tention to these words of St. Augustine: “Know and understand,” he says, “that we are not Christians to think of this world alone, but to have our thoughts always fixed on the next life;”[1] our sole care should not be as to how we can live and bring up children, and clothe and feed them according to our station, but we are Christians especially that we may prepare for the next life. For that reason the supreme Lord of heaven and earth has placed you over your domestics as masters and mistresses, and over your children as parents, that you may so rule them and bring them up that not one of them may be lost at the end of his years through your fault. Ah, parents! think of it often, and think on it deeply: what a dreadful thing it would be for a loving father or mother to bring a child into the world that is to fall into the clutches of the devil at the end of his days! And what should not parents do to avert such a dreadful calamity! And what a happiness it is for a loving father or mother to bring into the world a child that at the end of its days shall be brought by the angels into heaven! What should not parents do to secure such happiness for their children! Make a resolution to work for a happy end of your years, and it will keep you up to your duty with regard to your children. Let the husband then often say to his wife, and parents to their children: Dear wife! we are now living together, but we know not for how long; the time shall come when we shall have to separate; one of us must go first and the other follow. My dear children! it will be the same with you; but, wife, what a terrible thing it would be for us to be separated at the end of our years forever, for one to be in heaven and the other in hell! Children, if I have a happy end and you an unhappy one, what a terrible separation that would be. God has given us the means of living well and respectably; but how will that help us at the end if we do not now make good use of those means? If on the other hand we now suffer poverty, what worse shall we be for that at the end, if we only serve God truly in our want? Let us then so live together that we may have a happy end, and rejoice together forever in heaven.
To the unmarried. Young men and women! lam afraid my wish is not a very pleasant one to you; yet it is all the more necessary for you the less you are wont in your young years, eager as you are after
- ↑ Agnoscite et intelligite; non ideo Christiani sumus, ut de hac tantummodo vita solliciti simus; sed ut semper de futuro sæculo cogitemus.
