OBEDIENCE TO PARENTS.
In the natural order of things, man, after having obeyed his parents
in his youth, becomes in turn the head of another family which he
must govern by the authority of his word and example. God has given
to woman another vocation. She obeys from her childhood, and
obedience becomes more necessary to her as she advances in years; for
when she quits the paternal roof for the one of her choice, it is
still to obey and be directed by the will of another. But in this
second moiety of her life she often finds the practice of obedience
more difficult and painful than it was when she lived with her
parents. More than once has the young woman, allured by the deceitful
charms of a false liberty, left with a secret joy the paternal roof,
hoping thereby to be delivered from the duty of obedience which
weighed so heavily on her heart. But, alas! she has often been
obliged to regret those days as the happiest of her life, when the
tender solicitude of a mother rendered submission sweet and easy.
God, whose Providence is infinitely wise, has disposed all things in
such a way that each epoch of life is a preparation to that which
follows; strengthened by the labors of the past, we are fitted for
those of the future, and prepared for the accomplishment of the
duties of to-day by our fidelity to obligations less difficult of
yesterday; we are thus imperceptibly and safely conducted by this
graded scale to the end for which we were created.
Hence you may consider the present as your noviciate to the future;
the family circle at home is the image of that with which you must
live at a later time; and while your duties and trials will vary with
your position, there is one obligation that always remains
invariable; that is obedience. If you have learned well how to obey
your parents whom God has given you, you will find it easier in after
life to bend your will when obliged in submission to that of another.
At present holy obedience is not painful to you; on the contrary, it
is a pleasure, as it is a means by which you can please your dear
parents whom you love; and by force of habit it is now so deeply
engraved in your heart as to be an act of second nature. But other
times and other circumstances will present new difficulties, when
perhaps you will be obliged to obey a man of your own age, possessed
of none of those qualities that give authority and prestige to command.
The familiarity that exists between the married couple which, when
truly Christian, is one of the greatest charms of their life, not
unfrequently becomes for woman an obstacle to the observance of
obedience; but she has reason to rejoice when her delinquency does
not diminish the sacred authority of her husband's commands. The lady
who has been docile to the orders of her parents will be docile to
those of her husband; for as we are assured by Holy Writ, our
accomplishment of the duties that God has imposed on us relative to
our parents is rewarded even in this life; as likewise our
delinquencies on this point will incur heaven's displeasure.
The paternal home should be for you a school of respect, obedience,
gratitude, and love; and these virtues should be constantly
manifested in your conduct; for, mark it well, you will be in the
position destined for you later by God what you are presently in that
which you now occupy. There is a logical succession in all our
actions, whether good or bad. In each one of your actions may be
found the germ of another which, being developed in due time, will
produce others. The same is also true of that happy or unfortunate
succession of thoughts and affections which is developed into habit;
and which is engrafted in our very souls, forming, as it were, an
integral part of our nature. From our infancy, God, in His infinite
goodness, has given us a facility to do good, which in the course of
time can be strengthened by habit; it will enable us to surmount
obstacles and dangers that increase with age, but which are ignored
in childhood.
The individual practice of respect, obedience, confidence; and
gratitude is necessary for the preservation of society; and in order
to render this practice easy for us, God, in loving goodness has
removed from those beautiful flowers of virtue, whose perfume should
embalm our whole life, the thorns that might pierce us. He has
confided their care to those to whom, after God, we owe our life, and
towards whom we are drawn by an invincible inclination of the heart.
When we merge into the noon-tide of life we find these virtues
already engrafted in our souls, with little trouble to us, for they
were planted there by the hands of good and pious parents; and, as a
reward for our fidelity to their instructions, those cherished
virtues take deep root in the heart and grow imperceptibly as we
advance in years.
But if, instead of being docile to their orders, we have stubbornly
resisted them, if, by some unaccountable egotism, the soul has become
concentrated in herself; and instead of giving our confidence and
love to those who have so generously given their life and means to
secure to us the happiness we enjoy, we rest satisfied with living on
the fruits of their labors without making them any return; we will
carry with us later on into the family of our choice only a withered
heart, dead to every noble and generous sentiment.
You should respect and honor your parents with the filial love of a
Christian daughter. Such is the precise meaning of the precept given
you by God in their regard: _Honor thy father and thy mother!_
Relative to you they hold God's place, who is the source of all
paternity in heaven and upon earth. Nothing can dispense you from
this respect which God requires for them, and which nature ought to
render easy to you; for, even when your parents would suffer by a
criminal negligence the image of God to be deteriorated in their
souls; they always remain His representatives for you, because they
are always, no matter what they may do, the instruments that God
employed to give you existence.
The faults of your parents should never diminish in your heart the
respect and honor that you owe them; and in certain painful and
delicate circumstances, you should imitate the example of the two
sons of Noah in order to escape the malediction that fell upon Cham
for his impudent strictures of his father's faults. You should
carefully draw the mantle of charity over any fault of your parents
that might tend to weaken your respect for them. Silence should seal
your lips forever on all their shortcomings, even before those who
know them, unless that it be to ask advice in some critical
conjuncture, or bring them to receive some useful and charitable
counsel. God alone should be the depository of your sorrowful
confidence in this matter. To Him alone you should confide your
sorrows and alarms, because He alone should hold the first place in
your mind and heart, for He will be your judge as well as theirs.
If you see that a salutary effect may be obtained by a prudent and
respectful observation, be slow in making it, and never act before
having consulted some virtuous and enlightened persons; should they
advise you in the affirmative, let your observation assume the tone
of a remonstration rather than a warning. Your language, actions or
gestures should never savor of anything that betrayed a disregard for
that profound veneration with which you should honor in them the
title of God's representatives in your regard. An unfortunate custom,
the fruit of a bad education, or of an excessive tenderness on the
part of parents, has sadly vitiated the nature and form of the
relations that should exist between child and parent.
During the present century in many places a fatal familiarity seems
to have sapped the very foundation from that profound respect which
was the honor and glory of the Christian family, and the salt that
preserves nations from corruption; that respect which children, who
truly feared God, paid to their parents. To that beautiful order that
reigned in the Christian family, and which preserved inviolable the
father's authority in Christian times, has succeeded a spirit of
equality as hostile to the natural order as to the order of Divine
Providence, since it destroys both rank and duty. It gives birth to
that false independence which may justly be called the seed of
revolution and anarchy; no consequence is more natural, for what can
be expected of a citizen who imbibed in his childhood, under the
paternal roof, the spirit of disobedience and insubordination, who
was taught to regard superiority with a jealous eye, and treat with
contempt those who are beneath him.
After paying due respect to your parents, they should be, after God,
the depositories of your confidence, and since a daughter's wants are
more easily communicated to her mother, it is in her mother's heart
that a Christian daughter will deposit the secrets of her own. This
filial confidence supposes, also, in a young lady a sincere
diffidence in her self, a consciousness of her own weakness which, so
far from being a fault, is the result of true humility. Those young
ladies who are wanting in confidence in their own mothers are indeed
great objects of compassion. For this confidence is not only an
essential condition to their advancement in virtue, but also one of
their principal safeguards against deception and intrigue.
The heart of woman, especially at your age, feels an imperative need
of making a confidant of some one, and if that one is not her mother,
it will be some friend who, perhaps, will not possess greater
experience nor more wisdom or force than herself, and consequently,
instead of giving the proper counsel, will add evil to evil by the
fatal help of encouragement in a course that should be abandoned.
Rest assured that you can never find any one able to fill the
mother's place in this regard. This unreserved abandonment to a
mother's confiding heart is not always possible, since death often
interferes. When such is the case it is a great misfortune for a
young lady--a misfortune that can scarcely be retrieved in her
lifetime. It is easy to recognise a woman whose soul has been
fostered in that of her mother. Such women ordinarily possess a
milder disposition, a more amiable ingenuousness, with a certain
simplicity of heart which, without being prejudicial in the least to
her mind, adds a new charm to the noble and generous virtues which
become the mother of a family. Those habits of confidence and
abandonment contracted from childhood have made frankness and
sincerity second nature. Their love for truth and sincerity is
revealed in their conversation, the sanctity of which is the echo of
their souls. Their whole demeanor sheds such a halo of delight around
them that they become, unpretentiously, the centre of attraction for
all those whose enviable pleasure it is to be honored by their company.
If up to this hour you have concealed nothing from your mother; if
you have given her the key to your soul; if your heart is for her an
open book; if she can at all times read in your looks your very
thoughts; on bended knees thank God from the depths of your soul for
having given you such a mother, and the grace of giving her your
confidence. If you remain a child to your mother you will preserve
your youth through the toilsome days of life to a ripe old age, an
advantage so precious that nothing should be left undone to secure it.
Woman is pleasing to others only in as much as she possesses this
adornment, which exhales a sweet odor like the perfume of youth.
Alas! how many women there are who have never been children even with
their mothers. Women from their youth, they have treated their mother
with a kind of diffidence, dissembling at an age when the only danger
to be feared should be an excessive confidence.
As for the gratitude and love that you owe your parents, I would
regard it as an injury offered to the candor of your age and the
sincerity of your heart to undertake to prove that these are
obligations which you are in duty bound to discharge. God who has
commanded us to honor our parents, left us no precept obliging us to
love them; but while He engraved other commandments upon stone this
one He has written in the very essence of our being. Hence I appeal
only to your heart in this matter, leaving you entirely to its
instincts to point out to you your duty, which to assert by any other
proof, I fear would lead you to suspect that there are children
unnatural enough to forget and neglect their parents.
Bear in mind, however, that your love and gratitude for them must by
no means be restricted to a sentiment of the heart or an instinct of
nature. Those virtues must find an echo both in your words and
actions. Love founded on sensibility has no signification, if you can
make no sacrifice to obey or please them. Love in man is effective,
and this is why our Lord tells us with regard to the love we owe Him:
_He who loves me keeps my commandments._
To love consists in pleasing him who is loved; it is prefering his
will to our own, his interests to ours; in a word, it is to seek him
rather than attract him; it is to become his property rather than to
appropriate him; it is to forget ourself to think of him. Love lives
upon sacrifices; as the pious author of the Following of Christ says:
_where love is, there is also pain: but love converts that pain
into pleasure._ If this be true of all the affections of the human
heart; what shall we think of the one that we have first felt, and
which in some way forms a part of our very nature?