Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:01 In the spiritual life, the life of grace when people in sanctifying graves third, what you call three ages, three levels of the spiritual life, beginners, proficient and perfect, and to move from the beginner to the proficient. There's a crisis and the spiritual life and to move from the proficient to the perfect. There's a crisis. I'm not going to go into details on that, but just to point out when God does something, he parallels it in other ways. In our natural life, there are three divisions. We have youth, adolescence and adulthood and the transition from youth to adolescence. There's a crisis. The transition from adolescence to our first freedom as adults. There's also a crisis now, people that negotiate the first one from youth, adolescents is they're going to puberty and all the struggles of becoming young team. They keep progressing forward in like manner. Some people never really get through that inadequate fashion that we know many people that might be in their forties but they're really still stuck at a, at a, at an age where they had not to be the second crisis.
Speaker 0 01:10 Then as the first freedom people leave home, they get kind of Giddy and getting a wreck. But people that negotiate successfully and up to becoming a good Catholic contributing adults, you know, they don't have to be Catholic to negotiate that because it's a natural thing and many Catholics don't. But since we're speaking of Catholics, so we want to get safely out the door now, what's the purpose of life? Having said, the purpose of our life, why God put us here is to know and love and serve him in this life so it can be happy with him forever. The next, the purpose for life is to get successfully to heaven. Education serves that purpose. The primary purpose of marriage is a procreation and education of children. What exactly is the purpose of education? The purpose of life is to get us to heaven. How does education serve that?
Speaker 0 02:05 I'm going to read you some meditations from the brothers of St John Baptist Aerosol Christian brothers to educate a child is to rear him well, to rectify, to cultivate, to strengthen and to Polish all the faculties of his soul and body. It is to enable them to become a complete man, to help them be an honor to his family, to his country, and to the church. It is so form him that the good use he makes of this present life will render him worthy of his eternal reward to educate a child his develop his intelligence to exercise and properly direct his judgment, to enrich his memory, to train him to observe, reflect, and reason. It is to help them acquire the knowledge proper to his condition in life and to help him carry this out. In regard to the recommendation of Ecclesiasticus has style. Children instruct and bow down their neck from their childhood to educate a child, just inspire them with the love for good and a horror for evil and to develop in his heart noble sentiments in the moral order in which alone the true greatness of man consists.
Speaker 0 03:19 Thus he will appreciate nothing, desire, love, nothing but that which an eyes of faith and reason is really worthy of esteem, admiration and love. To educate a child is to direct as well towards the accomplishment of the good which God desires of him. Without constraining or enslaving it, it is to accustom, to will and to act energetically through motives that are good. Just and true is to make them strong against temptation, to Armen for the struggle in life and enable them to come forth victorious from it. To educate a child as to form his character so that he will always show himself gentle, amiable, sincere obliging, and kind as well as firm, courageous and energetic, always in control of himself and his powers. It is to make him strong against the allurements to softness, but he's just strengthened him against the dangers of temptation. It is to teach them to develop habits of order, industry and economy, respect for one's fellows and forethought it to educate a child as to correct him in that which is reprehensible.
Speaker 0 04:25 It is to lead them to resist as evil inclinations, to free him from the law of the flesh and to correct his defects. It is to foster him the action of grace with which man's concurrence operates onto perfection and after example of Tobias to urgent particularly to justice and arms deans be mindful of God and bless him at all times. It true with all his power. It is to form him to the knowledge, love, and imitation of Jesus Christ, to lead them to hardy attachment, devotion to the church. I fulfill all this duties as a Catholic, so to educate someone, point them in the right direction, help them grow in virtue, conquer their vices, and be able to pass successfully through the crises in life. The eighth grade graduation is right about the time that people enter their first crisis in life and the church recognizes transitions, but those teen years struggling to keep going in the right direction towards heaven and avoid all the battles that show up in one's life at the teen years, high school graduation, typically time when they're going to start experiencing their first freedom. After that, we want to get a momentum to get safely out the door, land safely in heaven. So that education form the person virtue, teach them to resist flies and all the virtues, the natural and supernatural virtues, the opposition understands exactly what is at stake.
Speaker 0 05:53 The devil's understand what's at stake and the in union with them. Understand what setting state, if that sounds extreme, I'll read just a short quote. The whole, uh, article is quite horrific, but I copped this out of a magazine years ago called the humanist fellows too. A lot of professors in, uh, in departs, in education and so forth. As you know, I was a public school teacher. If you don't know that I was, and I was very interested in how these people think. So I'll just read you a couple paragraphs out of an article called a religion for a new age. I will say this, prefacing this. This was written by a fallen away Catholic and the whole article, the gist of it is really a long rampage against Catholicism per se, but a religion for new age published in the humanist in January, February, 1983 edition. So here we go.
Speaker 0 06:45 Quote, I'm convinced there's a battle for humankind's future must be waged and one in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive the role as a proselytizers of a new faith, a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers for they will be ministers of another sword utilizing the classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach. Regardless of the educational level, preschool, daycare or large state university, the classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with the arts, adjacent evils and misery and the new faith of humanism resplendent in its promise of a world in which they never realized Christian ideal of love.
Speaker 0 07:51 Thy Neighbor will finally be achieved. Yolanda oddly be a long, arduous, painful struggle, replete with much sar on many tears, but humanism will emerge triumphant. It must if the family of humankind is to survive closed quilt so they understand what's at stake at education too, and they have their own educational agendas. I'm speaking of the people in union with the enemies of God and the church, whether they know their new new with those enemies is a different issue. You can read the city of God by Santa Gustin if you want to see the whole game plan. He, he lays it down there quite clearly between the city of God and the city of men. If at any rate, father harden late, great father hardness Che writes a little bit about home education. I'll read you a little bit about that and we'll keep going. Why? Home Education, Father Heart and stating my thesis.
Speaker 0 08:43 I might've said many things like home education has helped for the family or home. Education is a valuable asset for family life or home. Education is a powerful age for the Catholic family or home educations, all but necessary for the Catholic family. Each of these titles would have been true but inadequate. Instead, I chose to speak on how education is necessary for the survival of the Catholic family. Why this title? Because it is literally true. Let me be clear. I'm not merely saying that home education is necessary in the modern world. This is not a conditional necessity. It is not just because the modern world has become so widely and deeply secularized that home education has become a necessity. No. I make bold to say that one of the main factors contributing to the secularization of once strongly Christian cultures has been the neglect of sound Orthodox, authentic, courageous, magisterial, historic Catholic teaching and faith and morals by parents in the home from the dawn of the infancy of their children.
Speaker 0 09:49 The issue we are addressing is perennial. Either Catholic parents provide their offspring with the education that children need or the inevitable happens as it has happened. Our main focus here is on why. Why are parents so necessary for the proper education, their children, and the corresponding survival of the Catholic family? The reason is really a cluster of reasons all derived from what we know about human nature and divine grace. Number one, we are what we have received. The first reason is the mysterious law of interdependence. We depend on others for whatever we possess. This applies first of all to our physical nature. Only human beings can reproduce other human beings. That's reproductions, not only bodily, but also mental or volitional. What do we know that someone else has not taught us? What do we love except what others have helped us to choose and appreciate?
Speaker 0 10:47 Under God, the primary most important person in our lives to enlighten, inspire us are our parents, parents and their turn out to recognize that the children they brought in this world are not meant for this world. The children's destinies eternal. It is apparent more than anyone in the world who are to prepare their children in time for eternity. Number two, parents are the primary sources of grace. It's important. No one reaches Heaven Without divine grace. No one receives this grace except through another human being who's the channel of this grace? Parents are the primary channel of this grace for their children. We are saying here much more than meets the year. We are saying that in God's ordinary province, the parents are the main instruments of supernatural light for their children's minds. The channels of spiritual strength for the children's wills in a word, the parents are the principle conduit by which God communicates the graces that children need to reach and to save their souls.
Speaker 0 11:55 This primacy is channels of grace for their children. Comes from the Sacrament of matrimony which Catholic parents have received. Matrimony assures them of Lifetime of God's grace to love each other and faithful charity and chesty until death natural, and he also assures them of a lifetime of God's grace for the upbringing of their children and loving obedience to God as a precondition for reaching the heavenly destination. The purpose of marriage is to raise your families for heaven, nothing less and there can be nothing more. One of the great blessings of modern home education is that is waking up so many parents to their god given responsibility and the Providence of God. He allows no evil or suffering without intending to draw a greater good precisely as occasion by the evil or pain. The widespread secularization of organized education, so many parts of the Western world as indicated by the thing I just read, you has served as lightning and thunder to rouse complacent parents from their complacency. They're beginning to ask themselves, what is our duty as parents? What should we do to join forces with other dedicated fathers and mothers who are making such great sacrifices for the home education of their children? Close quote, Father Heart. And today in fact, we're here Thanksgiving for the sacrifices that the parents have made to educate these young people. We have before us.
Speaker 0 13:21 Few more quotes and I'll close. Popeyes. 11th the family holds directly from the creator, the mission and hence the right to educate the offspring a right enable because in separately joined the strict obligation, uh, right anterior to any right whatsoever of civil society and of the state and therefore if viable on the part of any power on the Earth, Leo the 13th by nature, parents have a right to the training of their children. But with this added duty that the education instruction, the child be in a cord with the end for by which God's blessing it was be gotten. Therefore, it is the duty of parents to make every effort to prevent any invasion of their rights in this matter, to make absolutely sure that the education of children remain under their own control and keeping with their Christian duty. And above all to refuse to send them to those schools in which there's danger imbibing the deadly poison of impiety close quote, hopefully of the 13th compile comments to the graduates, the object, the sacrifices, all the different things your parents have gone to to give you a homeschooling as something that you should be grateful for.
Speaker 0 14:42 You will not see in this life how important that has been. You can only get a glimmering of that, but she'd be a very great motivation to you for holiness, gratitude towards your parents for the sacrifices and forgiveness of your parents. None of us come from the holy family except our Lord, so it hasn't been perfect. Maybe it's been painful. I don't know. I'm not your situation, especially the seniors. Don't be dazzled. She leave home, go to college, go to work. Whatever you do, don't be dazzled by the world. It may be exciting, but you've got to be humble. Your parents, the priest. We're not trying to ruin your fun. When we give you all these rules, we're warning you about things and that's really the object. There are many young people that leave home and leaves the faith. Some of them make it to heaven because God is merciful.
Speaker 1 15:41 Some
Speaker 0 15:44 you have to be careful to keep your balance in a time like this. It's easy to lose your balance. Everything's available. You can't really scandalize anybody. You can get away with anything you want, that's for sure, but keep your balance, keep the faith, keep obedient to the good things you've learned from your parents, and forgive him for anything bad you've learned from God. Bless you. And we'll continue with mass.
