Serious Hours of a Young Lady Part 8

CHAPTER XIX.

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. G.o.d 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.

G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sured by Holy Writ, our accomplishment of the duties that G.o.d 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, grat.i.tude, 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 G.o.d 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, G.o.d, 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 grat.i.tude is necessary for the preservation of society; and in order to render this practice easy for us, G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d in their regard: _Honor thy father and thy mother!_ Relative to you they hold G.o.d's place, who is the source of all paternity in heaven and upon earth. Nothing can dispense you from this respect which G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances, 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sume 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 t.i.tle of G.o.d'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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 compa.s.sion. For this confidence is not only an essential condition to their advancement in virtue, but also one of their princ.i.p.al 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 a.s.sured 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 n.o.ble 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 sanct.i.ty 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 G.o.d 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 grat.i.tude 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sert 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 grat.i.tude 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?

CHAPTER XX.

MELANCHOLY.

It will perhaps seem strange to you to be warned in the bloom of youth against a sentiment that seems to be reserved for that period of life when delinquents, through the infinite goodness of G.o.d, are brought to enter into themselves; when the illusions of the heart have been replaced by a cold and sad reality; when hope seems to recoil under the weight of sad recollections. Still, because this mental canker preys on the most vital interests of the soul, and because a predisposition to it is found to prevail even among the youthful portion of your s.e.x, a certain knowledge of it is necessary in order to resist it effectually.

It is most delightful and consoling to find in persons of your age and s.e.x that pure joy, so frank and candid, springing out of the innocence and simplicity of the heart; a good conscience and a lively faith, with unbounded confidence in Divine Providence; all of which combine to produce that sweet and saintly cheerfulness which dilates the heart and lights up the soul with its amiable reflections. But, alas! we confess with deep regret, that many young ladies have been ruthlessly robbed of all those charms by a precocious development received under the world's tutorship, by which they have been made to cross with a bound the smiling season of hope and joy, to a premature old age before having tasted the charms of youth.

In order that joy may reign in the heart, the heart must first repose in the bosom of Divine Providence--free from the pressure of doleful souvenirs, and from the pestering desires stirred up by vanity; in a word, exempt from every obstacle, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, that might in any way oppose the designs of G.o.d. But, alas! by some unaccountable inconsistency, we are in contradiction with ourselves; for, notwithstanding our great desire to live, and our horror of death, still we seem to be in a hurry with the time to pa.s.s, as though we advanced too slowly to the grave.

Now, we are well aware that of this lifetime the present is all that we can claim, the past and future being in the hands of G.o.d; still, true to the same principle of inconsistency we make little or no use of the present, it is something annoying that we wish, to get over, as quickly as possible, while we are absorbed by a countless mult.i.tude of useless but importunate desires relative to the past, which we can never recall, and the future, which perhaps we shall never see.

Hence, as we journey onward in this way, we must naturally find ourselves a prey to fears and doubts, sometimes suspended between hope and despondency, while the heart is hara.s.sed by corroding desires that succeed each other like waves on a tempest-driven sea.

We wish to be our own providence, to dispose of our own future of our lifetime according to those desires, instead of leaving that work to Him from whom we have received all that we possess.

When we are a.s.sailed by regrets in the evening, and filled with anxieties for the morrow, how can our heart rebound with joy, or our lips wear the smile of confidence and tranquility? Behold some of the many sources from which the fatal fiend of melancholy is fed and strengthened. But this vile destroyer of peaceful joy springs from another source not less fatal than those just mentioned. That is a certain vagueness of mind and heart, which is sometimes the result of some physical or bodily indisposition, but more frequently the consequence of an imperfect education, or indifference in the service of G.o.d.

That which gives to the mind its needed a.s.surance and strength, and to the heart its consistency and solidity, is a lively faith, nourished and sustained by a sincere piety. Of this you are thoroughly convinced, as you know full well that faith alone can give a solid basis to our thoughts, a true direction to our desires, and an eternal destiny to our hopes. Without faith the mind is without ballast--unsettled as to what it ought to believe or reject; the heart ignores what it should fear or hope for; in a word, the soul is lost in the midst of her vacillating desires.

In order that faith may impart its vivifying influence it must penetrate the soul's substance, and become to her the principle of a new life, directing all her movements, animating all her thoughts, desires and hopes. A superficial and inactive faith that is purely exterior, satisfied with believing what G.o.d reveals, without quickening the spiritual pulsations of the soul, will not preserve her from that vagueness and uncertainty which deprive all objects of their natural colors, and lend them a sombre shade which saddens the heart.

If you would escape falling a victim to melancholy, preserve your faith with precious care, enliven it constantly by fervent prayer, by meditation and the abundant graces received through the Sacraments.

Let its pure light be the rule of your thoughts and actions, accustom your mind to dwell upon things that are practical, and consequently useful, sedulously avoiding all speculative or doubtful topics, that have no other result than to keep the mind in a state of suspense and indecision. You will fare better in having a clear knowledge of practical things, even at the cost of appearing less learned than others.

A third source of melancholy is a species of mental idleness, concerning which women are exposed to labor under a false impression.

As they are naturally given to manual occupation habit begets with them an antipathy to mental labor; their judgment is readily but erroneously convinced by their feelings, which easily lead them to believe that they are sufficiently occupied when their fingers are engaged in fixing an embroidery or something similar. To reason the matter, they will readily admit that labor exclusively manual having no share in the exercise of the mental faculties, cannot be considered to give sufficient occupation to an intelligent being; since the imagination would be left to the mercy of its caprices and the heart to the whims of its desires, which is not worthy of a being created to the image and likeness of G.o.d, who commands us to labor as He labored, namely: with mind and heart constantly supplying useful thoughts to the one and n.o.ble sentiments to the other.

Such is the heavenly duty enjoined by those consoling words of our Saviour: _pray always_. At first sight it would seem that such an obligation is impossible and contrary to human nature. We cannot, however, even suppose that He who has made man what he is, misunderstood his nature so far as to command him to do impossibilities.

Every thought that raises the mind towards G.o.d, every sentiment that brings the heart near to Him, is a prayer. Hence there is no occupation that may not become a prayer, since there is none that may not be referred to G.o.d. The duties and obligations of woman, far from being an obstacle to the practical exercise of the above principle, on the contrary favor its execution most admirably; for her duties, though of the manual order for the most part, are not of a nature to distract the mind or absorb the heart; she can easily and constantly concentrate the thoughts of the one and the affections of the other upon G.o.d.

That you should make G.o.d the object of all your actions is your first and most imperative duty, and the moment that you discharge your duties for any other end that moment they shall lose the dignity of deeds worthy of a Christian or even of a rational being; moreover, your mind, as you are fully aware, is endowed with perpetual activity, it is never idle,--you need only chose the objects to which you wish to apply it. But if you fail to apply it to things worthy of your sublime calling it will soon escape from your control, and, flitting from one trifle to another, it will meddle with objects that might become dangerous to the peace of your soul. It will soon become preoccupied by puerile fears, unfounded apprehensions, vague sadness, which, when constantly indulged in, will deliver your soul over to melancholy which never fails to tarnish the purity of the heart and enervate the energy of the will.

The pain that many suffer from their imaginary ills robs them of the n.o.ble and generous love of compa.s.sionating the real and painful griefs of others. Egotism is nurtured and fortified in those ravings which attach the soul's energies to the consideration of our own ills or sorrows; the heart grows cold and hardened in a deplorable insensibility which estranges it to every sentiment of pity and compa.s.sion for others.

There is, I am aware, a sorrow that is salutary to the soul, and conformable to the spirit of Christianity, as also to man's condition in this vale of tears. I know that it is very difficult to be always joyful, when we take into account the dangers by which we are surrounded, the countless calamities to which we are exposed since the day that sin had entered the world. We very often see the objects of our warmest affections disappear from around us; and every day some new misfortune or some new loss adds some new tears to our cup of sorrow, from whose bitterness every one is doomed to drink during life.

Far from me be the thought of engaging you to fly this holy sorrow imposed by our condition and recommended by our Lord Himself.

_"There is,"_ says St. Paul, _"a sorrow according_ to G.o.d"

which, far from plunging the heart into a state of despondency, enables the soul to avoid the dangers which constantly expose her to lose G.o.d by sin. But this sorrow does not trouble the peace of either the heart or the mind, for it is that sorrow which our divine Saviour called blessed, and for which He has promised consolation.

Far be from me, also, the thought of advising that foolish and boisterous joy which carries away the soul, absorbing all her energies filling her with void and disgust. This joy, far from being a remedy or a protection against melancholy, is, on the contrary, both its cause and effect. The result of those intemperate paroxysms of joy, so little in conformity with our nature is that which invariably results from any forced or undue influence.

When shackled nature recovers her liberty she revenges the violence that she was made to endure. But, seizing her rights with too great avidity, she suffers more from the reaction than from the force that infringed upon them. This explains the reason of those fitful outbursts of joy and grief that pa.s.s in quick succession. Those puerile fears, followed by hopes, without rule or aim, that vain confidence giving place to sad discouragement. Those despondent feelings after moments of zealous fever, during which we seem to be able to do and attempt everything. Here we find the solution of those sudden and varied shades of temperament which will instantaneously cheer or prostrate the energies of the soul.

If you would preserve your soul from melancholy, conserve your heart in a calm composure, your mind in a just equanimity keeping both equally distant from all extremes able to taste joy with discretion, and sorrow without becoming discouraged. This will be putting in practice the advice of the wise man: Give not up thy soul to sadness and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. The joyfulness of the heart is the life of man and a never-failing treasure of holiness, and the joy of man is length of life. Have pity on thy own soul, pleasing G.o.d and contain thyself; gather up thy heart in his holiness and drive away sadness far from thee. For sadness hath killed many and there is no profit in it. Envy and anger shorten a man's days, and pensiveness will bring old age before the time. A cheerful and good heart is always feasting, for his banquets are prepared with diligence. Eccl. x.x.x. 22-27.