Irish Jesuit Province

Priedieu Papers. No. 7: "Am I My Brother's Keeper?"Source: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 24, No. 275 (May, 1896), pp. 256-261Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20498970 .

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2536 The Irish Monthly.

IV.

" And you, 0 summer moon, there in the clear dark sky,

Tell me, oh! tell me, you who live so high, What have you seen ?

What have you seen? "

I have seeu the eyes of (God looking down upon the earth;

I have seen the dark things growing to bright strength and joyful birth;

I have seen the slow unfolding of bud and leaf and life;

I have seen immortal good ripening on through mortal strife

Oh, I have seen! I have seen!

C. G. O'BRIEN. March 4th, 1896.

A Jiemo,ry.

PRIEDIEU PAPERS.

No. 7-" AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER ?

OUR title is our text. A strange text this for a May meditation, especially if we remind ourselves who it was who spoke

these words first, and when. They fell from the lips of Cain while his hands were still red with the first murder. But if we are

now adopting this sinister question as our own, we expect for it a different answer from what it was meant originally to call forth. Each of us is his brother's keeper; we are in many

ways responsible for those with whom we are linked by ties even less close than the ties of birth and kinship. This responsibility is not confined to cases where there is a contract or sort of contract,

which makes us, in the worldly phrase, legally liable. In a thousand ways we influence one another for good or for evil; and this item must needs enter largely into that meditation which a friend of mine thinks we ought all to make frequently, namely, a medi tation on all the harm we are doing. Along with the harm that

we do may fairly be put all the good we fail to do, and amongst other omissions, the good whichl it is in onr power to effect in and

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Piiedieu Pa psers. 257

through the persons with whom we live. As many of those with whom we ourselves have come in contact in the course of our lives have had an influence useful or hurtful upon us, so we, too, have

exercised, or might have exercised, a powerful influence on many of those around us, year by year, and hour by hour. Not only

material bodies but souls have a radiating power. Accentdat ardor

proxrznos,

But we introduced this subject by Cain's question: "Am I my brother's keeper ? "-and we did so in order to connect a special

branch of the subject with the Blessed Virgin and her children. These words were spoken of a brother by a brother; but on the

lips of a sister they would have a very particular point and force.

To how many sisters, if we could imagine them objecting with such a question, a very emphatic affirmative answer should be re

turned: " Yes, you are your brother's keeper-with you rests a

mighty power to help your brother through the dangers of youth, and to keep his heart unspotted from the world."

Before developing this view a little further, let us justify our choice of such a text and such a subject for our meditation by

looking up to the Blessed Virgin herself under an aspect in which she is not usually regarded. If we were disposed to link the sub ject of the mutual influence of fellow-creatures with the thought of the Blessed Virgin, it would rather be a mother's influence that we should think of. She is our Mother. "Behold thy

Mother." "Show thyself a Mother." Yes; but it may not be amiss to pause for a moment before a less familiar picture of our Lady, which fixes our minds on the earlier years of her prepara tion for that ineffable dignity of the Divine Motherhood. Such a picture is the Mater Admirabilis, representing the Blessed Vir gin in her girlhood, during the year of her retirement within the sacred shadow of the Temple between her Presentation and her Espousals. Copying a pious fresco which a holy nun painted on the wall of the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Rome, and which Pius IX. blessed fifty years ago, this statue represents the Blessed

Virgin as the Verginella of the Temple, the little Madonna of the Lily: for a lily, emblem of her purity, bends its head towards her as she sits at her work with her distaff in her hands, and a book lying open in her work-basket on the ground beside her.

We are unable to stop for any of the many lessons suggested by this realization of an important part of the Blessed Virgin's most

VOL. XXIV. No. 275 19

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258 The Irtsh Monithly.

hidden life-this image of her young soul perfect and immacu lately pure, sent into the world to be united to a body perfect and immaculately pure, and to become in this twofold purity and this twofold perfection, one of the instruments of our salva tion, the Mother of our Saviour. But in these earlier years she is rather the well-beloved daughter of our Father who is in lleaveu, our Sister rather than our Mother; and in this character of Sister she is put before us by one who lived and died outside the Catholic Church, though deeply impressed by the beauty and sublimity of the Church's doctrines and character. This good man, the American

Longfellow, makes the hero of his "Golden Legend" address Italy in lines which towards the close embody this idea.

This is indeed the Blessed Mary's land

Virgin, and Mother of our dear Redeemer!

All hearts are touched and softened at her name;

Alike the bandit with the bloody hand,

The priest, the prince, the scholar, and the peasant,

The man of deeds, the visionary dreamer,

Pay homage to her as one ever present!

And even as children who have much offended

A too indulgent father, in great shame,

Penitent, and yet not daring unattended

To go into his presence, at the gate

Speak with their sister, and confiding wait

Till ahe goes in before, and intercedes;

So men repenting of their evil deeds,

And yet not venturing rashly to draw near

With their request an angry Father's ear,

Offer to her their prayers and their confession,

And she for them in heaven makes intercession.

And if our Faith had given us nothing more

Than this example of all womanhood,

So mild, so 'merciful, so strong, so good,

So patient, peaceful, loyal, loving, pure,

This were enough to prove it higher, and truer

Than all the creeds the world had known before.

rlThis argument ought to have drawn the poet himsdlf into visible union with the Cbhurch which alone honors the Blessed Virgin; but it failed with him, though it succeeded with his niece, Adela Longfellow, who is now a Catholic; just as Gladstone's sister was converted, but not the great statesman himself, and just as Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter has found her way into the Catholic Church, while he himself remained outside, although

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Priedieu Papers. 259

confessing to such feelings as these :

" I have always envied the Catholics their faith in that sweet,

sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of His awful splendor, but permitting His love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness."

This thought expressed by the man whom many consider the finest genius that the New World has yet produced, throws light on the aspect under which we are at present regarding our Blessed Lady; and so does the following passage from another man of noble genius who has betrayed an instinctive sympathy with the Catholic faith in many ways, among the rest by a generous appre

ciation of Ireland and her children: " I am persuaded (says John Ruskin) that the worship of the

Madonna has been one of the noblest and most vital graces of

Catholicism, and has never been otherwise than productive of true holiness of life and purity of character. . . . There has prob

ably not been an innocent cottage home, throughout the length and breadtn of Europe, in which the imagined presence of the

Madonna has not given sanctity to the humblest duties, and com

fort to the sorest trials of the lives of women.t

The great writer goes on to ascribe also to the Israelite maiden

a share in " every brightest and loftiest achievement of the arts and strength of manhood "; but we are at present concerned more

directly with Christian womanhood. The daughters of Mary have participated in the holy influence wielded by the Virgin Immac ulate. Motherhood is too high and too vast a theme to be touched

upon now; but even the yoaungest daughters of the household can exhale a heavenly perfume of innocence and piety that will help to sanctify the other members of the family, and affect powerfully their very vocations and all their after lives.

1 remember our famous Dominican, Father Burke, at the Month's Mind of Cardinal Cullen, drawing a beautiful picture of

a true Catholic household, such as generally gives a priest to the

Church-where (as he said) the young Levite must breathe from infancy an atmosphere of purity and domestic piety, where the

voice of prayer must be familiar to him from his earliest years,

* " The Blithedale Romance."

I" Fors Clavigera, " 4 1st letter.

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260 The Trish ]lonthly.

where from his mother's lips and the example of his father he must learn the first lessonts of what is destined to be sacerdotal virtue and holiness. "Such (the great preacher concluded) was the traditional Catholic family in Ireland, through centuries of persecution, still the seminary of sons strong in faith and holi ness; and such was the home in which the child, Paul Cullen, first

learned to love God."

Very generally the sanctity of such a home, besides the holy influences that have been iincidentally enumerated, will depend greatly also on the young sisters of the family. To them under God's grace will in a large measure be due the cheerful piety that

makes religion amiable in such a. household, with its spirit of un

worldiness, its reverence for God's Church and His ministers, its innocence, industry, mutual charity, and the solid, quiet hap piness which results from all, and in turn helps to secure all the

rest. And when in the changes of human life the young grow

old and the old die, and the young too, sometimes-when the

fledglings get strength and fly away, and the nest is deserted

when home is broken up by deaths and other leave-takings, and

becomes merely a holy tradition for the scattered survivors-one of them looking back to a far-off childhood will recall, no doubt,

"All those fair angels, saintly, wise, light-hearted,

Whose smile made pure the very air he breathed,

And who at parting (for they all have parted)

Sweet sanctifying memories bequeathed."

fLow many are there who have served God faitbfully and hap

pilv in the highest vocations with great fruit for many other souls and with great profit and contentment for their own, yet

who would have been carried off into more perilous paths, were

it not for the gentle but firm restraints of such a holy family-life as has been described-carried off by those vague yearnings and

ambitions that one might almost dare to call the natural pagain

ism of the young heart! It would not be hard to draw from considerations such as these

strong motives for gratitude and contrition: gratitude for the good done to us by others, sorrow for our having failed to do

grood of the same sort to many others in our turn. Doubtless one

of the joys of Heaven will be our fuller understanding of the workings of God's grace in the various relations of our present

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A May Day. 261

mortal life, amongst which not the least interesting will surely be the influence that others have exercised over us, and we over others. And certainly before the tribunal of our Lord and Saviour, if part of our examination turn upon our neglected ,opportunities of helping certain of our fellow-creatures on their

way to God, our excuse will not be any sullen denial of our

responsibility or any approach to that insolent question of the first murderer: " Am I my brother's keeper ? "

A MAY DAY.

GOLD and green spread o'er the meadows Where the landrails loudly cry;

Sunbeams and the fitful shadows Playing in the beeches high;

Woodlands filled with cuckoo laughter; Daisies nodding on the leas;

Bloom where fruit shall grow hereafter On the swarthy cherry trees;

Fragrant snows upon the hedges Where the happy thrushes dwell;

Marsh lights gleaming 'mid the sedges; Mist of violets in the dell;

Crimson tassels on the clover

Gemmed with drops of pearly dew; Gorse fires where the wild bees hover;

Skies of deep and brilliant blue,

Balmy breezes softly singing Lullabies amid the leaves;

Skylarks' chansons sweetly ringing; Rosy morns and golden eves;

Corn-blades shining, streamlets bounding, Clouds of flame that change to gray

When the Angelus is sounding Make a day in Mary's May.

MAGDALEN IRocic.

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