Formation of Character/conscience (2)

THERE is a story that at a certain Honor’s Day a prize was offered to a lazy little fellow by way of consolation; since he did not come in for any victories in achievement, he was given a prize for the best health. He must have had a flair for rhyme for according to the legend this was his response:

I don’t care for the prize I did not really earn; Why, to get my good health, I did not make a turn.

To be rewarded for something which had caused him no effort, which represented no attainment on his part seemed odious to him. Lazy though he was, he did not lack intelligence or a sense of disinterestedness.

Most children are quicker to understand the notion of punishment as a just consequence for a wrong done.

They are well aware that to be able materially to accomplish an act is not one and the same thing as being permitted to do it. Children very quickly grasp the idea that Monsignor d’Hulst explained in one of his masterful talks at Notre Dame in Paris:

“We can compare physical necessity to a rigid iron or wooden barrier: As long as it holds out it is impossible to break through; if one does succeed in breaking through it is only because the barrier was knocked down or broken. Duty, moral obligation, is also a barrier, but a spiritual barrier; we can cut through it as we would through a ray of sunshine. Its bright line marks out very clearly the limits beyond which we must not pass; if we happen to violate it, it lets us pass but closes behind us to continue forming a frontier of light between good and evil.”

Whoever does break through this bar of light merits punishment.

How easy it is to profit by the awakenings of morality in the child to help him see clearly into his conscience. We teach him his prayers, the Act of Contrition for example: “O my God, I am very sorry…”; he has no trouble understanding; he knows he has acted badly, that he should not have pulled his sister’s hair, disobeyed papa, wanted his own way. He has broken through the bar of light. Even if mother did not see him, someone did and that was God; a kind of inward voice tells him very quietly that he is guilty, that he must make up for it by being sorry, by asking forgiveness, by accepting the little pain that will come to compensate for the pleasure that he had no right to take.

Perhaps it will be necessary to reverse the order of the words, proceeding from the natural to the supernatural. Nothing is simpler: “Regret, sorrow, penance, offense against God, a God infinitely good…. How many difficult words; yet their meaning will unfold bit by bit.

Then when the time for confession comes, when he must say “I confess to Almighty God” only the word confess will seem strange, but only the word not the act; the child will have no difficulty making his accusation. Get him into the habit of making his little examination of conscience; he will tell you his “sins” out loud. I “confess” that is I “admit”; he will understand that he ought to admit and admit to God who is so good all the wrong that he has done.

“Through my fault,” I should not have done it. But when I have confessed it, it will disappear, it will be wiped out. And then, of course, I must not do it over again; I must not break through the bar of light again. “Therefore I beseech You. . . “ Another difficult word he must learn, but a reality that he does not yet see . . . to be good he must have God’s help. By himself everything would be too difficult! How children do stumble over that “by means of Your holy grace” in their Act of Contrition and sometimes we don’t blame them! Yet beyond the vocabulary so poorly adapted to them lies a reality which is quite within their power to grasp!