ILLUSIONS OF YOUTH, VALUE OF TIME AT THIS PERIOD OF LIFE.
The age of youth is the age of illusions, ardent desires, and
fanciful hopes. Youth is like a fairy whose magical wand evokes the
most graceful images and the most alluring phantoms. This ignorance
of the doleful realities concealed in the future is a gift of divine
goodness which, in order that life might not be too bitter, casts a
beneficent veil over the sorrows that await us; God screens the
future from us to let us enjoy the present. Far be it from me to
remove this veil which renders you such kind service. But, apart from
this screen which the good God has placed between you and the
miseries of this life, there is another of a darker and heavier
shade, fabricated by the imagination, and which it draws with a
perfidious complacency over the object which it behooves us the most
to know and avoid--a seductive and deceitful veil which, while
presenting things to us in a false light, exposes us to most
deplorable illusions and inevitable dangers.
God permits that we should ignore many things, but He does not wish
that we should be deceived in anything. He is truth itself; error can
never claim His acquiescence.
If prudence and respect for God's work make it a duty for me to
leave intact the veil that He has drawn between you and the future, I
would consider it highly criminal in me if I did not endeavor to
remove that by which your imagination seeks to conceal its illusions
and its errors. It is not my wish or design to trouble the present by
exaggerated anxiety; but, on the other hand, I do not wish to leave
you under a false impression, fed by delusive hopes relative to the
future. My desire is that, while enjoying with gratitude and
simplicity the happiness or peace which God has bestowed upon you in
the springtime of life, you may profit by the calm and tranquillity
it affords you to prepare for the future, and to anticipate a means
of soothing its sorrows and bitterness.
While the soil of your heart is yet untilled and moist, and while
your hands are yet filled with those heavenly seeds which God has
given you in abundance, I desire that you may sow them in the light
and strength of divine grace, to develop in them the heavenly germs
which they contain, that you may be enabled to reap at a later time
an abundant harvest of virtues, holy joy and merit before God and
men. I desire that you may learn to turn to good account all the
natural resources that you possess, and acquire that knowledge of
yourself which enlightens the mind without troubling the heart; I do
not wish to discourage nor flatter you, I only wish to instruct and
fortify you.
Do not think that the river of life will always flow for you as it
does at present, broad, deep, calm and limpid, between two flowery
banks. Age will diminish those waters and deprive their banks of
their charm and freshness. The flame of passion, like a burning wind,
will rise, and more than once perhaps will bring to the surface the
mud that rankles in the bottom, and thus destroy its limpidity.
A day will come, and before long, when, stripped of all those
exterior advantages which please the senses, you will possess only
those qualities, less striking, but more solid, which satisfy the
mind and heart and attract the complaisant regard of God and the
angels. Youth will quickly pass, more quickly than you think, and the
subsequent period of life will last much longer, hence, in all
justice to yourself, let its preparation absorb your attention.
If you had a long sojourn to make in a place close by, would it be
reasonable on your part to pay less attention to the place of your
destination than to the few fleeting moments it would require to go
thither. Youth is not a stopping-place, it is a passage, a time of
preparation; it is to the whole life what the florid period is to the
gardener, or seed-time to the farmer.
Oh! if you did but fully comprehend the value of each hour during
this most important period of life, the value of each thought of your
mind, of each sentiment of your heart, with what extreme care you
would watch over all the movements of your soul, nay, even the
external movements of your body.
That fugitive thought which enters your mind, fanned by curiosity's
wing, may seem quite trivial; to dwell on and delight in it may be to
you something indifferent. That sentiment which, scarcely formed,
commences to germinate in your heart, and to produce therein emotions
so imperceptible that you are but imperfectly conscious of its
presence, seems insignificant at first sight; that unguarded glance
seemed to you a matter of no import, and which, at an earlier or
later period of your life, would have but little consequence. At an
earlier age the impression, it is true, would be lively but
inconsistent, and the levity of childhood would soon have replaced it
by another; later it would be found so superficial and trivial that
it would be soon forgotten among the multiplicity of thoughts which
absorb the mind at the age of maturity; but, during the youthful
years, everything that comes under the notice of the senses sinks
deeply into the soul, penetrating its very substance, the faculties
still retain all the vivacity of youth, while already they
participate in that firmness which is characteristic of the age of
maturity.
That thought is, perhaps, the first link in a chain of thoughts and
images which will be the torment of your conscience and the bane of
your life. That sentiment to which you imprudently pandered is
perhaps the source of countless fears, regrets, remorse and sorrows.
That imprudent glance is perhaps the first spark of a conflagration
which nothing can extinguish, and which will destroy your brightest
hopes.
If, as yet, you are ignorant of all the evil of which an imprudent
glance may be productive, recall to mind the example furnished us by
the Sacred Scriptures in the person of David, who, for his imprudent
glance at the wife of Urias, committed two crimes, the names of which
you should ignore, and suffered a life of sorrow, repentance,
bitterness and anguish: a life which even yet serves to express the
sorrow and repentance of imprudent souls who have yielded to the
allurements of the senses. And, nevertheless, David had attained the
age of discretion when the mind is firm and the will is strong; David
was the cherished one of God; he was just and virtuous, one on whom
God had special designs of mercy. What a terrible example! What a
severe, but at the same time instructive, lesson!
Young Christian soul, may it never be your sad experience to learn
the effect of an imprudent glance which would exact from you the
bitter wages of countless tears and regrets. Is there anything in the
material world so beautiful, so beneficent as the light and heat that
we receive from the sun; is there among material things a livelier
image of the goodness of God towards us? And, nevertheless, let the
sun shine upon the young and tender flower or vine immediately after
a shower of rain, and it will cause them to droop and wither. The
reason is quite obvious, for at no time is a being so frail and
delicate as at the moment of its formation. There is a critical
period for all beings, during which the greatest possible care is
necessary. In this relation, what is said of the body may be said of
the soul; character is formed and developed according to the same
laws which regulate the development of the physical constitution.
Are you not aware of the extraordinary care that must be taken of
those organs that are the chief motors of the body, while they are
under process of development? Are you not aware that the fresh air
which you inhale and which purifies and invigorates the blood
contains for you the germ of death, which justifies in your good
parents the anxious care they take of your health, but which you
perhaps regard as entirely unnecessary?
Now, what the lungs are to the human body, that the heart is to the
soul. It is by the heart that we breathe the spiritual and divine
atmosphere that sustains our moral life. This atmosphere is composed
of three elements,--truth, goodness and beauty, which envelop and
penetrate the soul's substance; as it is the respiratory organ of the
mind it follows that for the heart, as well as for the lungs, there
is an epoch of development which is dangerous, and which,
consequently, demands the greatest possible care; it is the epoch of
your age at present. An emotion too vivid, an indiscreet thought, an
imprudent glance, is quite sufficient to imperil the interesting and
delicate process by which your moral constitution is formed, to
accelerate the development of the heart, and thus give to this most
important organ a pernicious precocity or a false direction.
Your mother, anxious and always trembling for your welfare, guards
it with tender solicitude from all the dangers to which it might be
exposed. But her vigilance cannot equal that of your guardian angel,
nor the care with which he removes you from contact with all that
might in any way tarnish the purity of your soul, or trouble its
peace and harmony. It is to you that the Holy Ghost addresses these
words of the Proverbs: With all watchfulness keep thy heart, because
life issueth out from it. [Footnote: Proverbs iv 23.]
The heart is, therefore, the seat of the moral life, and as the
source is known by the waters that flow from it, so will the moral
life partake of the character and bear the impress of the heart
whence it proceeds. This is true of youth in general, but more
particularly so of young ladies.