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St. Joseph Marello - 1894

right path with generous determination?
Therefore you, parents, must be your children's first
teachers of Christian doctrine, but in accomplishing this your
great task, you are not dispensed from the other obligation that
falls upon you, and that is to send you children to the parish so
that they may pursue and complete the instruction required to
prepare them for the reception of the Sacraments and to teach
them every Christian duty. Your duty is not limited to just
sending them, but you must also question them carefully to
assure yourselves that they profit by the instruction received. It
would be wrong for fathers and mothers to consider wasted or
less usefully employed the time that their children spend in this
school of religious knowledge which, while it can take the place
of many others, cannot itself be replaced in what it teaches.
Parents must think that there is no other school where their
children can better learn to obey them with respect and love, to
help them in all their needs, to assist them in their infirmity and
console them in their old age. They must think especially that
not only in the life to come, but also in this one, they will have
to expiate every negligence and lack of care with regard to such
grave duties of their state.
Now we turn to you, our beloved Cooperators, and with you
to all the priests who help you, to express our greatest
appreciation for the solicitude with which you attend to the
religious instruction of the faithful entrusted to you. We urge
you ardently to persevere with generous constancy in the
accomplishment of this laborious ministry, often reviled,
unfortunately, by those who should avail themselves of it, but
also a source of consolation and merit before God. Therefore,
with an ever increasing zeal, spread the good seed of the
evangelical doctrine among your people and be comforted with
the thought of seeing it produce a fruitful harvest in every mind
and in every heart, and especially in that virgin soil which are
our children. Oh! for that so lovable and simple part of your

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