Training in Generosity

THE child is instinctively selfish, but he easily learns generosity. His training should be directed toward it.

Little Rose of Lima’s childhood was marked by a series of accidents, maladies, and sufferings which the crude treatment of that time often aggravated rather than relieved. When only three months old she crushed her thumb under a trunk lid and the nail had to be removed. She also had to undergo an ear operation which was followed by a skin disease that began on her head; her mother treated it with a salve which burnt her so severely that the surgeon had to treat her for weeks, removing proud flesh so that the healthy skin could heal.

Thanks to her mother’s exhortations, this little girl of four years bore the cruel pain with an astonishing calmness and in perfect silence. Are not the staggering mortifications we see her imposing on herself later due to her early training?

Like all little girls, she was vain and took considerable care of her hair which was very beautiful. Her brother used to throw mud at it and get it all dirty just to tease her. Rose became very angry, but the brother, recalling perhaps some sermon he had heard, assumed a preaching tone on one of these occasions and said to her solemnly, “Take care, vanity will be your ruin; the curled hair of girls are cords from hell which bind the hearts of men and drag them into the eternal flames.”

Rose did not answer, but bit by bit began to understand . . . and she detached herself. That detachment prepared her for greater sacrifices and soon we see her offering her virginity to God.

Jacqueline was another little girl, a little girl of our own day, who learned the lesson of sacrifice. She was sick and suffering much. “Oh, I believe nobody has ever had pain like mine!”

“Where does it hurt?” she was asked.

“In my stomach, in my head, everywhere!”

“Think of Saint Francis who had a red hot iron applied to his eyes as a treatment. . .”

This time her attention was caught. She forgot her own misery to sympathize with her dear saint whom people had hurt.

“Did they cure him after all that?”

Guy de Fontgalland had to have many strychnine injections in his leg.

“Offer it to Jesus, my darling,” suggested his mother. “He was crowned with thorns for love of you.”

“Oh yes, that is true and He kept the thorns in His head while they quickly removed the needle from my leg.”

A mother had three children; the oldest was four, the second, three, and the baby, twenty months. It was Good Friday. Why not encourage them to offer Jesus on the Cross some little sacrifice which would cost them a little?

“My children, I will not deprive you of your chocolate candy at lunch today; but little girls who love Jesus will know themselves how to sacrifice their chocolate.”

She made no further reference to it. None of the children answered. That evening the mother was very much moved to see the three chocolate bars at the foot of the Crucifix. Our Lord must have smiled at the childish offering; one of the candy bars bore the teeth marks of the baby who had hesitated before the offering and begun to nibble on her chocolate.

These stories of successful lessons in generosity are encouraging. What others have achieved, can I not achieve too?