(1981) After Grandma visited with our family of nine children for a week at our home, she wrote this letter to my Mother. 😊
"It was a new experience to spend so much time with your entire family and to get to know the many personalities, all different, no two alike, but each delightful in their own unique way. Needs and concerns are also apparent to one who has learned to live and judge everything in the light of Faith. At my age, one has learned to sort out true values with rejection of all else. This is the mercy and goodness of a loving God who does prepare us for eternity when He is our all, when His Will becomes our only meat and drink. Each age has its own enlightenment, youth, and it’s care-free days which should be idealistically imbued with the joy of living and promise, but which are distorted by present world and decay of morals, and the loss of our heavenly oasis in life, our Holy Mass which was our former haven from the world’s pollution. The vigilance necessary for young people to escape unharmed (spiritually) from the grave evils today is not recognized by them. Their Faith has not been tested by adversities, the glitter of a false world and “getting with it” is too enticing – all warnings are ignored, but guess that’s part of youth too – they won’t learn until they’ve passed through the same trials and errors that teach us the lessons of life. For Catholics it means interpreting all in the light of Faith. This is the most serious duty of parents today, when the Church no longer exerts this discipline. Eternal values first before worldly standards that have always been diametrically opposed. We cannot serve God and mammon too, but few there are who believe it. At best, we compromise; to be all for God means the world will hate us. It’s the “hard saying” that we walk away from. We want to believe Faith is conformable to our ideas of comfort, our ambitions, our efforts, the I-centeredness that obscures God and the right order He established. So in His mercy, He has to afflict us for our own good. Life is our novitiate for the hereafter. Our Blessed Mother is our best teacher for the deep things of Faith that lead to love of God, that out rules overattachment to creatures and pleasures. Her power against the devil is exposing his craftiness and lies, his evils which must be rejected. The only way we can “bash his head in” as St. Teresa of Avila puts it. His biggest deception today is the false charity that neutralizes any effectual attach against his evils. Evil has always been called evil and its perpetrators evil men who were exposed as such. True charity is love of God without which we cannot love our neighbor rightly. God hates evil, so too His followers must abhor it just as we must love all that He loves.
The greatest blessing is to be faced with circumstances that leave no room for doubt at the path to be followed, even though there is nothing but anguish ahead. (Terminally sick patients must experience this I suppose.) To cast all care, worries, and wretchedness into the lap of our Mother to blindly follow whatever or wherever God willed was all the assurance given me when I was about your age. But these are the contentions that bring down God’s mercy via His Mother. The more wretched one is, the greater the succor from above. Only when we seek it from that source, and not creatures. I saw the limitations of priests even then – prayer was to do it all, no rejection of evil. In helping ourselves to merit God’s help we must reject what He hates, the evil that today is being cast in the light of everything else, but I don’t know why I’m writing all this. I ache for young people who are not being instilled with the discipline of our Faith which is so necessary to avoid the snares and pitfalls everywhere.
And now my further boldness is another “ache”. You remind me of our Lord’s “Martha, Martha, you are troubled and concerned about too many things.” She was knocking herself out in a frenzy of activity which was detrimental to peace of soul. “His greatest gift.” Complexity instead of simplicity, over concern for her efforts. Our Lord’s admonition “Mary (her sister_ has chosen the better part” awaiting His pleasure, His will, remaining quietly self-possessed. “Daily duties” when over stressed becomes the heresy of good works. (See “Soul of the Apostolate) That is the definition of heresy=when one truth of our Faith takes precedence to the detriment of other Truths. The Mass was stressed to the exclusion of former devotions and eventually discarded entirely. Daily duty IS an important doctrine. Much has to bow in deference, prayer devotions. It’s the surest sign that is given to know God’s Holy Will., but as the “Imitation” says, we must not carry it beyond the precepts given by God. The welfare of our souls and those for whom we are responsible come first. This is an especially serious duty when all falls on parents to instruct and guide their children. This has always been the most important duty even when the Church was sound. This home training and example of parents does influence youngsters and help them to live their “faith when things are hard to bear later on in life. How much better to look to God, and His Mother, for direction in their life. God created them with only one thought in mind, to love Him and serve Him in this life for the ultimate eternal union in the next. “Seek first the kingdom of God and all else will be added.” I wonder why it is so hard to take Him at His word? Why can’t we believe Him instead of creatures? “Will I find Faith when I return?” asked our Lord. Where is it now? The Faith that must be possessed, a living, believing Faith that never falters is firmly rooted in God and knows if God be for us, who can be against us!
As I wrote earlier, I don’t know why I was impelled to set all this down, but it’s my Catholic heartache ever since becoming one of being showered from heaven with all the riches of our Faith, the wealth that is ours for the asking and living His right order. In the beginning of our efforts to live for God alone, much effort is required on our part as we lean on Him to instruct and guide us. Later when our will is conformed to His Will, He lives in in us. He is our motivation in all we think, do, or say. Mysteriously, we have no inkling whatever of how He works, nor have we any curiosity of how we are moved. This is the “peace that surpasses all understanding.” Gently He detaches us from all things temporal; He can even instill a homesickness for Heaven. We know life is perilous in that we can still sin, the dangers here on earth are far more real than the fear of death.
Love and prayers, Mother