“all My Trust”

“I GET all my trust from my mother,” Joan of Arc used to say.

Pauline Jaricot, Foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, could say the same. Every evening her mother used to gaze into her eyes to read the story of the day’s fidelities to God’s law which she had explained to the little girl with much unction.

Something similar took place in the training of the boy Augustine in Malegue’s, “The Master is Here.” Never did his mother reprimand him for his failings without reminding him that he had grieved Little Jesus.

“It makes Little Jesus sad when you stamp your foot because you want to go home or when you refuse to leave the table so that it can be set just because you are busy doing a water color in your Christmas drawing book.”

Each day he was expected to learn two Catechism questions.

“Every morning after breakfast in Big Catherine’s kitchen, mamma heard the recitation of the two Catechism questions she had explained the evening before. Tiny sister Christine balancing herself on her yet unsteady legs used to pull at mamma’s dress. That would be just the time when the baby would set up a howl in his cradle.

“Mingled with this morning hubbub were the words of Theology. They were difficult and impressive words. They were like the words grown-ups use when they don’t want little children to understand what they are saying. It is true that mamma put other words in their place to explain them.”

Happy the man to whom God gives a saintly mother! This verse of Lamartine will always be profoundly true!

Who can tell the mother’s great power to make the Faith take root in the mind of the child and to plant seeds of the most beautiful virtues in his heart. And will we not have to give primary credit to these first lessons of childhood for whatever remains of trust in the mind that has reached maturity and for whatever generosity exists in the souls that have been buffeted by life? The forces of mature age owe much to the lights and inspirations of early age.

Monsignor d’Hulst in one of his famous conferences at Notre Dame in Paris referred to this idea: He said that when a man wants to justify his moral principles he will search his past to find their origin; he will discover that they seem to trace back farther than the beginnings of his conscious thought; they will seem to him as submerged in that distant past when his life was still bound closely to that of his mother and he was as yet unable to sustain himself without the tenderness of her supporting arms.

Should it happen that a child loses his mother at an early age, her memory will remain and protect him. But if she lives what a help she is above all if she has a great soul, a soul that knows how to watch and to pray; to watch without being too obvious about it; for she will not want to awaken haughty resistance; to pray more silently still without however neglecting her duty of good example in prayerfulness.

Ozanam, writing to a friend, stated that he seemed to benefit almost every moment by the nearly constant presence of his mother.

Let me as a mother examine my conscience. By bringing children into the world I have accepted a sublime mission. To give birth to children is in itself something wonderful. But to rear children, how much more difficult! How close to God I must be to lead all my little ones or my big ones as the case may be to the heights of the divine and to help them live on this high plane.

I must grow. I must educate myself. I must acquire what I lack.