The Hunter and His Son – Plain Talks on Marriage

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, O.F.M., 1927

A man who had long given up the practice of his holy faith had a son of about fourteen years of age who had just received his first solemn Communion with sincere piety.

The father was very fond of him.

Shortly after the boy’s first solemn Communion the father accosted him one Sunday morning, saying he should get ready, for they were to go out together to hunt all day.

The boy replied; “Papa, I must go to Mass first.”

At this the father seemed to be peeved, and he rejoined: “Oh, you need not go to Mass now anymore; you are getting old enough to have more liberty.”

Now the boy appeared hurt, and asked: “Papa, does not the Third Commandment say: ‘Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath Day?'”

“Third Commandment, nothing,” answered the irate father; “that does not mean anything.” The boy gravely looked up at his father and said solemnly: “Papa, if the Third Commandment does not mean anything, then the Fourth Commandment which says: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother,’ does not count either. If I do not have to honor God, I need not honor you.”

At this utterance the father grew pensive. He feared if he would not relent, he would lose his hold on his son. He therefore said cautiously: “Well, maybe it is better that you go to Mass; and I will go with you.”

He continued to accompany his son to Mass ever after to his own and the family’s welfare and happiness. The reason many Catholic parents lose out with their children and have no sway over them is often because they themselves disobey God and ignore his authority.

“If God’s authority means so little to them,” the children argue, “why should my parents’ authority mean anything to me?”

A Catholic couple shows the fear of the Lord by receiving the sacraments worthily and often.

They would dread to take the chance of doing without the heavenly food of our Lord’s Body and Blood for too long. They go frequently, of possible; even every day. They not only approach the holy rail themselves, but they see to it, that all the members of the family communicate often. Their example alone will usually be a sufficient factor to bring this about.

 

“One of the first essential elements in a wife is faithfulness, in the largest sense. The heart of her husband safely trusts in her. Perfect confidence is the basis of all true affection. A shadow of doubt destroys the peace of married life. A true wife, by her character and by her conduct, proves herself worthy of her husband’s trust. He has confidence in her affection; he knows that her heart is unalterably true to him.” -.J.R.Miller

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Family Tidbits – Fr. Fulgence Meyer, 1927

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1927

Nature’s Sexual Mysteries

At the age of puberty, when the girls are about thirteen and the boys about fourteen years old, certain physical developments take place in the human organism, with the nature and purposes of which it is wholesome for the children to become acquainted gradually and circumspectly.

It is the part of the father to instruct his sons, and the duty of the mother to instruct her daughters regarding the origin, the meaning and the reproduction of life. It is far better that the children obtain, this valuable and necessary information from wise parents in a decent and sacred manner, than that they get it in a vicious and objectionable way from tainted and corrupt companions.

This instruction properly given will serve the children as a safeguard and protection in the dangerous years of adolescence.

When the angel informed our Blessed Mother that she was to be the Mother of God, she replied: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?” (Luke, 1, 34). Evidently, though she was but about sixteen years old at the time, she had a knowledge of the sacred process of human generation; and yet she was the purest of the pure, and more innocent than any angel of God.

Little Crosses: Big Crosses

Little children are said to be little crosses, while big children are said to be big crosses. Formerly it used to be said, that little children step on the mother’s dress, while big children step on their mother’s heart. Woman’s dress today renders this proverb out of date, but the nature of children is the same as ever.

Whatever those sayings may mean and be backed up by, parents make a big mistake in believing that their growing or adolescent children need their attention and correction less than before. They often need them more, although perhaps in a different way.

To achieve the best results in educating their children in the fear of the Lord, it is above all necessary that father and mother work harmoniously and mutually supplementarily.

In other words they work together hand in hand, upholding and endorsing one another, and the one supplies what the other lacks.

The mother will usually abound in grace, tenderness, sympathy, gentleness and kindness: the father will represent dignity, power, firmness, authority and discipline.

As marriage in general, the burden of education will be carried like a yoke. If both go into the same direction, aim at the same goal, and keep about the same tempo, the burden becomes easy, light and agreeable: whereas if one insists on going one way, and the other is stubborn about going into the opposite direction, there will be nothing but confusion, failure, disappointment and ruin.

For the sake of harmony, then, in this very important department of family life, wise concessions from both parties are much in order, and worth all they cost.

The Deadly Lake Ride

A story is told about the evil consequences of division or disharmony of parents in the upbringing of their children.

A girl had asked permission of her father to take a ride in a launch on the lake. It was Sunday afternoon. The father refused permission. He would not accede to the request, no matter how much his daughter pleaded.

When he left the house for a walk, the girl entreated her mother to allow her to take the ride. The mother yielded, but cautioned the child not to let her father suspect that she granted her the permission.

Several hours later a storm suddenly swept over the lake and surrounding territory. The father, who had returned home, was just telling his wife how much he was congratulating himself for not allowing his daughter to go on the lake, when a messenger knocked at the door to bring the sad news that the launch containing the girl and her companions was upset in the storm, and that all its passengers were drowned.

He added, that the corpse of the girl had been recovered, and was ready to be brought in by the men who were waiting outside. Imagine the consternation of the father, and the guilty and crushed feeling of the mother.

Such a catastrophe may not happen often in the physical order, but morally it is, alas, but too frequent.

The Shipwreck of the Soul

Many Catholic children suffer moral and religious shipwreck due to a lack of union and cooperation of father and mother in their education. And what has been said regarding the parents in their relation to one another in this matter, ought to comprise the teachers and pastors of their children also, in the sense that parents should cooperate all they can with them, too, in promoting the welfare of their children.

They will consequently defend and support the authority of pastors and teachers in all things, and never permit the children to make faultfinding or otherwise derogatory remarks about them; much less will they ever openly take a child’s part against the teacher or pastor.

No one is faultless. Teachers and pastors make mistakes as do other human agents.  But it damages rather than benefits the children, if their parents tolerate, or even endorse a critical, carping, disparaging and rebellious attitude on their part towards teachers and priests.

The Power of Love

The best, the most agreeable and effective way for parents to achieve fine results in rearing their children is by harboring for them, and plainly exhibiting towards them genuine, consistent, impartial, generous, sympathetic and unselfish love.

Love begets and elicits counter-love. It is easy for you to guide and train a child that sincerely and fondly loves you.

Enter into their interests, take part in their games and pastimes, as much as possible, and help them with their studies and other laudable efforts towards success. You will thus win their trust and confidence.

They will tell you their secrets, acquaint you with their ambitions, and inform you of their friendships and their loves. They will appreciate your counsels, and welcome your guidance.

It will be easy for you then to know the company they keep, the amusements they frequent, and the acquaintances they make. In other words, parental watchfulness, instead of being an irksome task, will be for you an agreeable duty.

Fortunate the child whose mother stands by its cradle like a Guardian Angel to inspire and lead it in the path of goodness! – Pope Pius XII

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The Important Choice

Front, – Fr. Kenneth Walker, 1986-2014, R.I.P.+

From Plain Talks on Marriage, Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1929

The Important Choice

The point of the choice of their state of life, or of their vocation, on the part of their children must be of great concern to parents, and should always enlist their keen interest, sympathetic guidance and substantial help.

Whilst the children are and should remain free in the choice of a vocation, the counsel and advice of the parents can be of great assistance to them.

But the parents must not grow dictatorial and narrow in the matter, nor allow themselves to be swayed by some blind prejudice or selfish leaning. Their exclusive aim must be the child’s own best interests.

Perhaps your sons or daughters want to consecrate themselves to God in the priesthood or the Religious life. If they exhibit any such tendencies, foster and nurse them prudently and fondly, thanking God for this great grace the while.

God can hardly confer a greater distinction upon a family than by calling one or more of its children to His exclusive service, either in His sanctuary as priests and ministers of the divine mysteries, or as friars, brothers, monks or nuns to pursue His works of religion, education and charity.

The opinion has been expressed—although it has never been authoritatively endorsed by the Church—that if a family gives a child to God in the way just mentioned, the entire family goes to heaven.

The Lord Is Generous

It would be imprudent to stress this mere opinion too far, but the gospel tells us that some of the relatives of the apostles got to be very close to our Savior; and they were no doubt drawn to Him through the apostles.

The Lord is as generous today as He was then. And the faith has been preserved in many a Catholic family, and in every member of it, mainly through the consecration of one of the children to God’s special service.

Hard as it may be for parents to surrender a child to God in this manner—He usually asks the best one—the pain of separation will be compensated for, not only by an eternal reward, but also by a hundredfold reward in this life, in the shape of the many joys and consolations coming to them directly or indirectly from this child.

From none of their children who remain with them and get married by and by, do they ordinarily derive the same comfort, even on earth.

God is good to those who love Him. Whereas, if parents thwart the high designs of a priestly or Religious vocation which God has upon their children, they may seriously incur His displeasure, and because of the various misfortunes resulting to them and their children, they may live bitterly to rue their selfishness and stubbornness.

On the other hand no prudent parent will attempt to influence a child unduly to become a priest or Religious in the absence of a call from on high. This would be exposing the child to the risk of serious unhappiness and spiritual disaster.

Question: If the home is such a powerful factor in the future of the children of a nation, why are such powerful groups in the nation arrayed against the home?

Answer: Precisely because the home is powerful. If it were not an important institution, the enemies of God and of man would leave it alone. Because the people who control the home control the future, because parents are the first representatives of God on earth, because within the home is the hope of morality . . . . for these reasons the men who wish to control the future, who hate God, and who would for their own selfish purposes wipe out morality attack the home openly or subtly.
-Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J.. Questions People Ask About Their Children, 1950’s

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The Excellence of Motherhood

 

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1927

Nature’s Great Mystery

The labor of childbirth for the mother remains one of the deepest mysteries of nature. Why something that is so necessary for the preservation of the human race should be coupled with so much difficulty, pain and danger baffles our understanding.

The fall in paradise and the consequent curse inflicted by the Lord upon woman hardly accounts for what we call the natural mystery; for human nature, whilst it dropped from its preternatural and supernatural elevation through the fall, is not worse or otherwise than it would have been, had it never been elevated.

Why then is childbirth naturally so arduous and perilous?

The Excellence of Motherhood

The best explanation seems to be given by the high dignity and sublime prerogative of motherhood. Nature demands a corresponding payment for whatever distinctions and privileges she bestows.

She confers no higher excellence and gives no loftier station than that of motherhood: hence the big price she demands in return in the way of maternal suffering, anxiety and dread.

Her reward for their endurance, however, is also in proportion to their size and intensity.

Our Lord expresses it thus: “A woman, when she is in labor, hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but when she hath brought forth the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world” (John, 16, 21).

By common consent mankind gives more consideration, appreciation and gratitude to the mother than to the father. We have a fine historical illustration of this in the rapturous exclamation of the woman in regard to our Savior: “Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the breasts that nursed Thee” (Luke, 11, 27).

She centered all her admiration and gave all the credit to the mother. Jesus had no father according to the flesh, of course; yet the woman was not aware of this when she declared her sentiments.

The mother naturally seems also to get greater joy out of parenthood than does the father. She feels a sweeter transport and a higher pride in being able to point to her children and say with the ancient Roman matron: “Behold my jewels.”

In view of all this a sensible woman willingly resigns herself to the ordeal of motherhood when she feels called to it by God.

What Mankind Owes to Motherhood

It was in and through motherhood that one of our kin was elevated to the highest dignity, and endowed with the sublimest sanctity any actual or possible created being is capable of :— at the incarnation of the Son of God.

Through becoming His Mother, Mary at once and forever rose above all the angels and archangels of heaven. Through her divine motherhood she more than repaired the loss inflicted upon mankind by the first woman.

For the paradise Eve deprived us of Mary gave us heaven: a prettier, a more blessed and a more glorious heaven than we should have had, had Eve never seduced Adam to sin.

So much we owe to motherhood. What a grand privilege, then, accrues to every woman who becomes and is a mother after God’s own heart!

Your job is to help them reach this state of full and complete independence in a gradual fashion. And your success as a mother will depend to a great extent upon the amount of emancipation you permit them as they step progressively toward adulthood. Therefore you should try to judge realistically when your children truly need your help and when they do not. -Fr. George Kelly, 1950’s https://amzn.to/2NXlMld

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The Black Sheep – Plain Talks on Marriage

by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1924, Plain Talks on Marriage

Lifeless Idols

There are parents who in regard to their children are very delinquent in the necessary vigilance. They are like the idols mentioned in the Bible: “They have mouths and speak not; they have eyes and see not; they have ears and hear not; they have noses and smell not; they have hands and feel not; they have feet and walk not” (Ps. 113, 6, 6, 7).

Their children practically do as they please, without let or hindrance of their parents. They go where and with whom they like. They stay out as long as they choose. They read whatever they fancy.

When, then, they become involved in some scandal, say the son or daughter becomes an unwedded father or mother, the parents throw up their hands in horror. They grow terribly indignant, and exclaim that they cannot understand why such a disgrace should ever have befallen their family.

But often they are more guilty than the child. They were mature in years and had the experience of life; had they watched properly and prudently over their children, their going and coming, and had they used kindness and firmness upon them according to their needs, the lapse would likely have been avoided. After it has taken place it is too late to wax indignant.

When the girl is in dire distress, and faces ostracism and disdain on the part of the cold and cruel world, and that from many apparently respectable people who in their private lives may be immensely worse than she has been, it is not the time for her parents to increase her mental tortures by apathy and severity, and thus perhaps to drive her to a worse crime than her first offense, namely to abortion and, possibly, suicide.

But then it is the part of sensible and conscientious parents to take her back to their hearts in warm and generous sympathy, forgiveness and love, and to tender her in her delicate condition every protection and assistance.

The Black Sheep

Of course, if without any recourse to sinful practices the matter can be kept secret, it must be done for the girl’s and the family’s sake. If it cannot be concealed, the girl and the family should bear the consequent disgrace with humble patience and resignation to God’s providence, and in the spirit of compunction and atonement for sin.

There are many worse sins done in public and in private, which the world does not visit with its scorn and excommunication, but which are nevertheless grosser and more damnable in the sight of God.

Whilst the parents are often as much or more at fault than the child that goes wrong, it must yet be admitted that sometimes the best parents, in spite of all their good efforts in the interest of their children’s education, are afflicted with a wayward child that brings shame upon the family and overwhelms the hearts of the parents with bitterness.

This is one of the mysteries of the inscrutable providence of God, which it is given us devotedly to adore, but never to fathom in this life.

Still it is good for all parents to remember that eternal vigilance is the price they are asked to pay for the welfare and felicity of their children.

In addition to this it is consoling for good parents of bad children to reflect that, even as the winter wheat that is covered with snow seems hopelessly dead and gone, but soon comes to view again under the sun’s glow, so, too, a boy or a girl that has grown bad, and appears to be desperately lost to virtue and to God, is of a sudden touched by God’s grace and the warmth of the parents’ love, and rises and thrives again unto goodness and holiness of life.

“I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves upon earth.” — John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Photo: Solemn Mass of Exposition for the Forty Hours’ Devotion on March 12, 2013 at the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in London.

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Family Tidbits – Fr. Fulgence Meyer, 1927

Frederick Brunner – Artist

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1927

Nature’s Sexual Mysteries

At the age of puberty, when the girls are about thirteen and the boys about fourteen years old, certain physical developments take place in the human organism, with the nature and purposes of which it is wholesome for the children to become acquainted gradually and circumspectly.

It is the part of the father to instruct his sons, and the duty of the mother to instruct her daughters regarding the origin, the meaning and the reproduction of life. It is far better that the children obtain, this valuable and necessary information from wise parents in a decent and sacred manner, than that they get it in a vicious and objectionable way from tainted and corrupt companions.

The Mighty Ballot

Plain Talks on Marriage, Fr. Fulgence Meyer, O.F.M., 1927

Catholics will do their duty especially by contributing their share to procure a good and wise government.

They will take a judicious interest in the political situation in order to be able to cast their votes sanely and efficiently.

They will vote at every state and federal election, and also at every important local election.

All things being equal, they will support their fellow-Catholics in their campaigns for public offices, in order to insure a just proportion of their co-religionists among the civil officials of the land.

While our Church enjoys great freedom in this country, it still has many bitter enemies here whose aim in life is the Church’s destruction. They are doing all in their power to disfranchise the Catholics by depriving them practically of the rights and privileges of American citizens.

They even want to despoil Catholic parents of their natural right to educate their children according to the dictates of their conscience.

These wicked men can succeed in their iniquitous and un-American endeavor only in one way, and that is, if Catholics neglect to use the weapon of defense given them by the constitution of our country.

This weapon is the ballot.

As long as Catholics use the ballot prudently, consistently and universally, no one will ever reduce them to slavery; but once they grow careless in the employment of this powerful weapon, it will be their own fault if they are subjected to an ignoble and tyrannical dominion.

It devolves, therefore, upon our Catholic parents not only to vote themselves in the interest of our right as American citizens – and to vote regularly at every election in order not to get out of the habit and be caught napping – but also to arrange that their children who are of age vote with them. In unity there is strength, especially with reference to the almighty ballot box of a nation like ours.

David and Goliath

The blatant bigotry rampant in various parts of our country may be likened to Goliath, the swaggering giant of the Philistines, flouting the chosen people of God and their religion.

The pebble from the sling of David, that felled the mighty Goliath, is a symbol of the ballot.

If all Catholics cast their vote with a true and sure aim at each election, the giant of intolerance, stalking abroad, will be reduced to impotence and disgrace.

 

“The very presence of a woman who knows how to combine an enlightened piety with mildness, tact, and thoughtful sympathy, is a constant sermon; she speaks by her very silence, she instills convictions without argument, she attracts souls without wounding susceptibilities; and both in her own house and in her dealings with men and things, which must necessarily be often rude and painful, she plays the part of the soft cotton wool we put between precious but fragile vases to prevent their mutually injuring each other.” – Monseigneur Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims, 1872 -Loreto Publications http://www.loretopubs.org/sins-of-the-tongue-or-jealousy-in-womans-life.html

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God Has Chosen You!

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, O.F.M., 1927

 

Life is often compared to a stage, upon which we are all given a part to play. God Himself has assigned our individual roles to us.

In calling you to the married state He has allotted to you a distinguished and arduous part on the stage of life. And if you are a parent, your part is immensely more sublime and difficult.

It is by no means easy to play well and creditably the part of a Catholic married person and parent. This requires virtue and ability of the highest order. Whoever in a dramatic play has to represent a difficult character, is glad to have someone instruct him and provide him with helpful cautions, hints and suggestions.

God Has Chosen You

You must above all remember, that God has chosen you for the part you must play on the stage of life; and since He has chosen you for it, He will supply you with the strength you need to acquit yourself of it satisfactorily.

Even if you married frivolously and thoughtlessly, or through mere passion or spite: now that you are bound by the marriage tie, you can be sure that God intended you should be bound thus: and consequently you can count on His help to achieve happiness and holiness in the marriage you have legitimately contracted, and from which you can no longer withdraw.

All regrets as to what else might have been, had you not married as you did, are idle and futile. What matters now is that you make the most of your present situation through good sense and the grace of God.

Do not make things worse by dwelling gloomily and pessimistically on your real or imaginary mistake in marrying as you did, and by thus increasing the evil effects of it: but rather make a virtue out of necessity, and turn your mistake, whatever it was, into a stepping stone to sanctity and everlasting glory.

To those who entered the convent or the priesthood without a vocation from on high, and who realized their mistake after they had bound themselves by the holy vows for life, St. Augustine said: “If you are not called, see to it that you be called.”

Similarly married people who, after they are married a while, find that they made a mistake in marrying at all, will apply the best remedy to their hard situation not by unavailing complaints or morbid self-pity, but by doing what they can to render their actual married life their real vocation.

With the aid of God’s grace many have done this to their great contentment and sanctification. What others have done, you can do too, with the assistance of the same grace.

Spiritually and religiously you may even thrive better for being unfortunately married.

A Vale of Tears

The fact alone that you are not fully happy in your married life, is not by any means a sign that you were not called or destined for it. No one, in the married or any other state of life, is completely happy on this earth.

God did not intend that anyone should be entirely happy. This earth will always be a vale of tears no matter how we arrange it, in marriage, in the single life in the world, in the cloister, in the priesthood, and everywhere else.

We are merely pilgrims or tourists steering towards our eternal home, and the more we are disposed to put up with the discomforts and annoyances of tourists or travelers, the less chagrined shall we be.

Even in paradise there was the forbidden tree and the insidious serpent. No home or family life can therefore be expected to be without some trouble and worry.

All we can do is to achieve a relative eternal happiness here below, as a preparation for an eternal happiness beyond. Marriage offers a good opportunity for the accomplishment of both.

 

 

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An Infallible Recipe – Plain Talks on Marriage

From Plain Talks on Marriage by Rev. Fulgence Meyer, O.F.M., 1927

What, then, is the recipe of happiness for a married person? It is contained in the words of my text: “Blessed are all they that fear the Lord.”

This is the recipe given by God Himself. If anyone knows the way to true and lasting happiness, it is the Lord Who created our heart and gave it its vehement and incessant craving for happiness. He condenses the whole manner of achieving happiness in the words I have quoted.

All other recipes of happiness, divergent from this one, no matter by whom they have been or are given, are false and misleading.

There is but one way for a Catholic couple to become thoroughly and permanently happy, and that one way is the fear of the Lord.

How does a Catholic couple practice and manifest the fear of the Lord?

First of all by worshiping God faithfully. They say their prayers every morning and evening. In their home, which is duly blessed, they pray aloud with the family before and after meals; this, too, when guests are present, let them be Catholics or not. Grace at table always makes a good impression on company worth having.

Family Prayer

Outside of their personal prayers, which should by all means include the daily examination of conscience and an act of perfect contrition, Catholic parents will see to it, that the family recite a certain prayer in common, called family prayer.

Not only is each individual member of the family expected to pray, but the family as such should in concert worship God and consecrate itself to Him afresh every day.

Father and Mother and all the children kneel down before the family crucifix and recite together the rosary, or a litany, or some other prayers as a homage of the family towards the Lord.

The best time to perform this prayer will usually be immediately after supper before the family disbands or retires. The prayer need not be long – it should not be so long as to weary and bore the children – but it should be said regularly and constantly by the entire family.

Nothing is more apt to keep the spirit of God and of faith in a family, and to assure it of the Lord’s continual blessing and protection than this family prayer.

And nothing will be more likely to guarantee the perseverance of all the family members in the true Church than this family prayer.

Your children will not remain with you long. Soon they will disperse into various directions. They will be assailed by all kinds of temptations against virtue and religion, and they may for a time grow lukewarm and careless in the practice of their holy faith.

But if in their childhood and youth they were held to take part in the daily family prayer, the remembrance of it, when with father and mother and brothers and sisters they dedicated themselves to God anew from day to day, will haunt them persistently, and give them no rest until they return again to the faith of their fathers and its regular and conscientious practice.

If, therefore, you have not yet introduced family prayer into your home, do it at once. St. Augustine says, that every Christian home is a little parish for itself. The parents are the priests, and the children the members of the parish.

It behooves priests to guide their parishes particularly in prayer; parents have the same office in their homes; and wherever it is well done, it invariably proves to be their most grateful and productive office.

The best time to start this family prayer is at the very beginning of married life.

Our work within the home can be transformed into a powerful prayer. One day of making meals and changing diapers, of reading stories and sweeping floors, when offered up, is worth much to Our Lord. Eventually we will see the merit we have gained doing just the small things….

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Education: When Does It Start?

Keeping in mind that this was written in a different era, it reminds us of the importance of this time of life for the mother and child….

from Plain Talks on Marriage, Rev. Fulgence G. Meyer, 1927

Education: When Does It Start?

Most of you have been blessed by God with offspring. Merely to have children is not a great credit; but to bring them up carefully in the knowledge, love and service of God is a credit.

To affect this abidingly all the good sense, virtue and tact of both father and mother are required.

When is the education of the child to begin?

As soon as it is conceived, or, rather, at the very conception. A child that is conceived whilst both its parents are in proper physical and moral condition starts with a better chance for a good and fruitful life than one at whose conception its parents are not in a condition fit for generation.

The nine months of gestation mean a great deal to the future life of the child. It draws the gradual formation of its body from the mother, on whose actual condition the state of the child’s body very much depends. Between body and soul there is a close interrelation of influence and condition. Consequently the condition of the expectant mother is very material to the child’s fate.

The Effects of Heredity

One must not stress the burden of heredity too far: yet there seems to be ground to believe, that many convicts who are in our prisons and penitentiaries today, women as well as men, would not be there, had their parents been in a more favorable state at their conception and gestation.

The mother, of course, plays the more important role here. She should therefore be attentive to herself in this sacred period of pregnancy. She must avoid every undue agitation and worry of mind, and eschew anything smacking of excessive or passionate indulgence. This has reference not only to drunkenness or lust, but also to violent anger, jealousy, envy, revenge, and to inordinate anxiety, fear, depression, despondency and melancholy.

All these and similar sentiments, when freely pursued, are likely to affect the mind and body of the mother in a sinister manner, and to have a disastrous influence on the child that is forming under her heart. It will behoove both mother and child, if the pregnant mother keeps herself well, easy and happy as much as possible in body and soul, and nurses feelings of the love of God and her neighbor, of trust and confidence in God’s

Sweet providence, and of virtuous resignation to His holy will in all things.

She will foster these feelings by the regular attendance at Holy Mass and by the frequent reception of the Sacraments.

On his part her husband will assist her towards this disposition of body and mind by behaving towards her, in the season of pregnancy, with more than ordinary love, tenderness, devotion, attachment, respect and consideration, which prompt him to anticipate her every want and to meet her most silent desires as much as his circumstances will allow.

Expectant Mothers and Sunday Mass

As to hearing the obligatory Mass on Sundays and holydays, some expectant mothers are exempt or dispensed early in their sacred period because of peculiar personal conditions: with the best will in the world they cannot attend Mass, for fear of nausea or some kindred indisposition.

Others again keep on assisting at Mass until almost immediately before the day of their delivery. In case of doubt as to the obligation, the pastor will gladly give a dispensation, or the confessor a declaration in the matter.

To discontinue going to Mass merely from embarrassment at the appearances and the consequent comment of others is hardly commendable, as a rule. It is certainly no dishonor, but rather an honor and a sign of God’s favor and blessing to be an expectant mother, and something of which a good woman has every reason to be justly proud.

Of course an innate feeling of delicacy will prompt a woman not to parade her condition unnecessarily before the world. For very good reasons God desired that the origin of human life should be veiled by a certain mysteriousness that shrinks from notice and publicity.

As the pregnancy progresses to the fifth and sixth month, the mother must be especially cautious not to exert herself unduly in a physical way. She will avoid heavy lifting, high reaching or jumping, and every other unusual tax on her bodily condition, in order to avoid a miscarriage.

The husband will see to it that his wife is then excused from all manner of work that is likely to jeopardize her health and the life of her blessed charge.

Involuntary Miscarriage

It happens not infrequently that, without any fault at all of the parents, a miscarriage ensues. This is deplorable, of course; but it calls for nothing else than conformity to the holy will of God, Who arranges everything sweetly and wisely.

In case baptism can be administered to the prematurely ejected fetus, it should not be neglected. The mother, taking notice of it, opens the involucrum or sack, and pours water over the contents whilst saying the words: “If you are living, I baptize you in the Name of the Father, aid of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

Life may still be there; if so, the baptism will open the gates of heaven to the child’s soul. In case the administration of baptism is out of question, the soul of the child will not go to heaven, it is true; but it will neither go to a place of torments; it will go to what is called the limbo of infants, where it will enjoy natural happiness in a high degree: in a higher degree than is tasted by children or men in general on this earth.

This is an opinion quite commonly held by theologians, and not at all frowned upon by the Church. At all events such a child is immensely better off in being as it is than if it had never been conceived at all: hence its parents who, as we suppose, had no guilt whatever in regard to the miscarriage, have no cause for worry or regret.

“In God We Trust”

When the time for the delivery approaches, the mother will not grow over-anxious, but she will entrust herself unreservedly to the goodness and providence of God. The less timid and nervous she is the more natural and easy will the birth prove to be.

On the other hand she will be prepared against every possible eventuality, both spiritually and materially.

Statistics tell us that the mortality of parturient mothers in the United States is about at the rate of one out of one-hundred and fifty. The proportion is lower than it used to be, thanks to the progress of medicine and surgery; but is still far too high, and we hope it will continue to be reduced until it is at its minimum.

All other things being equal, it is advisable to have a Catholic doctor and a Catholic wife or nurse at the birth. Often baptism must be administered before or during birth; and a Catholic may be counted on for doing this more reliably than a non-Catholic.

The wisdom and training you give to your child will determine the outcome. It is not the time to give in to weariness, indifference, laziness or careless neglect. Their souls are in your hands…. Painting by Tasha Tudor

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