Exhaling at Home (Opus Gloriae)

St. John Bosco and real men

Today, as I said before, I am praying that my own boys grow to become real men of God.

Included in that prayer is one that God will put strong mentors in their lives in the years to come, when they begin to  look beyond their own father to see what manhood is all about; mentors like our good pastor, who likes to ask them if any of them are going to take his place because he's getting old, and like their uncles who model hands-on fathering for them.

Someone mature and strong in Christ who will look them in the eye and challenge them to become what they are created to be.

Men who do not hesitate to kneel in God's presence, to admit their weakness and ask for His strength, who know that tears are not a cause for shame, who know that gentleness and power are not mutually exclusive - these are the strongest men of all.

May my sons know men like this, so that they can become men like this.

"Reason and religion are the two springs of my method of education. An educator should realize that all these lads, or nearly all, are smart enough to sense the good done to them and are innately open to sentiments of gratitude. With God's help, we must strive to make them grasp the main tenets of our faith, which, based entirely upon charity, reminds us of God's infinite love for mankind. We must seek to strike in their hearts a chord of gratitude, which we owe God in return for the benefits He so generously showers upon us. We must do our best to convince these boys through simple reasoning that gratitude to God means, concretely, carrying out His will and obeying His commandments, especially those which stress observance of the duties of our state of life. Believe me, if our efforts succeed, we have accomplished the greater part of our educational task. "             ~St. John Bosco

There is the goal. Grace is the means. We are the labor.

So, I'm off to work.

Samuel makes me re-think my Religion lesson

Samuel, our 6yo (he's the littlest one) , is always the one to say things in the most amusing ways.

Like the day he peered into a model of an Indian teepee and saw a skunk pelt on the floor and said, "Hey, look! They caught a stinky fox!"

Or the time we stood on the shore of Lake Superior, waves pounding in our ears, and he looked up and announced, "Mom! It's the song of the water!"

One Sunday night as I tucked him in bed, he must have been thinking about Mass that morning, as he mused profoundly , "Jesus is like the sneakiest one in church. He's so quiet, no one even knows He's there..."

But there are some times when I wonder at what kind of mental images I am putting into these kids' heads. Like the other day when Samuel, angry at something his brother had done to him, whimpered, "You're like a broken part of the Mystical Body!" Yes, this after a discussion of Paul's writings that we are all one body, with Christ as the Head. And some of us are not as strong as we should be, and some of us are broken, and we have to help heal one another, and we are all necessary to the functioning of the Body, etc.

Maybe I need to rethink the way I present that lesson...