Page 29 - pastoral-letters-sjm

St. Joseph Marello - 1892

may be useful to maintain it healthy and strong is something that
animals do, even the most ferocious, for their newborns; but to
educate a soul, that is, to enlighten it with the light of truth,
warm it with the fire of divine love, and guide it on the paths of
good to its eternal salvation: oh! this is the noble and holy task
of men and Christians, the great ministry that raises educators to
being representatives of the Heavenly Father, even cooperators
with him.
Therefore, you owe your children the instruction that places
them on the right path and makes them virtuous Christians and
excellent citizens. Here we are not speaking of the human
instruction that the civil laws oblige you to give them by sending
them to the public schools, nor of that higher religious
instruction that you make them receive from God's ministers
through catechism lessons and sermons, and to which you are
strictly obliged, if not by the laws of men, by that from which
you could not avoid without guilt: the law imposed on you by
God. We mention only that instruction which is the foundation
of all others, and which by natural and divine law you, fathers
and mothers, must impart to your children from their most
tender age.
In the Sacred Scriptures, great praise is given to old Tobias
because he instructed his son, from his earliest childhood, to fear
God and flee sin: ab infantia timere Deum docuit et abstinere ab
omni peccato; and it follows that Christian parents should do
the same. that is, with the guidance of that golden book which is
the Catholic Catechism, to instruct very early their children in
the first truths and the principal mysteries of our Holy Faith; to
teach them to love God above all else; and not only through fear
of his punishments but because of the love and gratitude he
expects from us for his great and innumerable blessings, to
impel them to observe his holy law.
Let no one say that the children will learn these and other
truths later; in school, for example, or in Church.

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