"Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?" St. John, 6:5
Agnes was a little Chinese girl about five years old. Her father died when she was a tiny girl, leaving her mother almost penniless. The mother decided to follow the old Chinese custom of selling her daughter to the parents of some boy who would later marry her. Twenty dollars was usually paid, and twenty dollars would mean a lot to the mother of Agnes.
But the little one got wind of it. She saw her mother talking to a neighbor. Every now and then they would look at Agnes. Then she heard the words, "twenty dollars." Finally it dawned on her that she was going to be sold.
She rushed to her mother, after the man left, and begged her not to sell her:
"Don't sell me, mama, don't sell me."
But the mother paid no attention to the pleadings of her little one.
Agnes decided to run away. But where could she go? She thought and thought and at last remembered hearing that the Catholic missionary often took in little boys and girls. She ran to the mission church and sobbed out her story to the missionary. She told him she could not think of going so far away and living with strange people.
The priest was so touched by her sad situation that he arranged to give the mother twenty dollars so that Agnes could be taken care of in his orphanage. You can imagine how happy and thankful the little tot was. A year later she made her first Holy Communion, and ever since she received Holy Communion every day in thanks for being saved from a heathen life of misery.
A story like this gives us the shivers. How could a mother be so cruel and unnatural as to sell her own child? How brutal and benighted such people must be? We must pray to God that our country might be stopped from proceeding down the path of paganism and irreligion.
Right here in the United States we have thousands of parents who are just as cruel and unnatural as that Chinese mother. We see parents neglecting to provide for the physical needs of their little ones, neglecting what nature demands... neglecting what the very animals provide for their offspring. We want to speak of those temporal duties of parents:
1. The first duty is to give a child life. That requires prudence and care on the part of the parents before birth. It means avoiding anything that will harm the health of the child before it enters the world. For proof of cruelty in this regard just think of the hundreds of tens, and hundreds of thousands of abortions, child murders, right here in the United States every year.
2. Parents are bound to provide food and clothing for their children suitable to their rank and condition. Yes, we know the terrific expense that entails, but we also know that some parents who are able do not provide as they should for their little ones. Money that should go for food and clothing, goes instead into entertainment, liquor, vanity and junk food. In one investigation of the causes of juvenile delinquency it was revealed that many of the teen-agers hailed into court very seldom had a warm and decent meal served in their homes.
3. Making home a comfortable, pleasant and inviting place is another duty of parents. Thank God, many take a just and commendable pride in their homes. Nevertheless, some of you might be making nothing more of your home than a hotel and restaurant. Modern life has bent and even broken many ties of home life. There are so many outside activities and distractions that home takes last place in the minds of too many.
Parents who haunt beer joints, mothers who think more of a bridge table than of a kitchen table, fathers who spend more money on sports events and mothers who spend more on shows in one week than they spend in a month on improving their homes, are not fulfilling their parental duties. Parents who are home as little as possible, who set their children adrift with money for the show, and no care about when or where they go and when they return, are neglecting a rock-bottom duty to their children. It takes genius and talent, we admit, but fathers and mothers have the solemn duty of making home a pleasant place, an inviting place, and the further duty of spending a certain amount of time at home with the children.
4. With regard to the state of life or vocation of their children, parents have a serious responsibility. Many a child has been forced to live a life of poverty, ill-health and insufficient education because parents used for for drugs or liquor what should have gone for proper training.
See that your boy learns a trade or profession. Help your girl by teaching her domestic arts-cooking, sewing, cleaning, and interior decoration.
With regard to a religious vocation, no father or mother is to persuade or push a child into the priesthood or sisterhood, but an ordered, pleasant and religious home is the best nursery of religious vocations.
5. We must mention the making of a will. It is necessary as a provision for the children. It prevents quarrels and enmities later. It forestalls expensive court action. Make a clear will for the benefit of your children - now. I might add that a "Will to Live", for health care reasons would be in order as well.
These material duties of parents are serious. You need God's help in meeting these obligations. In the Gospel passage above we see Jesus faced with the task of feeding thousands with practically nothing. Many a parent has been in a similar situation. Christ can and will help you.
We want to say a heartfelt word of congratulation to the many parents who make every sacrifice for the physical care of their children. But we want to issue a warning to parents who by their extravagance, love of luxury and style, their desire for ease and selfish satisfaction, neglect their temporal duties to their little ones.
May Jesus, who miraculously fed thousands, help you parents to be true fathers and mothers.
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Adapted from Talks on the Commandments, (1948)
by Fr. Arthur Tonne
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