Feed My Lambs

...Of course, she had had some before that...

...Will starve, that is, unless God works a miracle...

...The child has a divine right to expect it...

...The saint seems to have put the whole of elementary Christian doctrine into verse, which the people were taught to sing...

...Of course we must recognize the validity of the various decrees as to verbal teaching of the catechism...

...The children will leave school soon and many of them will have no more lessons in Christan doctrine, unless we count the five minutes after the Gospel on Sunday...

...Yet, that would seem to be what many teachers think, unless, in charity we are to believe they do not think at all...

...Who made pussy...

...It was a daring venture to ask a child of five such a qestion...

...The years will roll by and, without the clear-cut definition to aid their memory, little by little it will fall away from them...

...So we tried another way...

...If the child does not have the doctrine, too, it will not assimilate the words and its soul will starve as truly as would its body if fed on bread made from sand...

...We waited breathlessly for the result...

...Whether a teacher is to use the inductive method, as we did, or the deductive must depend on his own individuality...

...Was it necessary to teach her the words...

...Why did we crystallize into the words of the catechism the doctrine on the reason for our creation...

...She knew that God made her...

...God made pussy"—she knew that...

...Shall we presume to demand the miracle, to demand a miracle to supply at least part of what our best efforts can effect...

...And she had not read the first chapter of the Bible either...

...But did God make you the same as the pussy and the birds...

...People do not throw away what is of value to them...

...We might have told her the answer and let her memorize it...

...Saint Francis Xavier's missionaries must have used both methods...

...But how can anyone think that the obligation of teaching doctrine imposed by the command, "Feed My lambs," is fulfilled by merely seeing that the child memorizes words...

...A teacher may find it difficult profitably to crystallize for a child of five, or even for a child of six or seven or eight, all the doctrine it needs for its nourishment in those tender years, but the doctrine must not be left until the words can be learned...

...The memorizing of the words will keep in the child's mind the doctrine which has been placed there...

...But, in spite of the ignorance of those who own the medals, the Holy Ghost has worked a miracle and kept alive their faith...

...So blighting have they realized the mere word memorizing to be, that word memorizing has become odious to them and they have omitted it altogether in their schools...

...Can God send us another Saint Thomas to give our children— and their parents too—the whole doctrine in language such as this, so simple that the little ones can understand it, so comprehensive that theologians will find that there is nothing to add...

...Saint Francis's metric catechism is in a language strange to us...

...The eldest child had regular instruction first when she was about five...

...Let the teacher use such parts of the Baltimore Catechism as can be taught the smaller children, or another catechism, or no catechism at all, but do not let him neglect to feed the lamb until it is of the age for which the great Baltimore Catechism was written...

...It did not take long after that to enable the little one to work out for herself that we were made to know that which is most infinitely worth knowing, that love follows knowledge and service follows love and that our own soul's salvation depends on the three...

...Not all children begin to learn their catechism at the age of three, not all, because not all have older sisters who burn to share their newly acquired knowledge...

...There were, and still are, many whose only recollection of the catechism is the medal, still carefully stowed in their treasurebox, which they received in childhood for repeating the answers without missing a word...

...Why are the words forgotten in after life...

...And the birdies, she was very fond of birds and she knew that God had made them...

...Straight as an arrow came the answer—"Oh, no, birdies don't know things...

...He would set out the dinner on the table, carefully covered to keep it warm, and then gradually feed it to the child...

...Such a shepherd has still to learn the lesson the disciples learned when Our Lord rebuked them and, calling the little children to Himself, sat them on His own knees and let them nestle around His own Sacred Person while He fed their souls with the story of their creation and of their Creator...

...But after that she required help...

...The Church of the last century in America had such need of homes in which to feed the lambs, that it would almost seem that the attention she had to give to building made it impossible for her also to give enough attention to teaching...

...In baptism it is made a lamb of Christ and woe betide the shepherd who starves it...

...There are some zealous priests and teachers who would go to the other extreme...

...Shall we expect the tender child to glean its own doctrine from the sometimes almost Latin wording of even so fine a summary as the Baltimore Catechism...

...It may prize them, even when it does not understand them, not merely for the sake of the medal, but because they may be to the child a symbol of the religion to which, by the grace of baptism, it clings—clings by the grace of baptism, if not by the nourishment the lambs have a divine right to expect...

...Clearly the essential thing is the doctrine...

...But do not let us think that Saint Francis could have been content with teaching his five-year-olds his beautiful hymns and leaving them to sing and starve till they were ten or twelve or fourteen years old...

...But her answer to the next question was one of which any learned theologian might have been proud—"Why did God make you...

...It is a pity...

...The doctrine of the Eucharist has been versified for us by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the Lauda Sion...

...And as she learned the doctrine, we crystallized it into the exact words of the catechism...

...Another teacher might have taught the words first, with the hope of a medal as the attractive force and mutual affection as the impelling motive...

...The adults must have first learned a large part, at least, of the doctrine from the preachers and then memorized it as expressed in the hymns...

...But the tiny children, no doubt, from hearing others sing them, learned the hymns before they understood them and we can imagine their joy, when they learned the doctrine, at finding it was the same as the hymns they knew and loved so well...

...So that you do not drop one here and one there on the way home...

...But it is only when the words are to the child an embodiment of the doctrine that they are assimilated and retained...

...Why does the grocer wrap the potatoes...

...Because I am so sweet...

...What it will not do is place it there...

...The child may prize the words of the catechism at the time it learns them...

...In teaching our child of five we chose to unfold to the child's delighted gaze the philosophy of man's creation and then to crystallize it into words which the child could carry to life's end...

...We might have done so, but even a child of five is human—that is, rational—and likes to use its reason...