Courageous Fathers

IF MOTHERS with a profound faith can give evidence of a courageous zeal, fathers animated by solid religious principles can also offer examples of singular magnanimity.

A young Jesuit who had come from a large family was stricken with a sudden fatal illness. Hurriedly his parents were sent for. When they arrived their boy was already in his agony and died before their eyes.

As soon as he had gasped his last breath, the father knelt down and leaning toward his wife asked, “If you will, dear, let us recite the Magnificat that God called our boy to religious life and that He took him at the age of Saint Aloysius.”

Pierre Termier, the famous Christian geologist had a son. One day, the boy who was then fourteen years old, came home from school in gay spirits. He took the elevator to go to their apartment. There was an accident on the way up and the boy’s head was badly crushed, causing instant death. The mother was overcome with grief. Her husband said to her, “Believe sincerely, my poor wife, that if God asks such a sacrifice of us, it is not for the pleasure of making us suffer, but for the eternal happiness of our child.”

In how many homes where death has come because of the war has God been able to admire heroic resignation like this and superhuman joys in trial!

Assuredly, the designs of Divine Providence are mysterious. Why, why have all these young lives been snuffed out before they were able to attain virtues or enjoy the achievements of maturity? There is doubtless the possibility for expiation; who will ever know the power for reparation that all these holocausts will have in the life of a people called to offer them?

Then too there are individual reasons. How do we know what would have become of so-and-so or such a one among the young men of our acquaintance if they had lived? Being mortal, they have died. Too young, no doubt. But who knows if this death in their youth has not assured their eternity? We judge as the world judges—the only precious thing seems to be life on earth. Really the only precious thing is eternal happiness. Perhaps many of these youthful dead, had they lived in our world of sin, mingling with sin, would have lived in sin and died in sin. Is it not better, a thousand times better that they should have fallen at twenty in a magnificent act of generosity than to fall later at fifty or sixty with hell facing them?

Without even mentioning hell, what do a few years more bring to life if they must be passed—let us suppose they have been so passed—in spiritual insignificance and moral poverty?

To leave, if leave they must, is it not better that it be in beauty and in the exercise of heroic courage?

To be sure these noble thoughts cannot suppress the sufferings of fathers or of mothers. But in whatever situation we may be or whatever trial we must endure ought not faith always animate us? God never permits evil except that good may come. That is the truth we heard Pierre Termier recalling to his wife before the dead body of their son. I must tell it to myself in every trial and especially when faced with the bereavement of a dear one’s early death.

“The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord;” that is how saintly Job spoke.

That is how I want to speak in my turn.