p. 162The Father’s Supreme Duty

They gave me a master who was rich in high virtue, the Margrave Henry of Austria, who served women with full loyalty, and spake ever nobly of them as a knight should. He was mild, bold, and of a high heart, wise with the wise, and foolish with the foolish; he endured labor for the sake of honor, and his mouth never spake a bad word; to all his friends he was generous and faithful; and he loved God from his heart. This worthy master said to me: Whoever would live well, must give himself up to serve a woman. He taught me much of his gentle virtue, how to speak of women; how to ride on horseback, and to compose sweet verses; he said, Thereby will a young man endear himself to people, when he can praise women with gentleness, and when he loves them more dearly than himself: for (said he) that which arises from a flattering and lying mind can never succeed with the good. Had I fulfilled all that he said to me, I should have been worthier than I am.

Ulrich Von Lichtenstein.¹1“Duties owed to Women.”

Reverence,—the Grand Feature of Christian Homes

The happiness of the world and the salvation of society itself, must depend on the manner in which women, within the home-sanctuary, mold men to loftiness of soul and gentleness of life, while the father and husband, by word and example, teaches his sons a sovereign respect for every one that bears the name of woman.

Do not pass lightly over this thought, as if the practical chivalry it inculcates belonged to the society of the past, or as if this supreme reverence for woman could never again become the worship of all Christian homes and the distinctive virtue of all young men who are proud of their Christian mothers, and proud, too, of doing homage to her who is the ever-blessed Mother of Christ.

More priceless than all the treasures ever buried in the bosom of the deep and recovered by the appliances of human skill, are such fundamental truths as this, which await the serious inquirer in the very first pages of the Gospel.

We all know how the first words of prophecy ever uttered by man,²2Genesis, ii. 21, 22, 23, 24. were inspired by the Deity³3Matthew, xix. 4, 5, 6. and applied to the divine institution of Matrimony. He who came to restore this fundamental ordinance of the divine economy to its primitive unity and firmness, and who perfected all preceding legislation in His law of charity, generosity, and self-sacrifice, also gave, in the lives of his Mother, of St. Joseph, his foster-father, and in his own private life at Nazareth, the examples of the very home-virtues needed throughout all time.

She who was to be the Mother of the Redeemer, had been united to her kinsman Joseph by a true marriage,—a marriage founded on exalted and mutual affection. Both had left father and mother and the whole world to cast their lot together, under God’s wonderful guidance, in poverty, toil, obscurity, and perfect union of hearts. It was a union sanctified by so special a grace, that from the virginal love and life of both was to spring and blossom forth that Tree of Life in whose blessed fruits and leaves was to be the healing and salvation of the world.⁴4Apocalypse, xxii. 1, 2. Just as John the Baptist, His forerunner, was endowed before his birth and through Mary’s instrumentality, with a grace that made him shine like the morning star, the precursor of the sun,—even so were both Mary and Joseph privileged with the purity and holiness that fitted them to be the parents and first companions of the Holy One of Israel.

Threefold Reverence practiced at Nazareth

We find in the lowly home at Nazareth of Joseph and Mary, honored during thirty years by the presence of the incarnate Son of God, the practice of that threefold reverence, which has been characteristic down to the present century, of every Christian family and state,—the reverence for God, for parental authority, and for woman. More than ever, at a time when false science and revolutionary socialism league themselves together to destroy the foundations both of domestic and of civil society, does it become necessary to insist upon this threefold reverence, without which all the glory of our civilization must disappear forever.

The Christian family, wherever it was free, during the past eighteen hundred years, resembled the settler in some one of our lovely valleys in the interior,—along the course of the Susquehanna, the Wyoming, or the Connecticut. He had placed his home high above the stream, so that the sweep of no inundation could reach it; and for generations had beheld from his secure position the fields and farmsteads far and near laid waste in spring by the devastating waters. But lo! he wakes up from his fancied security one morning to see a portion of the bluff on which he has built, ingulfed in the swollen river, and to discover that the swift-flowing waters are slowly but steadily undermining the very soil beneath his foundations.

This Reverence now more than ever Necessary

The waters of unbelief are daily rising higher and higher, undermining the hitherto secure foundations of the family and the community; the captious errors of the socialist and the communist are sinking deeply into the minds and hearts of the vicious and idle who will not work, and of the hard-toiling poor whose work is but ill requited,—like a conflagration which acquires fiercer destructive force from everything it preys upon.

We must build the home far away from the mighty flood and high above the reach of the flame,—on that Rock of Ages which alone can withstand the utmost violence of the deluge, the fiery tempest, and the earthquake. It behooves us, therefore, to convince ourselves thoroughly of the deep practical truths to be learned by children and parents, by rulers and subjects, by families and by nations, of the Hidden God, who toils, obeys, and grows in all spiritual loveliness beneath the roof of the Carpenter Joseph.

I. Reverence for God

The prodigious self-abasement of the Word made Flesh,—taken in the whole compass of his mortal life, was one perpetual act of reverential submission and loving expiation offered for the entire race of man by Him who had become the Second Adam, to repair the ruin caused by the blind pride and selfish sensuality of the First.⁵5“Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith: Sacrifice and oblation Thou wouldst not; but a body Thou hast fitted to me. Holocausts for sin did not please Thee. Then said I, Behold I come: in the head of the book it is written of me, that I should do Thy will, O God.”—Hebrews, x. 5, 6, 7. “Who in the days of His flesh, with a strong cry and tears, offering up prayers and supplications to Him that was able to save him from death, was heard for his reverence.”—Ibidem, v. 7.

The infinite reverence with which the Second Eve, the Mother of our Life, accepts to be associate with the Crucified in his labors, humiliations, and self-sacrifice,—is set forth most eloquently in the simple words of her answer to the angel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to thy word!” And then, how that absolute and heartfelt reverence for the expressed will of the Deity, is manifested in the pains such a Mother takes to separate herself from all the scenes in which her Son is glorified by the people, only taking her place,—woman-like and mother-like,—by His side when He is lifted up on high in shame and agony! And was the cry of that motherly heart, pierced by a sevenfold wound, not heard along with His, when He “was heard for his reverence,” as He yielded his spirit to his Father?

But what of him who was the visible head of that lowly and most blessed household of Nazareth? what of Joseph, the “just man,” true and perfect in the discharge of his office as custodian of God’s chiefest treasures on earth, as husband to such a wife, and foster-parent to such a Son?

See, when the first perplexity assails him, how promptly and unhesitatingly he yields obedience to the injunction of the heavenly messenger: “Fear not to take unto thee Mary, thy wife!” How reverently he complies with the divine command when bidden to fly without preparation or provision across the wilderness to Egypt, trusting himself and his precious charge, on the way thither and while there, to the guidance and care of the Most High and his angels! The same reverent and trustful submission shines forth in his receiving the order to return to his own country, and to fix his abode at Nazareth. Were not he and Mary the ready pupils in all this of the Divine Babe who grew up beneath their roof and their nurture,—like the Lily of the Valley beneath the shade of twin palm-trees, embalming with its fragrance and delighting with its simple beauty only the obscure corner of earth on which it grew!

II. Reverence for Parental Authority

Respect for man can only come from respect for God; a loving and conscientious obedience to human authority can only be found in the man who sees the majesty of his Divine Author reflected on the brow of parent, prince, or magistrate. There can be no degrading submission to the voice or will of father and mother in the home, when the child is taught and feels assured that they speak and command in the place of the Heavenly Father. There is nothing but ennobling obedience in observing the laws of Church or State, in accepting the authority of Pope, bishop, and priest,—of emperor, king, or president,—when the reverent eye of faith sees the Eternal Lawgiver behind the earthly legislator, and the knees of the heart are bent to the Infinite Majesty, as man bows down before His representatives here below.

When our Emmanuel gave himself a mother upon earth and consented to pass for a time among men as the son of the Carpenter Joseph,—He did so with the design of teaching all after-ages in His own person how they were to reverence father and mother. He interrupts the obscure life of toil, poverty, humility, and obedience which he was leading at Nazareth, to show Himself in his twelfth year at Jerusalem the true God-Man, already fitted by the plenitude of his wisdom to teach Israel and enlighten the world,—and lo! after proclaiming to his parents and to the audience assembled in the Temple, that he has an indefeasible right to “be about His Father’s business,”—he becomes once more the docile and dutiful child, returns with them forthwith to Nazareth, and thenceforth till his thirtieth year “was subject to them,” and, as the pregnant years succeeded each other, He “advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.”⁶6Luke, ii. 42-52.

This is the order of nature, carried out by its very Author when he came to repair and to teach the world: it is and ever must be the law of life and of all intellectual and moral advancement, so long as the world exists and as man continues to be what he is.

Shall we ever lay this truth to heart—that human society, both in the Home and in the State, is paternity, dependence and loving progress in all moral worth, much more than that “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” which sets one half of the human race to cut the throats and burn down the homes of the other half?

III. Reverence for Woman

Do we, in this nineteenth century,—this age of boasted progress and freedom from old prejudices,—marvel at that noble ancestor of a long line of emperors, who was so “rich in virtue,” and “who served women with full loyalty, and spake ever nobly of them as a knight should”? We forget that she who, being the Mother of our Head, is thereby the Mother of us all, was looked up to by Him with all the reverence which the best of sons ever paid to the best of mothers. We forget also that Mary was treated with supreme reverence by the angel, by Joseph, her husband and protector, and by St. Elizabeth, their cousin; and that this reverence pervaded the entire Christian family down to the age of the Reformers, forming the very spring and soul of Christian chivalry and the guiding principle of domestic education.

Read over the passage of the Evangelist St. Luke, in which is related the Angel’s message to Mary, and weigh well the reverent words of salutation:

Then listen to the almost adoring words of Elizabeth, who, like her unborn babe, was filled with the Holy Ghost, as soon as the Mother of the New Life, the Eve of the new creation, the living Ark of the New Covenant,—had crossed her threshold:

And then, as the Divine Spirit rushes upon her own soul, and opens out before her eyes the book of the future, the trials and triumphs of the Christian church,—her prophetic soul hears every succeeding age bending before herself with reverence and repeating the words of the Angel and of Elizabeth:

“Behold from henceforth all generations shall call me Blessed!”

Joseph’s respectful and faithful service to Mary

From the hour that the Angel discloses to Joseph the august mystery of Mary’s Motherhood, he understands, this chaste Joseph of the New Testament, that he is infinitely more honored than Obededom of old. For, it is no longer the figurative Ark of the Mosaic Covenant that he has the honor of sheltering beneath his roof; but the true Ark, and the abiding presence of the Incarnate Deity bringing with it untold blessings.⁷7“And the Ark of the Lord abode in the house of Obededom the Gethite three months: and the Lord blessed Obededom and all his household.”—2 Kings, vi. 11.

Thenceforth he understands it to be in conformity with the divine plan that he should devote himself,—every thought, and aim, every aspiration and pulse of his heart, every day and hour of his life, to the service of that most blessed Mother, and the preservation of that Life of our life, from its first tender blossoming on the root of Jesse till its glorious maturity on the Tree of Calvary.

He knows that the Babe intrusted to his keeping is one to be “born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God;” in the light vouchsafed him from on high, he sees that until the time appointed for his Emmanuel’s manifestation by John, He was to be, in his life of absolute dependence and laborious obscurity at Nazareth, as if he were in the eyes of the nation “without father, without mother, without descent.” The blood of David in the veins of the high-souled Carpenter, and the heroic spirit of David firing his heart, will thenceforth prompt him only to deeds of unhesitating devotion and self-sacrifice to protect both Mother and Babe from the manifold perils which beset them.

How tenderly, how reverently he watches over her during the period that Emmanuel remains hidden within the Holy of holies! How full of sovereign respect, and love and tenderness is the solicitude with which he guides her to Bethlehem, when “the fullness of time” has come! And who can appreciate his mingled grief and humiliation, when the City of David casts forth the Lamb of God in the cold midnight hour to be born in a cave by the roadside! And then follows the touching story of the hurried flight to Egypt, when Christ, the Hope of the world, and his humble Virgin-Mother, are left, under God, to the care of this other most true-hearted Joseph,—intrusted with a charge infinitely above the administration of the broad empire of the Pharaohs.

Can we wonder, that this man, so holy, so true, so honored by God and his angels, who was the guardian of Christ,—the Head and Parent of regenerated humanity,—and of Mary, the type of the Church, should have been so reverenced in all Christian lands, and that, in our own days, he should at length be solemnly proclaimed as the Guardian and Protector of the whole Christian family?

We have, therefore, in the very first pages of the Gospel history set before our eyes that Holy Family,—as it has been called by the reverence of Catholic ages,—that most august household in which Emmanuel grew up from infancy to boyhood, from boyhood to modest and gracious manhood, subject all the while to his parents, both Mother and Child respecting in the Carpenter the divine seal of that fatherly authority, whose prototype and fountain-head is in the Eternal God.

Woman ever reverenced in Catholic Households

There never has been, since Christianity began, a Catholic family in which Christ, his Mother, and his foster-father Joseph, have not been a reality most familiar to the mind and dear to the heart. Indeed, every household in Catholic lands has been modeled on this sacred home of Nazareth. The devotion of Joseph to Christ and his interests, his reverent service toward the blessed Mother and her Babe, his living faith and unquestioning trust in the all-directing providence of God,—have been the virtues proposed to the imitation of Christian husbands and fathers. Every man within these homes professed to reverence in wife, mother, and sister, the dear and lofty image of Mary’s spotless excellence. Nor, all through the countless hosts of chivalrous men, who professed to honor women, was there to be found one true man who had not been trained to imitate St. Joseph, and to reverence in all women Mary Immaculate, the sweet Mother of the children of God.

These men saw with their own eyes, that, in the women of their families, “Goodness gave greatness, and greatness worship.”⁸8Ben Johnson, “New Inn.” And old Chaucer, toward the close of the middle ages, gave expression not only to the heart of Catholic England, but to that of all Christendom, when he wrote:

If such was the universal respect paid to women, so many ages after the death of the Blessed Mother of God, and all through heartfelt love for her who is also our sweet Mother,—what, think you, must have been the love and worship paid to her by the husband into whose hand and heart God gave her to keep, to honor, to cherish?

The Rule of Catholic Households

It is impossible that any true Catholic man should think deeply of these things, and make of the holy and elevating sentiments they inspire, a guiding principle in his home-life, without reverencing and worshiping his wife, the mother of his children, the angel of his hearth and heart. It is quite impossible, where true love in the husband is begotten and hallowed by deep piety toward our Lord and his Blessed Parents, that it should not be manifested in a chivalrous devotion toward the wife and mother; that his home should not be blessed with noble children,—true “children of God,” full of loving submission to father and mother, and prompt to fulfill every duty of home-life and citizenship.

Reverence for Women a Want of our Age

Besides,—and this observation is not without its opportuneness at the present moment,—our Divine Solomon is most anxious that we should find in the hidden and unfailing treasures of instruction laid up for us in the brief records of his own private home-life, what is most needful for our own day and country. Unfortunately, to very many Catholic families, these treasuries of revealed truth are like the magnificent reservoirs of Christ’s great ancestor, Solomon,—constructed so many ages before the Christian era with such forethought and munificence, they are now discovered, by English and American explorers, at the cost of much money and labor. Uncared for, unknown, hidden away in Jerusalem, half-choked by ruins, or far away in the neighboring mountains where the gigantic works are scarce known to rulers or people,—are they not the lively image of our own splendid birthright of truth, lying around us and beneath our hand, while we cry out for the living waters, and the land is desolate in its moral barrenness?

If families and communities in our nineteenth century will only apply themselves to the study and imitation of these God-given models of private holiness and public virtue,—if all classes in society will only revive in their hearts and homes and lives this threefold respect for God and His Law, for parental authority, and for womanly purity,—we need not fear the inflow of new ideas or the changes threatened by political revolutions.

The Ideal Excellence of the Life at Nazareth most eminently practical

The supernatural light vouchsafed in such abundance to the Blessed Mother and her noble companion aimed at a life of extraordinary and continual devotion and self-sacrifice in the cause of God’s highest interests and of man’s salvation. Their life-work was to be that of Christ. They were to be identified with Him, and their actions to be lost in the splendor of his career,—just as the planets nearest the sun, though sharing most in its warmth and brightness, are lost in the surpassing effulgence caused by the very nearness of the mighty luminary.

The obscurity, the apparently purposeless inactivity of Christ’s hidden life at Nazareth, was no mystery to Mary and Joseph, how much soever it may puzzle the rationalists or half-Christian biblicists of our modern literature. If our divine Model wished to mark out, by the deeds and virtues of his brief public life, the road which apostolic men in the church and statesmen in civil society should be studious to follow,—He assuredly wished no less to make of the long years spent beneath the roof of Joseph in toil, poverty, obedience, and growth in all Godlike excellence, a lesson to be taught and imitated by the weary and heart-sore millions of the laborious poor.

His parents were enlightened from above to seize the divine purpose both in the one and the other;—and, just as they set themselves with their whole hearts to study and copy Christ in his long probationary humility and toil, so did their inflamed love of the divine glory dispose them to follow Him.

We can thus conceive, that both husband and wife in that most blessed household, would encourage each other to copy to the life all the excellences of the dear Model they had ever before their eyes,—and even, were that necessary, exhort Him as he grew up beneath their care, to run his own giant race of obedience and self-immolating charity. Such was the heroic Mother’s purpose, when she “stood” beneath Him in his terrible death-agony, and with her most assuredly would have been present Joseph, had he been then among the living, to support and cheer both herself and her Son in the accomplishment of this supreme act of conformity to the divine will.

Nearness to Christ in both these august personages, meant, therefore, the closest fellowship with him in abnegation, suffering, and all magnanimity. It meant, practically, the closest resemblance to Him whom they studied more nearly, copied more faithfully, followed more devotedly than any of his dearest disciples.

Thus, in the three persons of the Holy Family, we have the most perfect embodiment of purity;—and purity, let us not forget it, is always strength of soul, and the principle of heroism in action. And, as it is impossible to honor and to practice purity without reverencing and honoring woman, so the study of Christ’s life at Nazareth and piety toward His Mother, begot throughout early and medieval Christendom, that spirit of chivalry which went hand in hand with the highest heroism in designing and accomplishing great things.

A reasonable curiosity which is not exclusively distinctive of scientific men, but belongs to all of us, leads to seeking out the sources of great rivers and gazing with wonder at the lake or the rivulet which is the head and well-spring of the mighty stream. So let us look for a moment at some of the sources in the household piety of Catholic nations, of the heroism, courtesy, and gentleness of manners which we couple with chivalry and the knightly enterprises it originated.

Hear Christian Spain through her Ildefonso of Toledo:

“O my Lady, and my sovereign mistress, Mother of my Lord, handmaid of thy Son, parent of the world’s Creator! I pray and beseech thee that I may have the spirit of thy Son, the spirit of my Redeemer, that I may think of thee true and worthy things, speak of thee true and worthy things, and utter whatever is most true and most worthy concerning thee.”

“Yes, I desire to become the servant of the Mother of my God; and why I should desire this, they know who love God, they see who are faithful to God.... But not so ye, O wise of this world, who by your wisdom are made fools, and who reject this doctrine, who refuse to believe that she alone should have Him for Son, whom every creature hath for its Lord. But I, as the servant of her Son, desire to have the testimony of submission to his Mother. Thereby, what serves the handmaid is referred to the Lord, what is shown to the parent redounds to the Child, what is paid to the Queen passes to the honor of the King.”

“By this Virgin God has come, and having gathered together the nations and the languages, we have seen his glory as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father. We have flowed to Him from all people, we ascend to this Lord, to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob, which is the Church of the living God.”⁹9De Virginitate Sanctæ Mariæ.

To Love the Mother means to Love the Son

And this tender and universal feeling toward the Mother of regenerated humanity only served to deepen the love felt for her Son. What St. Augustine wrote toward the close of the fourth century held true of all those which followed, while the reverence for the new Adam and the new Eve spread with the Church all over the world:

“To them who believe,”—the great Doctor says,—“the beautiful Spouse (Christ) is presented at every turn,—beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in miracles, beautiful in sufferings, beautiful inviting to life, beautiful not heeding death, beautiful laying down life, beautiful receiving it back again, beautiful on the Tree, beautiful in the Sepulcher, beautiful in the celestial Kingdom. The weakness of the flesh does not turn aside their eyes from the splendor of that beauty.”¹⁰10In Psalmum, xliv.

How Catholic Ages Meditated on the Heroic Deeds of Christ and His Mother

In the days of Augustine and Monica, of St. Patrick, St. Bridget, and St. Ildefonso (died 667), it had become the custom for the Christians of both East and West to divide the Psalter into three divisions of fifty Psalms each, which they recited or chanted in public. But for the unlearned poor, and the multitudes who toiled in the city and country, in forest and field, far away from the churches, the sweet custom arose and spread of reciting the Psalter of the Incarnation or of the Blessed Virgin, consisting in repeating the Angelic Salutation fifty times in each division. And this they did in order to proclaim thereby their living, loving faith in Him whom all the Psalms and other inspired writings foretell and proclaim as the Father of the world to come, while they saluted at the same time with heartfelt reverence the Mother whom they could not dissociate from him in life or in death, on earth or in heaven.

Thus, in the age of St. Bede (the venerable), who died in 733, this manner of praying prevailed all throughout France and England. “The beads used to be suspended with veneration in churches and public places, for the accommodation of all who wished to use them. We read of St. Eloy that for a certain devout lady he made a chair adorned with one hundred and fifty gold and silver nails, that by the signs of the nails she might repeat the Psalter of Blessed Mary.”¹¹11Digby, “Compitum,” book ii., ch. ix.

This led step by step to what is known as the Rosary, a most beautiful form of mental and vocal prayer, perfected by St. Dominick in the thirteenth century, and which has ever been so dear to all Catholic homes and hearts.

Chivalrous Zeal for the Spread of God’s Kingdom

So, all this sweet and devout thought of the mysteries of Christ’s life,—this familiar contemplation of the three great figures of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the studied story of our redemption, begot in souls, together with the love of purity, reverence for woman, and a mighty desire to imitate and glorify the Redeemer, by spreading his faith and his reign in all lands.

Although the age of chivalry has passed away, and, it is thought, the spirit which animated it has disappeared for ever with the institution itself, yet the general favor shown in our age for the works in prose and poetry which set forth the glories of ancient knighthood,—would prove that this spirit is still a living reality. Thank God, we know it to be such wherever in the English-speaking world the beautiful productions of the Bard of Chivalry¹²12Tennyson: see his “Idyls of the King.” are still read with admiration by old and young.

Also to Purity as the Brightest Ornament of Chivalry

The piety begotten by this daily meditation of the sublime mysteries of Christ’s life and a familiar acquaintance with the heroic achievements of his apostles, martyrs, and principal saints, prompted men not only to become knights for the protection of female innocence and weakness,—for the defense of the Church and the recovery of the Holy Land from Islam, and for the extirpation of infidel and heretical rule,—but it also spurred men on to such enterprises as the recovery of the Holy Grail,¹³13The Holy Grail (French, Sangréal, or Sang réel, the very blood of our Lord), was, in the Arthurian poetry, supposed to be the Cup which our Lord used in the Last Supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea had collected the drops of blood which fell from Christ on the Cross. when lost by the sin of its keepers, and to the high and spotless purity which could alone enable one either to see or to recover it.

The virgin-knight, Sir Galahad, who is privileged to recover and possess the sacred treasure, is the youngest of the knights of the Round Table:

Sir Percivale and his Saintly Sister

A nun, the sister of Sir Percivale, himself a blameless youth, had risen to such a height of purity and holiness, by her fervor in expiating by voluntary austerity, the scandals she heard of in the outside world, that God also granted her to see the Holy Grail as it was borne away from its unworthy guardians at Glastonbury. Says her brother:

So, this saintly girl, anxious only to stir up in chosen heroic souls the spirit of purity and self-sacrifice as a remedy to the social poison that was leavening souls in the world, chooses Sir Galahad for her champion,—the one destined to recover the Holy Grail, the palladium of England’s Christianity. She binds his sword around him with a belt she has made herself:

Such was their conception, in these ages of faith, of the purity which adorned the souls of Joseph and Mary, of the ardor which such holy wife could breathe into the soul of such holy husband, of the unearthly love which bound them together in promoting the interests of God and His Christ: such the spirit in which one might imagine Mary addressing holy Joseph and sending him forth to “see what she has seen,” and to endure and brave all labor and suffering, in following their common Lord and Love.

This Pure Spirit fruitful in Great Men and Women

What marvel that such popular belief and piety begat so many great men and women in every Christian land? Take that great nation, which for eight hundred years was ever in arms against the domineering Mohammedan,—Spain. “Having great examples of virtue in their Catholic kings and princes,”—says a writer who knew them well,—“the Spaniards in general live in a most Christian manner. For they observe justice; they observe the precepts of the Church; they assist at the divine offices; they hear sermons; they venerate priests; they respect elders; they love their friends; they injure no one; they console the afflicted; they assist the needy; they show the right way to those who are wandering from it; they admonish sinners; they pardon the penitent; they keep faith, love the studious, and hate the wicked:—therefore do I prefer Spain to other countries. For I am delighted with the admirable morals of the Spaniards, with their singular urbanity, their noble customs, not alone those of the knights and priests, but also of peasants and husbandmen.”¹⁴14Marinus Siculus, De Rebus Hispanicis, lib. v.

The Country Population in Spain Uncontaminated

Nor,—much as the systematic introduction of Voltairian skepticism and the prevalence in the cities of revolutionary doctrines have affected Spanish institutions and manners,—has the mass of the Spanish people been robbed of ancestral faith and piety by the successive social and political revolutions.

Do not think, because the stream, as it flows by the crowded city or skirts the great centers of industry, becomes polluted by the manifold impurities poured into it, that its waters have been contaminated throughout their entire course and even in their well-springs.

We have only to go

and we may be sure that there we shall find the air pure, the crystal fountain stainless, and all around peace and purity.

Catholic Home-Life Surviving in Protestant Countries

We may well console ourselves, in view of the dangers with which society and religion are at present threatened, in reflecting that home-education in every Catholic land, is still based on this venerated ideal of our fathers,—the home-life of Nazareth. Even in countries, which regard with undisguised hatred not only the authority of the Church, but the very name of Catholic,—the ancient virtues and traditions of Catholic home-life still continue to be cherished. That is a mercy of Him who is Father over all the families of nations, and who, having “made them for health,... there is no poison of destruction in them,”¹⁶16Wisdom, i. 14. Creavit enim, ut essent omnia: et sanabiles fecit nationes orbis terrarum: et non est in illis medicamentum exterminii, nec inferorum regnum in terra. for which he has not prepared an antidote in his own good time. No! the power of evil is not unlimited; nor is the reign of the Enemy of God and man to endure forever.

A Noble National Character

Surely we have seen enough of these blessed homes on both sides of the great ocean, not to feel secure of the future, even though the present be full of doubt, and danger, and fear. The greatest man ever born in Ireland, Edmund Burke, wrote at the close of the last century: “The Castilians have still remaining a good deal of their old character, their gravidad (dignity of deportment), lealdad (loyalty), and il timor de Dios (the fear of God).” This is more true even of other provinces of Spain than of Castile. It is true of the whole rural population from sea to sea. And these noble characteristic features,—the lofty self-respect and dignified courtesy, the steadfast loyalty to God, country, and honor, that fear of God which is not the abject servility of superstition, but the enlightened sentiment of that Majesty which rules and judges the whole earth,—all that comes from the intimate knowledge and daily practice of these great principles that guided blessed Joseph in Nazareth, and still form the living law for every Spanish father of a family in Europe or America.

What we most need in our day are men conscientiously and invincibly attached to principle,—God-fearing, self-respecting, nobly independent while reverencing the rights of others,—incapable of betraying their conscience, their trust, or their honor; men uniting to the vigor of body inherited from chaste and temperate ancestors and sustained by personal virtue, to the strength of soul which true piety begets,—that dignified and gentle courtesy which is only the flower and perfume of Christian charity.

Catholic faith, Catholic piety, Catholic home-life begat such a nation of men in glorious Spain during her long struggle with the Moor. If the national character degenerated, and with it declined the national greatness,—it was because other principles and another life, hostile to their ancestral faith, penetrated like the miasms of a plague into Spanish homes, and tainted there the atmosphere which Christian purity and piety ever generate.

How to Preserve and Improve National Virtues

Would you see, among the Spanish race at home and abroad, the old domestic virtues flourish anew, and with them revive the pristine glories of the proudest nation of Christendom? Leave Religion free to set up the ideal we have been describing, and men free to make it a living reality in their homes and their public conduct!

We Catholics, by our degenerate lives, are responsible for much of the evil which at present afflicts both Religion and Society. The sole remedy against its increase lies in our honoring the faith of our fathers by living up to its precepts and teachings, to the high ideal which it holds up to our imitation and to the noblest of household examples.