FR. DE LA TOUR WRITES TO MOTHERS
The following article is taken from Fr. Herve’de la Tour’s Letter to the Members of St. Monica’s League, published in New Zealand, May 22, 1998.
Mothers, your situation is a difficult one and you need encouragement in order not to lose hope. Some of you get discouraged because your efforts toward the conversion of your children do not seem to have borne fruit. It is important to practice trustful surrender to Divine providence in all things., and especially in this regard. What God requires from us is not success in our undertakings but the conscientious discharge of our duties. So we must do everything that depends upon us with a great zeal, but always with peaceful abandonment to the will of God.
You must love your children as God loves them, conforming yourselves to the order of his providence. He has judged it well to endow human souls with the faculty of free choice. Because of this, disappointments will frequently occur. We encounter the mystery of Divine grace and human cooperation: Some children seem to welcome your efforts to help them, some turn a deaf ear to your pleadings. Do not fall victim to despair when your children seem to refuse to open their hearts to God. Remember that Our Lord loves these souls infinitely more than you yourselves love them. He died for them on the cross. Have confidence in the power of his grace. Persevere in prayer and sacrifice. Here’s what Father Vital Lehodey says:
“However bitter may be our lack of success, we must recognize in it the permission of God, accept it with peaceful abandonment, and turn it to account for our own spiritual progress. It is one of the very best occasions for entrenching ourselves more securely in humility, detaching ourselves from vainglory and human consolations, purifying our intentions, and resolving for the future to seek God alone in our spiritual ministrations. We should bless Providence in the humiliation we have received. Only too often, success blinds, inflates, and intoxicates us. It makes us forget that conversions come from God, and that they are due perhaps, not to our efforts, but to the secret prayers and sacrifices of some unsuspected soul. Failure opens our eyes to the reality of things. It reminds us that we are only poor instruments at best. It invites us to turn our gaze back upon ourselves, and, if there is need, to correct our shortcomings, to rectify our methods, to reanimate our zeal, and to pray more. If our negligence and sins have contributed to our want of success, we must not only rid ourselves of these failings, but we are also bound to repair the consequences of them so far as possible, by redoubling our zeal, our prayers and sacrifices.
Humble resignation to God’s will should not, however, cause our ardor to cool. When souls fail to correspond to our efforts, “Let us weep for them,” says St. Francis de Sales, “let us sigh, let us pray for them, as did our sweet Jesus, Who, after shedding His tears all his life for sinners, died for them at lastwith his eyes dimmed from weeping and his whole body bathed in blood.”
Condemned, betrayed, abandoned, He could have preserved his life and left us in our obstinacy. But he loved us unto the end. Thus he teaches us that true charity never yields to discouragement. She knows that very often she will at length triumph over the most obstinate resistance. She hopes all things, because she puts her hope in God who can do all things. If compassionate love failed finally in Judas, it made saints of Magdalen, Peter, Augustine, and so many other holy penitents. Humility, which reveals to us our own wretchedness and faults, makes us understand the difficulties of virtue, and inspires us with a tender compassion for souls who are still weak. “How do you know,” asks the gentle Bishop of Geneva, “whether the sinner will not, perhaps, do penance and save his soul? So long as there is room for hope, and whilst there is life there is hope, we must not abandon him, but must rather pray for him and help him as much as his malice will allow us.”
“THE WOLF I SAW IN MY DREAM.”
St. Andrew Corsini is a consolation to mothers and fathers whose teenage children are a cause of suffering. Andrew was the son of a noble Italian family. His parents had long been childless and Andrew was finally born to them in 1301 as an answer to their prayers. His parents had promised to offer to God and the Blessed Virgin their first child if their prayers were heard. Andrew’s first years did not give any sign that he would become a saint. He was a carefree noble of his time and had a violent temperament. He was more interested in the feuds and wars which raged at this time in Italy, and especially in Florence where he lived. Worst of all, he was disobedient to his parents and laughed at their reprimands.
One day, when he had been especially obnoxious, his mother exclaimed, “Ah truly, you are the wolf I saw in my dream!” At these words Andrew stopped short and asked his mother to tell him about the dream. Then she revealed to him the dream she had before his birth but which she had kept secret. In that dream, she thought she brought forth a wolf, she saw it run into a church and in three days it became a lamb. She also told Andrew how he did not belong to his parents but to God and Our Lady to whom he had been offered at his birth. The 15 year-old was impressed. He knelt at the feet of Our Lady to implore her intercession. The next day, he went to the altar of Our Lady in the Carmelite church and asked Mary to change him into a lamb. After that, he knocked at the door of the Father Provincial and begged to receive the habit of Carmel. He thus became a friar, later was ordained a priest, and finally became of great saint.
Some mothers lament the fact that their children are dead, and that at the time of their passing they were not leading a good life. I encourage you to continue to pray for their salvation. Do not despair. Several times in my priestly life, I have come across mothers whose children have died without giving any signs of repentance. Some of these children have committed suicide. But I say to these mothers it is important not to lose hope. God lives in eternity. He has before his eyes, the past, the present, and the future. It is your duty to hope that when your child departed from this world, God gave him then the grace of repentance in prevision of all your prayers and sacrifices that you are now offering for his eternal salvation.
It would be nice to know with certainty that your child has been saved, but such has not been God’s will for you. His plan is for you to endure this uncertainty for the rest of your life. This sorrow, borne with resignation, will be the price you will pay for the salvation of your child…or someone’s child, nonetheless. God knows your generosity and he has anticipated your sacrifice. You will learn in heaven that God has spared your child as He spared Isaac, because you substituted yourself as a victim.
Mother Church gives us an example of her belief that this happens. A zealous priest had died and his cause for beatification was introduced in Rome. Suddenly the process was interrupted. What was the reason? This priest once attended the execution of a criminal. In spite of his efforts to save him, the condemned man died without apparent repentance. Moreover, he blasphemed at the very moment the guillotine was putting an end to his life. The priest got carried away by an excess of zeal and exclaimed before the crowd, “See, brethen, how someone dies who is damned.” Holy Mother Church thught that these words expressed a doubt on the possibility of a stroke of God’s mercy at the last minute. She concluded that the priest was not prudent enough and judged that he could not be beautified.
Of course, the saints have always preached sermons about the great number of men who fall into hell through leading a bad life and therefore making a bad death. However, when it comes to bearing a judgement on a particular soul, no one has the right to affirm that it is certainly damned, even in spite of apparent signs pointing to this effect. It is your duty to hope that God has given you the vocation of suffering for your loved ones so that one day they may be with you in heaven.
Everyone knows the story of the Cure’ of Ars, (Cure’ is priest), revealing to a desperate woman that her husband was saved. He committed suicide by drowning, but, between the bridge from which he jumped and the water, God gave him the grace of final repentance. ”The mercies of the Lord I will sing for ever. ” Ps. 88:2. Less known is the story of Father Cohen, which is also very consoling and full of hope.
In 19th century France, there was a very famous converted Jew, Fr. Augustine-Marie of the Blessed Sacrament, who was born Hermann Cohen. After his conversion, he became a Carmelite monk, and worked hard for the conversion of his family. By the grace of God, he succeeded in the conversion of his sister and her son. But he did not succeed with the conversion of his mother. He prayed, made sacrifices, talked to her, to no avail. She died with no apparent sign of repentance. Fr. Augustine-Marie was sad, but never despaired in the mercy of the Sacred Heart. For several years, God left him in this trial, but one day he met the Cure’ of Ars who told him, “Hope. Hope, you shall receive one day, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a letter that shall bring you great consolation.” Indeed, on the Fest of the Immaculate Conception, 1861, he received a letter from a pious soulLeonie Guillemant, which said:
“Jesus gave me…a beam of his Divine light…At the moment when Fr. Augustine-Marie’s mother was almost breathing her last breath, when she looked unconscious, almost without life, Mary, our good mother, came in front of her Divine Son and, falling on her knees at his feet, she said to him, “Grace, mercy, O my Son, for this perishing soul. In a few moments she shall be lost forever. I beseech Thee, do for the mother of my servant Hermann what Thou wouldst him to do for Thine if she would be in her place and Thee at his place. The soul of his mother is his dearest good; a thousand times he has dedicated it to me. He entrusted it to the tenderness and solicitude of my Heart. Could I bear to see it perish? No, no, this soul is mine. I want it, I claim it as my inheritance, bought at the price of Thy Blood, and of my sorrows at the foot of Thy Cross!”
As soon as she ended this divine supplication, a strong and powerful grace came forth from the Heart of our Jesus, the source of all graces, enlightening the soul of the dying Jewess and triumphing instantaneously over her resistances. This soul turned around with love and confidence towards Him whose mercy had followed her even in the arms of death, and she said in her heart, “O Jesus, God of the Christians, God that my son adores, I believe, I hope in Thee, have mercy on me!”
The soul who had this vision was a complete stranger to Fr. Augustine-Marie. The fact of her vision is not only known by the letter she wrote to Fr. Augustine-Marie, but also by the testimony of her nephew, Emile Baumann. I hope these words will help those whose children have died. It will also help those whose children are still alive to always hope in the infinite mercy of God.
“Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” St. John 17:3.
Devotion to Mary — A Great Sign of Predestination – MotherofGodlibrary.org
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The Blessed Mother told Venerable Mary of Agreda, Spain regarding unworthy Communions: “In the primitive Church, many were saved by it, but now, many damn themselves by it.” So much immodesty in the churches now, and how many are contracepting? Fr. Robert Brown, of venerable memory once said, “Most Catholic couples are contracepting.” When he was asked, “Why do you say that Father?’ he replied, “No children.” In one diocesan paper, remembering the couples who had 50 year anniversaries, six couples totaling 300 years, all combined, only had twelve children! OUR LADY WARNS ABOUT SACRILEGIOUS COMMUNIONS TO FR. STEPHANO GOBBI Revised – MotherofGodlibrary.org