 can just 
as well be ordered to God as that which comes, say, from the Grand 
Canyon; and if it is not, a whole side of our children's lives will be 
allowed to grow up cut off from God and His love.

So we need to direct the children's admiration for man's wonderful 
works to an admiration for God who made men able to discover how to 
make these things, able to get together and actually build them. Again, 
when opportunity permits, from the sight of all the ordered activity 
that goes on in putting up a new building, for example, we can show the 
children how we should all be working to build up God's house; from the 
care with which each brick or rivet is put in its right place, we can 
lead them to think about the care with which God is fashioning us with 
"blows and strokes" as the stones of His eternal dwelling.

When they come to experience the life of a great city, or to learn 
about city organization and so on, we can show them that it is by no 
mistake of terminology that the Church is called the "City" of God; 
that the company of redeemed mankind will be the holy city, the new 
Jerusalem coming down from God; and, therefore, it is part of the 
Christian's work to make our human cities less completely unlike the 
heavenly one, to see to it that life in these cities is better suited 
to lead men toward that heavenly City rather than away from it into 
that of the devil.


Along these lines also, we can begin to give the children some sense of 
the Church at work all over the world, leavening with Christ's own 
presence and action cities and towns, villages and country, wherever 
there is a priest at work, wherever there are Christians building up 
the kingdom of God. And so we can begin to give the children a 
world-wide vision of the Church at work, of its needs in various coun-
tries, of our responsibility to pray for and support all missionary 
effort.

Such a vision will mean also what might be called a Catholic sense of 
geography, which sees Rome as the real nerve-center of the world, the 
home of Christ's Vicar and of all the organizations by means of which 
he governs the worldwide Church. Such a Catholic sense of geography is 
also aware of the great spiritual centers in each country, of the great 
shrines of our faith, of the Holy Land as what it is.

But above all it sees the world as being vivified and renewed by the 
invisible force of Christ's life working through the visible 
organization of the Church, reaching from the Holy Father in Rome to 
our Bishop in his Cathedral, to our own parish Church in which we 
receive the teaching, the life and the direction of Christ Himself.


It is hard for a 'born' Catholic to realize how featureless must be the 
lives of those whose ordinary experience does not include any kind of a 
'holy place.' All other cultures have had places known to be especially 
filled with the power of their god or gods or demons; only to ours is 
everywhere equally neutral, equally empty of any presence above or 
below or beyond the human. But since we live in such a culture, we need 
to do something to cultivate in ourselves and our children a real and 
living sense of the sacredness of our churches. "This is a place to 
fill one with awe," says the Introit of the Feast of the Dedication of 
our own church, "Truly it is the House of God and the gate of heaven."

One seldom-used means of giving our children such a sense of our 
church's holiness might be to ask our pastor or his assistant to give a 
private (or, better, public) description of the marvelous ceremony of 
consecration (if ours is a consecrated church, or of its blessing, if 
it is not). Surely such a description would make a wonderful sermon for 
the anniversary of consecration or blessing.

Again, we might ask our pastor to take the children, as a priest friend 
of ours actually does, on a conducted tour of the church, showing them 
the consecration crosses, letting them have a good look at the altar 
and its furnishings, at the holy oils in the ambry, at the sacred 
vessels and vestments for Mass, while he tells them as much as they 
could follow of the special blessings of each thing and of its use.

Besides such special means, we must, of course, take the day by day 
ordinary means of teaching the children to appreciate the holiness of 
our church by teaching them to appreciate the wonders that take place 
in it: the Mass, especially the Sunday Mass, Baptisms, Confirmation, 
Confessions, blessings, prayers made and heard, the Presence of our 
Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.


We also need to give the children a sense of the sacredness of places 
in which Christians live and work, not that this is of the same kind or 
degree as the sacredness of a church, but it is nonetheless very real 
in its own right. The most obvious among such places is, of course, our 
own home. We need to bring the children to feel implicitly that their 
home is, as it were, their special workshop, training-ground, gymnasium 
in the work and exercises of real life, and not to feel that real 
living takes place everywhere else, that home is simply a 
filling-station for their physical or spiritual needs. (Though, of 
course, they will always feel at times that other people's homes are 
more interesting, more full of promise and vitality than their own.)

And, by the time they grow up, they should realize that it is now their 
task to go out and form some new home, whether in a rectory, or a 
convent, or a group, or a new 'little church,' an ordinary Catholic 
home. But for the years of their home-life we should surely try to make 
them feel positively and not merely negatively "at home at home." And 
for this purpose, we need to make sure that real living, spiritual and 
mental, as well as physical, is going on in our house. If we ourselves 
are trying to lead a fully Christian home life, surely this effect will 
follow.

In this regard, we can also try to make sure that the physical lay-out, 
furnishing, decoration, etc., of our houses are, as far as possible, 
suited to the life we are trying to lead in them, not to somebody 
else's life, or to some notion of static unrumpled perfection.

So we can try to train the children in habits of order and tidiness; 
teach them to help us with the cleaning and beautifying of the house by 
showing them that all this is for the sake of more efficient, more 
fruitful, more vital living both human and Christian; that if your 
tools for carpentry, or for cooking, or for clothing yourself are so 
mixed up that you cannot find what you want, such a mess is neither 
practical nor efficient, nor worthy of a house in which Christ's mem-
bers and fellow-workers live and work.

So, also, we can not only have our houses blessed when we first move in 
and, when possible, at Epiphany and Eastertime, but we can try to make 
these blessings really understood by the children as vital forces in 
our home life, forces with which we want to cooperate in order to live 
as fully and happily as God intends.

In this connection also, we can try to give the children the sense of 
going away from home and coming back as special events. For instance, 
one mother known to the writer is careful always to give her children a 
blessing, the sign of the Cross on their foreheads, before they go out, 
even to school or to a friend's house to play.

We can also work towards awakening in the children a sense of 
responsibility about going to other people's houses, being sure they 
are invited generally or specifically, telling us just where they are 
going, and being back home again on time. And, above all, we can try to 
make sure, in our discussions of our home furnishings and improvements, 
and in our comments on other people's houses, that our children come to 
understand that it is not the material or size or plan or efficiency or 
"niceness" or "loveliness" of beautiful surroundings or furnishings 
that are important about a house, but rather the Christian life of 
charity that is lived in it--that all these other things are only 
important as possible means toward this end.

As the children grow older, of course, they will realize more and more 
explicitly that, although God is everywhere, there are many places, 
alas, in which He is not wanted, to which He is never invited, and many 
from which He is as positively excluded as the perversity of human (and 
devilish) wills can do it. Our task here, it would seem, is to be aware 
of children's instinctive reaction to the presence of evil in places, 
to encourage them to realize that our Lord has, in fact, overcome all 
this, and that they can overcome it also in His strength with the sign 
of His Cross.

We can show them also that their future work as Christians is to be our 
Lord's instruments in bringing His life and grace to the human beings 
who are responsible for the unholiness of unholy places, and so helping 
Him to restore all places as signs of His presence. And we can also 
reassure them, whenever the need presents itself, that in deepest 
truth, unless by unrepented serious sin they have cut themselves off 
from God's presence, wherever they go they will find, ultimately, "only 
God and nothing strange."


STUDY QUESTIONS

1. What is the Christian attitude toward nature?


2. List the ways in which children can be aided in acquiring an 
understanding of nature.


3. How can children be led to appreciate that the parish church is a 
place of special reverence?


4. In what ways can we give a religious meaning to our own home?


5. What standard should children use in judging the homes of other 
people?


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. List examples of how the Church uses some places or some aspect of 
nature as a symbol for religious truth. (Consult the litanies and 
Scripture; for example, the Blessed Virgin as "Ark of the Covenant.")


2. Discuss the importance of religious places in our lives. Do we have 
the same concern for learning about the sacred places in our area (such 
as the Cathedral church and religious institutions in our dioceses) as 
we have for places of civic interest? Would it be possible to arrange 
pilgrimages to various religious places in the area?


3. A conscientious Christian housewife said: "One of the things that 
bothers me is that now with several children I can't keep the house as 
tidy as I would like to have it." Discuss this problem and try to set a 
standard to guide a Christian mother in her housekeeping: can there be 
too much "order"? too little order?


4. Discuss ways of building an appreciation for Rome and the various 
European countries through which we have received our Christian 
culture.


5. Discuss the places in the community where "God is positively 
excluded." Do teenagers have difficulty in recognizing the places where 
God is excluded and the places that are occasions of sin? What kind of 
program can be suggested which would encourage teenage recreation at 
places and in ways consistent with Christian culture?



6. WORK

"What are you going to do when you finish school?" "Oh, get some kind 
of a job, I guess."

How many Catholic young men and women today give this vague and dreary 
answer to a question which should call forth intelligence and heroism, 
zeal and hope! And how many of us who are now parents, even those of us 
who had good Catholic parents and a good Catholic education, look back 
regretfully on many dismal years spent in finding out what our lives 
were for, convinced as we were that since God had not given us a 
priestly or religious vocation, He had no special plans for us at all.

But it is part of our faith itself to believe that God has a special 
plan, a vocation, for everyone, and that means for each of our 
children. And it is part of our faith to believe that this plan of His 
for each child is an integral part of His plan for the whole human 
race, for the upbuilding of the whole mystical Body of Christ to its 
final perfection.

Surely, then, one of our main tasks as parents must be to give our 
children a positive and realistic idea of the Christian vocation as a 
whole, and of the various vocations, professions, and occupations by 
which that vocation may be carried out by Christ's members. And we must 
also do everything in our power to equip our children to find out and 
to fulfill the part which God has given each of them in His great plan.

Obviously, all our home life, all our education and training should 
tend to give our children the great plan of the Christian vocation, "to 
know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His 
sufferings...doing the truth in charity, to grow up in all things in 
Him who is the Head."

But even if we teach our children the outlines of this great plan, even 
if we also show it to them in our daily living, our education may yet 
fail of its purpose if we do not give them some idea of the various 
ways in which this great plan actually is to be furthered by daily 
Christian life and work, of how it may be furthered not only by a man's 
general 'state in life,' but by the works of that state and, in 
particular, by the work by which he earns his daily bread.

For unless God gives our children a clear and early vocation to the 
priesthood or religious life, the necessities of earning a living will 
face them as soon as their schooling is over. And if we have not 
managed to show them how 'real life' and earning a living, in all its 
rightful forms, is meant to be part of the Christian vocation, the 
vision we have tried to give them of God's plan may well prove to be 
more of a torment than a guide, more a cause of schizophrenia than of 
sanctity. And what a waste!

Let us begin, then, to give ourselves as clear an idea as possible of 
all the rightful forms of human work, of how each of these has been 
'Christ-ened' by our Lord's own example and by the grace He gives us to 
work in Him and for Him, and of how each is meant, in God's plan to 
contribute to the building up of Christ's Body and to the re-
establishment of all things in Christ. For if we ourselves can truly 
see how the work of a farmer, a storekeeper, a train-dispatcher, as 
well as that of a doctor or teacher or priest can be truly a share in 
Christ's work, then we will be prepared to give our children an 
intelligent and comprehensive idea of real life and of the 
possibilities of their own future lives.9

Moreover, if our children really possess the Christian idea of work, 
then they will be able, with God's grace, to help make sense out of 
life for their fellows in high school or college, in their neighborhood 
or place of work, at that most trying and difficult age when one wants 
the best, but is learning to expect the worst. What a marvelous 
opportunity for charity this would be, were more Catholic young people 
trained to take advantage of it!


If we consider human nature, then, in the light of Christian teaching, 
we see that God made men as incomplete creatures, needing each other's 
services and many kinds of material and spiritual goods and services in 
order to exist and grow and perfect themselves. We see also that God 
made men to His image and likeness so that they could fulfill each 
other's needs and their own. As God is our Creator, He made men able to 
be makers: as He is Truth itself, He made men able to be teachers, 
communicating what they learn of His wisdom to each other. And as He is 
Goodness and Love, the end of all human wills, He made men able to rule 
and guide one another toward the ends of human life.

The work of mankind, then, consists in one way or another in making, 
teaching, and ruling, and, because of the very relation of men to God, 
in the work of uniting men to God, the work of priesthood. Farmers, 
herdsmen, miners, builders, storekeepers, businessmen, all who work to 
make or produce or make available goods and services, are, obviously, 
makers, and many of them are also rulers of their enterprises and of 
those who work under them.

A doctor is a maker of health and a teacher, as his name implies, of 
how to become healthy. A lawyer is (or should be) a maker of peace and 
order and a teacher of how to achieve it. A writer is a teacher of some 
aspect of wisdom and a maker of the story or play or poem or article by 
which he communicates his vision to others.

Now all this four-fold work of mankind was planned by God in the 
beginning. But it has been, obviously, warped and thwarted and 
perverted in many ways by sin and sinfulness throughout human history, 
as it has been made arduous and difficult in punishment for original 
sin. But it has all now been redeemed and consecrated by Christ our 
Lord, so that men can now, in Him and through Him, work as befits God's 
children.

Our Lord was anointed with the Oil of Gladness of the Holy Spirit at 
the very beginning of His human life, to be the Priest, the King and 
the Prophet of all mankind (see the Preface for the Feast of Christ the 
King and the ceremony for the Consecration of Holy Chrism). And the 
great work which His Father gave Him to do of making us all into a 
Kingdom, included during His life on earth the ordinary human work of 
making tools and furniture at Nazareth, and of making stories and 
sermons in His public life.

Since, then, by Baptism and Confirmation, we share in our Lord's life 
and His powers, His work and His purpose, we can in very truth work in 
Him, with Him and for Him. We can make the work by which we earn our 
daily bread a part of our Lord's one great work of building up the 
Kingdom of God.

In the first place, as we all realize from the words of the Morning 
Offering, because of our share in Christ's Priesthood as baptized and 
confirmed Christians, we can offer our lives and work and sufferings to 
God with Christ's sacrifice in the Mass. We were incorporated into 
Christ's mystical Body by Baptism. Our vitality as members of that Body 
is increased as we grow in grace; we are living and useful members to 
the degree of our union with Christ in love.

According to the degree of this union, according to the measure in 
which our life is at the service of Christ's life, our activity is 
somehow united with His so as to share in the value of His great work. 
The more perfectly Christian we are, then, the more whatever we do and 
suffer is united with His work and suffering, represented in the Mass, 
for the redemption of mankind. In this way, all our work and suffering, 
whatever its other value, may be transformed into a positive 
contribution towards the greater vitality, growth and perfection of the 
whole mystical Body, the welfare of mankind and the glory of God.

One of the deepest and most glorious truths of our faith certainly is 
that what is only waste and loss in terms of temporal value--mistakes, 
suffering, failure, and death itself--can, in Christ, have the greatest 
possible value, individual and social, for all eternity.

But our attempts to realize this should not make us forget that 
ordinary human work which does produce temporal results can also have, 
in Christ, its eternal value. No normal man wants to spend his time and 
strength and energy on mere busy-work or boondoggling. And normal men 
resent, at least subconsciously, that so-called Christian view of work 
which would make of it only a punishment, or a kind of busy-work to 
keep us out of trouble during our earthly exile.10

But this is, of course, nowhere near the glorious Christian truth. The 
fact is that all rightful human work duly satisfies a real God-given or 
God-permitted human need, has the eternal value of helping to build up 
the kingdom of God, the Body of Christ, to its full and everlasting 
perfection.11 The City of God is "not made with hands," the houses and 
statues we make will not last for eternity, neither will the books we 
write, the laws we frame, the institutions we establish. But the 
effects of all these things on the human beings who are to be the 
living stones of God's eternal temple will last forever.

The way in which a man is fed, clothed and housed, the way in which he 
is taught, ruled, and entertained, given the tools and conditions under 
which he himself does his work--all this affects the quality of his 
human living (and so of the meritorious value of his actions); all this 
aids or hampers his achieving his final perfection as the unique member 
of Christ's Body that God means him to be for all eternity.

When our Lord said: "Whatever you do to these My least brethren, you do 
to Me," He meant it as a fact, not as a mere manner of speaking, for in 
feeding, clothing, comforting, advising, guiding one another, we are 
actually 'edifying,' that is, building up the members of Christ's own 
Body.

Only God himself knows, of course, when and to what extent His grace 
makes up for our mistakes and failures and mistreatment in fulfilling 
each other's needs, so that somehow in spite of all this, 'all manner 
of things shall be well' and the perfection of the mystical Body and 
each of its members finally and beautifully achieved. But we do know 
that we shall be judged and given our place for all eternity on how we 
have tried to fulfill each other's needs..."Come," or "Go" as we fed, 
clothed, housed, comforted Him in His brethren.12

We can easily see that a well-planned and well-built house, for 
instance, contributes to the possibility of men's living a good and 
Christian life. The lack of proper housing is one of the chief 
occasions of sin and discouragement today a poorly planned and built 
house is a source of irritation; of waste of thought and energy that 
might have been put into prayer or study or needed relaxation or the 
fruitful service of others.

But a house planned for the needs of those who live in it and built as 
well as a house can be, conduces to contentment, to hospitality, to 
good human living and so to the more effective service of God and our 
neighbor. Clearly, then, the work of the architect, of the contractor, 
of all the craftsmen who gave their time and strength and skill to 
building such a house, in actual fact contributes objectively to the 
building up of the kingdom of God. So too, for all other forms of work.

But if our work is to have such an everlasting value (as well as a real 
temporal value), it must satisfy duly a true human need. This means 
that it must be done both charitably and skillfully, so that we try to 
find out and satisfy our neighbor's real needs rather than to seek our 
own gain, and that we try to satisfy these needs as well as possible, 
rather than try to get away with whatever a patron or customer will 
take. For, obviously, if the work we do is actually for the purpose of 
pandering to our neighbor's vices, of hindering him from leading a good 
life, it is serving not Christ, but the devil. And as we would 
certainly not offer careless, shoddy work to Christ Himself, so neither 
should we offer less than the best we can, or could learn to do, to 
Christ in our neighbor.

If we look at the list of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, we 
see that it adds up to a summary catalogue of human needs in an acute 
form. The only difference, then, for a Christian between performing a 
work of mercy and doing the work by which he earns his daily bread 
should be that he expects no return from the work of mercy, while he 
expects, in justice, to receive from his daily work either enough of 
its products, or a fee, salary, or wage sufficient to enable him to 
continue to satisfy his neighbor's need by means of his own particular 
skill, and to support his family and bring up his children to take 
their due part in the work of mankind, the work of Christ.

How fruitful and how wonderful, therefore, every rightful form of human 
work might be! As things are, few people besides priests and religious 
realize that they are co-workers with Christ and that their daily work 
has an eternal value of its own. And so the vast majority of Christians 
have lost the joy of this realization, and, what is worse, have lost 
the norms of what constitutes true and fruitful work.

Here is one of the chief causes for the desperate state of things in 
the world today. For the Christian truth is only the fulfillment and 
perfection of the true human idea of what work should be, and today we 
have almost completely lost both. While, thank God, many a doctor, many 
a small-town storekeeper or banker, many a farmer and craftsman still 
works primarily for other people's welfare, yet in general all kinds of 
vicious and artificial wants are mistaken for true "needs," the 
efficiency of machines and not the true welfare of the worker or the 
customer is the norm for what should be made, keeping up with or 
getting ahead of other people are the norms for success, rather than 
the true service of others.

Now, surely, it is the full Christian truth about work that we must be 
ready to give to our children. For if they are called to any form of 
lay life, they will have the double vocation of carrying out their own 
daily work as Christians, and of doing whatever they can to 
re-establish their chosen profession or occupation "in Christ"; to make 
it easier for others to work as Christians and to produce the full 
effects of Christian work and so leaven the whole of society. Or, if 
God calls our children to be His priests or religious, a part of their 
vocation will be to teach and lead and guide others by work and prayer 
toward the Christian idea of work.

In the next chapter, then, we will consider some concrete suggestions 
as to how we may best communicate to our children this Christian view 
of work and train them to work in accordance with it.


DISCUSSION TOPICS

1. Discuss the place of work in the life of a Christian. Is work to be 
considered primarily as a punishment imposed on man? A man has an 
independent income sufficient to satisfy his normal needs; would this 
man be a better and happier person if he did not work at all?

2. Contrast the basic Christian motives for work with the prevailing 
secular ideas about work. Analyze the various professions in terms of 
how their members seem to be motivated by Christian motives of work. 
How many workers get satisfaction from their work because they are 
filling a "true human need" of someone else? How extensive is the 
concept that work is to provide a service for others?

3. A husband works long hours and overtime because he wants to provide 
the "best" for his family. The wife works regularly away from home in 
order to increase family income so they can buy things of the same 
standard as their neighbors and friends. Do their motives reflect the 
Christian concept of work?

4. Discuss methods of developing a Christian idea of work in children. 
How far can children be expected to appreciate the deeper motivations 
of routine work at home? The mother of a family does most of the 
cooking, cleaning, and sewing rather than have her daughters help 
because, she says, "It's easier and faster to do it myself than to try 
to show them how--and besides, I can do it better." Is this the 
Christian approach?

5. To what extent should the father share in the work of homemaking? 
Should the wife assume that her husband will take over the chief 
responsibility for family work after he gets home in the evening? 
Should the husband and wife share equally the necessary work on 
Saturday afternoons and Sunday? How does a Christian philosophy of work 
provide a basis for solving this problem?


STUDY QUESTIONS

1. Classify the four ways in which man works.


2. Explain the meaning of the word "works" in the Morning Offering.


3. What is the principal purpose of work?


4. Why are the conditions under which men work important?


5. What is the difference between one's regular daily work and a 
spiritual or corporal work of mercy?



7. TRAINING FOR LIFE'S WORK AND PLAY

In the preceding chapter, we considered the Christian idea of work. We 
saw how this idea means, practically, that we can each in our own 
degree and way, work with Christ in His four-fold work of making, 
ruling, teaching and uniting men to God; that we can work for Christ by 
serving Him in serving one another's needs; and by this service, if it 
is true service, on however humble a level, we can help to build up His 
kingdom, both by the merit of our charity and by the objective effects 
of our work itself. How can we, then, best communicate this idea of 
work to our children and how can we best train them for it?

The first means must surely be to try to give them an ever-increasing 
appreciation of the sacrament of Confirmation. When the children are 
still quite young, we could, perhaps, ask our pastor to show us the 
actual Holy Oils as they are treasured in our parish church, and to 
explain the use of each. The children have already been anointed with 
the Oil of Catechumens and with Holy Chrism at Baptism; and we could 
tell even those who are small