Holy
children
It’s a fact of
history and tradition that holy parents often raise pious and holy
children.
The reasons behind this is that the children of holy and
devout parents often imitate the good and righteous deeds of their
parents as much as they are able. In contrast, according to numerous
saints and spiritual revelations, sinful and lustful parents
influence and affect their children by their bad life and example,
inflicting sinful thoughts, impulses and temptations upon their
children.
Thus, every parent who love their children and their future
children should do their utmost to live in holiness, knowing that
every act they will ever do can have an effect on their children –
for better or for worse. Only in Hell will bad parents understand how
their deeds effected their children in a negative way, but then it is
sadly too late for them. In St. Bridget’s Revelations,
it is described how such evil parents will be damned for their sinful
lives.
The
Son of God speaks:
“Sometimes I let evil parents give birth to good children, but
more often, evil
children are born of evil parents,
since these children imitate the evil and unrighteous deeds of their
parents as much as they are able
and would imitate it even more if my patience allowed them. Such
a married couple will never see my face unless they repent.
For there is no sin so heavy or grave that penitence and repentance
does not wash it away.” (St.
Bridget’s Revelations,
Book 1, Chapter 26)
St.
Francis de Sales, in his book Introduction to the Devout Life,
in the chapter Instructions For Married Persons, gives parents
important information about how they are to raise and care for their
children: “St.
Monica, being pregnant of the great St. Augustine, dedicated him by
frequent oblations to the Christian religion, and to the service and
glory of God, as he himself testifies, saying, that "he had
already tasted the salt of God in his mother’s womb." This
is a great lesson for Christian women, to offer up to his divine
Majesty the fruit of their wombs, even before they come into the
world; for God, who accepts the offerings of an humble and willing
heart, commonly at that time seconds the affections of mothers;
witness Samuel, St. Thomas of Aquinas, St. Andrew of Fiesola, and
many others. The mother of St. Bernard, a mother worthy of such a
son, as soon as her children were born, took them in her arms, and
offered them up to Jesus Christ; and, from that moment, she loved
them with respect as things consecrated to God and entrusted by him
to her care. This pious custom was so pleasing to God that her seven
children became afterwards eminent for sanctity. But when children
begin to have the use of reason, both their fathers and mothers ought
to take great care to imprint the fear of God in their hearts.
“The devout queen Blanche performed this duty most
fervently with regard to St. Lewis [King St. Louis IX], her son. She
often said to him, "I would much rather, my dear child, see you
die before my eyes, than see you commit only one mortal sin."
This caution remained so deeply engraved in his soul that, as he
himself related, not one day of his life passed in which be did not
remember it, and take all possible care to observe it faithfully.
Families and generations are, in our language, called houses; and
even the Hebrews called the generations of children the building up
of a house; for, in this sense, it is said that God built houses for
the midwives of Egypt. Now, this is to show that the raising of a
house, or family, consists not in storing up a quantity of worldly
possessions, but in the good education of children in the fear of
God, and in virtue, in which no pains or labor ought to be spared;
for children are the crown of their parents. Thus, St. Monica fought
with so much fervor and constancy against the evil inclination of her
son St. Augustine, that, having followed him by sea and land, she
made him more happily the child of her tears, by the conversion of
his soul, than he had been of her blood, by the generation of his
body.”
