YOUTH SERIES—VI 

" 3 f t e C a £ i t o ^ o u t f V 

"The Eternal Heroines As They Walk In The Twentieth 
Century." 

Series of radio talks presented as a public service 

feature of 

THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY 

National Council of Catholic Women 
1312 Massachusetts Avenue, N. W. 

Washington, D. C. 



IMPRIMATUR: 
<ì> JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D. D. 

Bishop of Fort W 

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR PRESS 
Huntington, Indiana 



. . . and my abode is in the full assembly of saints". 
Ecclesiastics XXIV—16 

The cover of this pamphlet is the design of Ade Bethune 

The circle is a universal symbol of eternity—with-
out beginning or end. The stars are the heroines. They 
are the Church or the Communion of Saints in eternity. 
As the figure of the Church, no one could more fittingly 
occupy the center of the circle of heroines than the 
Blessed Virgin, Queen of the Saints. Fitting, too, are 
the colors, red signifying the flame of charity, white 
purity of heart, characteristic virtues common to all the 
Saints. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 
Foreword 5 

Preface 6 

Discussion Outline 8 

The Communion of Saints 9 

Our Blessed Mother I 16 

Saint Anne 22 

St. Therese of Lisieux 28 

St. Frances of Rome .. 35 

Saint Brigid . 40 

Saints of the Canon 47 

Bernadette of Lourdes 54 

Saint Mary Magdalene :. 61 

Tekakwitha 66 

Saint Martha " '" 74 

Saint Elizabeth of Hungary 80 

Saint Catherine of Siena 87 

Saint Rose of Lima 95 

St. Hedwig—(Jadwiga) of Poland 100 

Saint Cecilia 106 

St. Joan of Arc i 113 

The N.C.C.W. Committee on Youth 119 

General Recommendations 122 

Suggested Program Activities 123 

N.C.C.W. "Helps" 124 

Catholic Action Aids 124 

Addresses of Publishers 125 



FOREWORD 

We are old-timers now, you and I, because this is 
our fourth year of meeting together as radio friends. 
We welcome with real appreciation in this collection of 
1940 broadcasts, distinguished speakers who have en-
riched our literature, our theatre, and our music. With 
the generosity and brilliance for which they are known 
and loved, they have given magnificently to the Call to 
Youth. We acknowledge also gratefully the cooperation 
of National Broadcasting Company and Mr. Franklin 
Dunham, educational director, as well as the many stu-
dios who provided distribution. 

"Eternal Heroines As They Walk in the Twentieth 
Century" is the subject of the series. The world today is 
full of half-goddesses whose only claim to wonder is that 
they are shrouded in glamor, but American youth is a 
thinking youth quick to reject the substitute. The Eter-
nal Heroines are not mythical creatures, but real flesh 
and blood. They knew the same intimate problems of 
economics, of family life, and of affections as do you. 
Undoubtedly the vocabulary of dates and smoothies, of 
kitchenettes and budgets was unknown to them, but the 
underlying fundamentals were familiar. They were the 
quintessence of femininity, because they were woman-
hood. They took their place in society, high or low, they 
knew war and peace, they were gay and discouraged 
even as you and I. In fact, they met the same challenge 
which is given you, the challenge of discharging the mis-
sion of living, but they met it with gay courage, with 
gratitude, and close friendship with the King of Kings. 

As you read these pages, may you come to know 
and love the charity of Elizabeth, the motherhood of 
Anne, the courage of Catherine, and the crusading spirit 
of the little French maiden of Donremy, in order that 
one day you may stand with the greatest heroine of all, 
and under the protecting shadow of her blue mantle, 
recite your Magnificat. 

Anne Sarachon Hooley 
National Youth Chairman, N.C.C.W. 



PREFACE 
"Lives of great men, all remind us, 
We can make our lives sublime, 
And departing leave behind us 
Footprints on the sands of time". 

If these words of a great American poet are true 
in their application to the secular characters, that stand 
out with distinction in the history of humanity, how 
much more significant are they not, when applied to the 
saintly men and women, who have bequeathed to poster-
ity the inspiration of their own efforts to walk in the 
footprints of Him, Who is for all the exemplar of per-
fection, Christ Jesus, "the way, the truth, the life". 

The 1939-1940 series of broadcasts for youth, spon-
sored by the National Council of Catholic Women, pre-
sented a beautiful panorama of God's choicest souls 
headed by the Queen of them all, the ever blessed Virgin 
Mother of the Incarnate Son of God. Each of them 
shines like a star in the firmament by reason of her love 
for the divine spouse and of her devotion to the law of 
charity. In the glow of the Gospel setting there came 
to us the Mother of Jesus, with her own mother Anne, 
and Martha and the Magdalene. Doubly crowned with 
the garland of virginity and the diadem of martyrdom, 
Cecilia noblest of the daughters of ancient Rome, joined 
Tekakwitha the Lily of the Mohawks to demonstrate 
what God's holy grace can do to exalt even the tenderest 
human nature. Frances of Rome, Catherine of Siena, 
Brigid of Ireland, Elizabeth of Hungary, Hedwig of 
Poland, Jeanne d'Arc, Bernadette and the Little Flower 
of France and Rose of Lima in Peru gave us an im-
pressive cross section picture of the universality of 
sainthood. It illustrated the fact that-no race, no nation, 
no continent, no epoch, no age and no state of life is ex-
cluded from that bountiful participation of divine grace' 
that makes heroic virtue possible. 

Modern youth, thank God, is still susceptible to the 
enchantment of the heroic and the romantic. It is still 
capable of appreciating with admiration and a desire to 



emulate those magnetic characters that stand out in bold 
relief among men for the excellent quality of their vir-
tues and deeds. Unfortunately the naturalism and 
materialism that prevail in so many phases and forms 
of modern life are doing much to minimize the necessity 
and the dignity of the supernatural and the spiritual in 
human character and action. Hence, there is great need 
of an antidote to the poison of modernistic philosophy 
and of an offset to the tendency manifested in certain 
quarters to glorify the mythological characters of primi-
tive religions and to idealize purely pagan concepts of 
human conduct and culture. 

In this reprint of the radio broadcasts given under 
the title of "Eternal Heroines as They Walk in the 
Twentieth Century" there will be preserved to modern 
youth a stimulating symposium of spiritual thought and 
action, presented by prelates and women of exceptional 
literary ability and spiritual idealism. May it serve to 
inspire its readers with a holy ambition to imitate with 
a commendable degree of generosity the beautiful ex-
amples of a galaxy of holy souls, who from heaven's 
heights cease not to watch over and pray for the often 
sorely tried youth of a much troubled age! 

-b Joseph Francis Rummel, S.T.D., 
Archbishop of New Orleans, 
Episcopal Chairman, Department of Lay Organiza-
tions, N.C.W.C. 

August 4, 1940. 



DISCUSSION OUTLINE 
I. Applicable to each saint. 

1. Tell in your own words the life of St 
2. Why was she a Saint? 
3. In what century and country did she live? 

a. What other saints lived in her country? 
b. About the same time ? 

4. What were the characteristics of the age in which 
she served? 

5. For what special virtues was the saint admired bv 
others of her day? 

6. Are there any social trends today similar to those 
of the era of our heroine? 

7. In what way may youth imitate her in order to 
change these false standards? 

8. What other saints lived under similar conditions 
and are noted for like accomplishments? 

9. Relate one incident of her life illustrative of an out-
standing virtue. 

10. In what way was she an example of Catholic 
Action? 

11. When is her feast day? How may we best celebrate 

12. Can you find prayers, (consult your missal) songs, 
pictures, etc., of this saint for use at Youth meet-
ings and for your own personal sanctification ? 

II. General 

1. If more young people were interested in being 
saints what difference do you think it would make 
in the world today? 

2. Does God expect you to be a saint? 
3. Do you think it hard to be a saint? 
4. Do you think saints are queer? 
5. Do you have to enter a consent to be a saint? If 

not, how can you live in your present calling and be 
a saint? 

6. Should we pray that we may become a saint or that 
we may help others to become saints? 



THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS 
Most Reverend Edwin V. O'Hara, Bishop of Kansas City 

In this troubled day the prophecy of the poet is 
realized only too literally and the "nation's airy navies 
grappling in the central blue" are raining down upon the 
hapless, innocent victims beneath them the "ghastly 
dew" of destruction. Ponderous machines of man's in-
vention lumber heavily over the fertile stretches of the 
earth dealing out death to the defenseless victims in 
their path. Even in the waters under the earth, men 
created by God Most High are engaging in deadly battle 
and sending one another down to the utmost depths of 
the sea. I wish to invite you to turn aside from this 
passing picture of carnage and death, that represents a 
hopeless perversion of the ideal of the family of human-
kind to consider the lasting fellowship of the great 
spiritual family to which we belong, of which God is the 
Father, and the saints, our elder brothers and sisters. 
They are the eternal heroes and heroines who lead 
armies of youth not by fear but by love, and who lead 
them not to cruel destruction but to a more radiant 
life. 

This "fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ Our Lord" 
(1 Cor. 1:9) is known in the language of the Creed, 
which all Christians profess, as the Communion of 
Saints. The words: "I believe in the Communion of 
Saints" may sometimes be lightly pronounced, or if con-
sidered, may be too little understood to convey the glor-
ious truth that they hold for all. That glorious truth is 
this, that we are all one in Christ. There exists among 
us a spiritual unity that binds together all those on 
earth who are of good will, as well as all of good will 
who have preceded us into the future life, whether they 
be in Purgatory waiting to pay the last farthing before 
they enter into eternal glory, or whether they have al-
ready come into their eternal destiny in Heaven, of 
sharing to the limit of their capacity the divine life of 
God, of seeing Him face to face, of seeing Him as He 



10 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

sees Himself. Among all these, the Church Militant on 
earth, the Church Suffering in Purgatory and the Church 
Triumphant in Heaven, there exists the bond of brother-
hood, for God made us all brothers in His great family 
natural brothers through participation in our common 
father, Adam, and brothers in Christ in the spiritual 
order through participation in the sonship of God, con-
ferred on us through the saving grace of Christ's Re-
demption. 

You will understand the implications of the doc-
trine of the Communion of Saints, if you will consider 
the relations and the interrelations of a well ordered 
family. In a proper family life, no member lives to 
himself alone. Each has obligations to all the others 
and serves the interests of the others wherever possible 
whether they be absent or present. The older brothers 
and sisters relieve the parents at times of the care of 
younger members, and younger members contribute 
what they can in services and obedience. Each has his 
distinct responsibility. This interdependence makes for 
unity and solidarity. Where one is concerned, all are 
concerned. When one is afflicted or in need, all the 
others come to his assistance, and this pooling of ma-
terial possessions or the greater boon of sharing affection 
makes the family the ideal unit in the greater family 
of God that it was meant to be. 

It is not otherwise in the greater family of God 
which is made up of all who will receive Him "As 
many as received Him", says St. John, "He gave them 
power to be made, the sons of God" (1:12). These sons 
of God who are still in this world make up the Church 
Militant. They share the same faith, and receive the 
same sacraments through which the life of the Head 
Who is Christ, flows into their souls. They offer sacri-
fice together, they pray unceasingly for one another, and 
they serve one another as it is fitting that the members 
of a family should do. They kneel together at the Altar 
table shoulder to shoulder. 

This Church Militant to which we belong is no 
selfish unit, living apart from others. Its members are 
united in a living union with Christ and with all men, 
living and dead, who are in the love of God. Death is 



"THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS" 11 

not the end of our lives but is in very truth the begin-
ning and the solid establishment of life, the beginning 
of the fullness of the life we have already received from 
God in Baptism, whether that Baptism has been of 
water, or of desire, or of blood. And so members of the 
Church Militant who have kept themselves in union with 
God, pass like a victorious army into the life beyond 
and join their forces with the victorious members al-
ready there, where as St. Paul tells us "we all meet 
into the unity of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son 
of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age 
of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13). Thus death is 
not the destruction of the bond in the great family of 
God, nor is death a barrier to the stream of prayer that 
circulates among the members, watering, as it were, unto 
greater fecundity the whole body. Sin and only sin, 
can destroy the bond of unity; .death can not. For we 
are members, not of a closed corporation, nor of a soci-
ety, but of a living, growing organism—the family of 
God. And "every pious and holy action done by one 
(member) belongs and is profitable to all, through 
charity which seeketh not her own" (Catechism of the 
Council of Trent, Pt. I, ch. X). 

Our Divine Lord through His inspired writers has 
given us the clear outlines of this plan of divine citizen-
ship, the Communion of Saints, in which alone is to be 
found our true and lasting happiness. Christ presents 
it to us under the name, "The Kingdom of God". He 
shows it to us as a living thing, "like the grain of mus-
tard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. 
Which is the least indeed of all seeds; but when it i3 
grown up, it is greater than all herbs, and becometh a 
tree, so that the birds of the air come, and dwell in the 
branches thereof" (Matt. 13:31, 32). Not only is it a 
living, growing organism but it embraces in its bonds 
of charity all the children of God. As the Scribe said 
to Christ: "Well, Master, hast thou said in truth, that 
there is one God, and there is no other beside him. And 
that he should be loved with the whole heart, and with 
the whole understanding, and with the whole soul, and 
with the whole strength; and to love one's neighbor as 
oneself, is a greater thing than all holocausts and sacri-



12 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

fices. And Jesus seeing that he had answered wisely, 
said to him: Thou are not far from the Kingdom of 
God." (Mark 12:32-34) 

This Kingdom of God is not of this world—"My 
kingdom is not of this world", said Our Lord to Pilate, 
but it is at work in this world, for Our Lord also said, 
"The kingdom of God is within you", (Luke 17:21), and 
"The kingdom of heaven is like to leaven, which a woman 
took and hid in three measures of meal, until the whole 
was leavened" (Matt. 13:33). That it is allied with the 
members in the world to come, is shown by the rejoicing 
of the angels at the repentance of a struggling member 
of the kingdom on earth (Luke 15:10) and by the words 
of royal welcome into the kingdom, "Come ye blessed of 
my Father", pronounced by the Master of that Kingdom 
upon those who had served in their hunger, or thirst, 
or loneliness, or nakedness, or illness, or imprisonment, 
His least brethern in this world. (Matt. 25:35 seq.). 

St. Paul who had been "caught up into paradise, 
and heard secret words, which it is not granted to man 
to utter", (2 Cor. 12:4) and who yet has the effulgence 
of that vision about all the words that it was granted to 
him to utter, tells us repeatedly that by the divine plan 
we are all compacted into a body. We are as closely 
related one to thé other as the living cells in the human 
body. The head of the body is Christ. The life blood, 
the energizing principle, of this body is charity. The 
members of the body are saints, not only the saints of 
this world, but those of the world to come. For he says, 
"Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreign-
ers; but youI are fellow citizens with the saints, and the 
domestics of God." And again he says, "but you are 
come to mount Sion and to the city of the living God, 
the heavenly Jerusalem, and the company of many 
thousands of angelsr* . . and to the spirits of the just 
made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the New 
Testament" (Heb. 12:22-24). 

• So close is the unity of this body that the saints 
are "members one of another" (Rom. 12:5). They 
share the same blessings, "For in one Spirit were we all 
baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, wheth-
er bond or free ; and in one Spirit we have all been made 



"THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS" 13 

to drink" (1 Cor. 12:13). They are "Mutually careful 
one of another" (1 Gor. 12:35), they pray for one an-
other, "at all times in the spirit and in the same watch-
ing with all instance and supplication for all the saints" 
(Eph. 6:18), and all share the same corporate life, for 
"the whole body . . . by what every joint supplieth . . . 
maketh increase . . . unto the edifying of itself in char-
ity". (Eph. 4:16). 

Into this great family of God we are all called. 
Every one in the world has the privilege and the oppor-
tunity of entering that family through the sacrament 
of Baptism, which gives the soul participation in the 
life of God as parents give their children bodies that 
participate in the natural life of man. As a member of 
that family the individual is not an isolated unit but has 
a special relation to Christ through Whom he has been 
introduced into the family, and to every other member 
of that family who has likewise been redeemed by 
Christ. The same supernatural life is flowing through 
us all. It is communicated to us all through prayer and 
the sacraments, the channels of Christ's grace. Whether 
we are in Heaven or in Purgatory or on earth, we are 
all members one of another, and can help one another by 
virtue of the life that is in us from Christ, our Head. 

Do we all as members cultivate this supernatural 
life, thus making ourselves more and more like Christ, 
our' Head? In the measure in which we, the members 
do so, the Kingdom of God, for which we daily pray in 
the Our Father, is realized. If all would bring their 
wills into entire conformity with the will of God, then, 
"Thy Kingdom come" would be a fact. But all do not 
do so. Each member makes a choice: He will surren-
der his will completely to the will of God and become 
a saint; or he will have the wish so to yield his will 
but achieves only partial success; or he "will not serve" 
but insists on following his own misguided will. 

In the last instance, he is a dead member of the 
family, for he has cut himself off from the stream of 
life that can come to him only when he yields himself 
to Christ. In the second instance, he may be compared 
to a man in the natural order who has no more than 
very moderate health. He has the life of Christ in him 



1 4 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

insofar as he submits himself to the d i r e c t i ^ i ^ f C h r i ^ 
will In the first instance, he is the "elect of God holv 
and beloved" (Col. 3:12). He has given his soul to God 
He has separated it, as our Apostolic Delegate has rec-
ently written "from those inordinate affections to whTch 
t has adhered removing it from the domination of 

the animal instincts, from the insatiable egoistic appe-

America, p . t f h e r e t ° f ° r e i t " ( S a n c t i * 

In the discussions that are to be given in this series 
on the lives of the saints, a study will be made of some 
of the members of God's family who have overcome t h d r 
natural inclinations to evil in this heroic degree X 
have purged out the old leaven and become a new paste 
who have put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Following t S 
example of Mary, they have become the eternal heroines 

radi'int l f a y ° U t h i ° U r H d a y t 0 a f u l l e r H E | 



"THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS" 15 

"I believe in the Communion of Saints" 

Bibliography 

A Dictionary of Saints, compiled by Donald Attwater, 
P. J. Kenedy & Son, 1939 

Catholic Dictionary—Universal Knowledge Foundation 
Catholic Encyclopedia 
"The Book of Saints"—Benedictine Monks of St. Augus-

tine Abbey, Macmillan; $8.00 
"Lives of the Saints"—Alban Butler, Kenedy, Publish-

ers; $2.75 
"Sanctity in America"—Most Rev. Amleto Giovanni 

Cicognani, Apostolic Delegate, St. Anthony Guild 
Press; $1.00 

"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S. J., 
Bruce Publishing Co.; $2.00 

"So This Is Sanctity"—Mission Press; 10c 
"What Are Saints"—C. C. Martindale, S. J., Sheed & 

Ward; $1.00 
"God's Heroes"—Rev. Thomas A. Lahey, C. S. C., Ave 

Maria Press; $1'.00 
"Hard-Headed Holiness"—Francis P. LeBuffe, S. J. 

Queen's Work; 10c 
Science of the Saints—R. J. Meyer, S. J., Herder; $1.25 
Six O'Clock Saints—Joan Wyndham, Sheed & Ward; 

$1.75 
The Nature of Sanctity—Ida Candenhove, Sheed & Ward. 



OUR BLESSED MOTHER 
Right Reverend Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen 

It has been said that it is impossible to have a 
youth organization without infiltration of Communists 
in it. I think that it would be truer to say that it 

S B « 1 M t 0 h a v f S B I B o f y - t h organization 
without Communist infection, because I could name a 
dozen national youth organizations in the United States 

m m M B B r u n i n t 0 hundreds of thousands, 
which have never been tinged in the slightest with un-
• H lde™- Whether or not a foreign ideology 

W m B m B i d e p e n d s e n t i r e ] y uP° n the ideals of that group. Experience proves that moths given a 

W M m m Z W 0 0 l e n a n d w o o l e n w i t h a grease spot will attack the greasy woolen every time. So it is 
with un-American activities; they get into those groups 
which have already lost resistance because they have 
lost purity of ideals and integrity of purpose. 

One wonders if the elders of America are not really 
by unsound advice, rendering a greater disservice than' 
service to the American youth. Two instances deserve 
to be mentioned: 1) The elders of America constantly 
urging our youth to talk. This is as it should be, but 
our youth should also be encouraged to listen. Urging 
them to talk but not to listen is like asking them to run 
races but never eat. The perfection of youth consists 
not in being self-expressive: boilers that blow up are 
self-expressive ; it consists in being self-controlled: like 
boilers that have power because they keep a given pres-
sure. God gave youth ears as well as tongues, and 
those elders who urge the exercise of youthful tongues 
to the utter forgetfulness of the absorption of wisdom 
experienced through the ears are begetting a loquacious 
youth, but not a wise youth. 2) The elders of America 
are too fond of telling our youth that the greatest ob-
stacle in the pathway of American youth is want of 
food, clothing and shelter. No one will dispute the fact 
that the reasonable comforts of life are essential to 



"OUR BLESSED MOTHER" 17 

youth, but they are essential as means not as ends. 
When youth is well clothed, fed and housed, what is he 
going to do with life? It is worth noting that those 
youths in America who have most succeeded in spread-
ing Communist doctrines in youth organizations always 
have plenty of money for living and travelling from one 
end of America to the other. Furthermore, if the integ-
rity of American youth is dependent on food, clothing 
and shelter, why is it that the rich youth is not always 
the model youth? Is there not something else required 
in addition to economic comforts to make a model youth? 
Shall we attribute the breakdown of youth to a want of 
material comforts? Shall we rightfully speak of the 
ravages of want and wrongfully ignore the ravages of 
infidelity? Shall we rightfully alleviate unemployment of 
youth and wrongfully permit them to ignore promises 
and pacts made one to another in marriage that they 
shall love one another until death do them part? Shall 
Stalin and Hitler be criticized for breaking their treat-
ies and our youth be condoned for breaking theirs? Let 
us think this out clearly: Are the well-fed always the 
pure? Are the well-housed always the just? Are the 
employed always the charitable? If not, there is some-
thing over and above the economic in the making of 
youth. Where is the foundation for fidelity, honor, jus-
tice and purity? Shall the elders be silent about virtue 
and loquacious about that which makes them full ani-
mals? To the extent the elders forget the moral, they 
have done a disservice to youth. 

That brings us to the constructive program for 
youth and here I speak as a Catholic. I thought you 
might be interested in hearing the way we develop our 
youth organizations which incidentally are as free from 
Communistic anti-American propagandists as snow is 
free from fire. We begin with this proposition: a) No 
youth will ever have an inspiration for virtue unless he 
has a love higher than self. As mother will often make 
the appeal to her son or daughter: "Never do anything 
of which your mother would be ashamed". Thus does a 
mother suggest an ideal for which selfish and sinful 
pleasure must be denied. The Church elevates this to a 
still higher plane and reminds youth that Our Lord from 



18 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

the Cross gave us a universal ideal of Purity. "Behold 
thy Mother". Thus did the Son of God in giving us as 
a love "our tainted nature's solitary boast" equivalently 
plead: "Never do anything of which your Mother would 
be ashamed". That is why the purity of Catholic youth 
is grounded not on hygienic but on moial reasons, b) 
In addition to offering youth an ideal love, the Church 
shows youth the fallacy of experienced evil. Too many 
youths in our day justify sin on the ground that in order 
to know life, you must experience evil: hence the catch-
word "know life". The Church however warns its youth 
that to know evil experimentally is to endanger suc-
cumbing to its superficial attractiveness until we are 
captive to it, just as to know smallpox experimentally 
is to endanger having our face pock-marked for life. 
The cost of the world's knowledge of good and evil was 
the loss of paradise; in like manner the cost of experienc-
ed evil is moral disorder within. 

How then does the Catholic Church bring home to 
youth the reality of evil, without permitting them to ex-
perience it? By showing them the consequences of evil 
on goodness. The Crucifixion is the laboratory where 
that lesson is learned, for on Calvary we see what evil 
can do to Truth, Virtue, Goodness and Purity when al-
lowed the full vengeance of its false tolerance. As a 
healthy person might know the ravages of drink by a 
visit to the hospital, so a Catholic knows sin by a look 
at the Crucifix. Not only on the Cross is evil revealed 
in its harvest, but even at the foot of the Cross where 
His Blessed Mother, who was the most virtuous human 
being who ever lived, was transfixed with the seven 
swords. Thus is evil known not experimentally but 
vicariously; not by living it, but by seeing it in action,— 
never triumphant but ever defeated by a Love which 
overcomes the evil by redeeming and forgiving it, and 
leaving as an intercessor the Mother who through the 
centuries has been affectionately called by the race of 
the saved: "Refuge of sinners". 

Virtue is difficult unless it can be integrated into 
a large pattern, and given an ideal to which even a low-
er life may be sacrificed. If we think only of our mouth, 



"OUR BLESSED MOTHER" 19 

it begins to water; if a singer thinks only of his larynx, 
his voice is impaired; if an orator concentrates on his 
hands, his manner becomes clumsy. In like manner, if 
youth is diverted of an ideal beyond either the economic 
or the carnal, he will be so wrapped up in self, as to 
destroy usefulness either for himself or society. But 
give him something to love outside of self, then life finds 
a pattern. An orchestra leader integrates his hands into 
the pattern of music and never once is he conscious of 
their awkward presence: they fit into the movement of 
every bar. A singer, in like manner, never thinks about 
his larnyx, because he has ordered it to the service of 
song, and the pleasure of the audience. Seizing on this 
psychology, the Church gives to youth an ideal outside 
itself, something to which every thought, word and deed 
is subordinated, namely the love of God and His Blessed 
Mother. That is why you never hear the Catholic Church 
talk about sex, anymore than you hear it talk about 
trains; both are means to ends. Trains exist for some-
thing else—to bring you to your destination. Sex exists 
for something else, namely love. Love is at its peak in 
God, in the Incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ and in 
His Mother. The Catholic youth has therefore some-
thing not only to live for, but also something to die for. 
He knows how to listen, for He has a Divine Teacher 
and Model; he knows how to live selflessly, because he 
has an ideal outside of self. 

For that reason we never have to worry about Com-
munists entering Catholic youth organizations; the same 
sense of justice and devotion to the law of God which 
keeps divorce from breaking up our families, keeps the 
atheistic groups from breaking up our youths. Doctors 
do not compromise with germs in their patients; neither 
do those youth groups which are American tolerate that 
which is anti-American. 

To that Woman who is the Patroness of Youth be-
cause the Mother of the Child Who is King of men, we 
commend the youth of America. In fact, we are all her 
children, old and young, and in the language of Mary 
Dixon Thayer, as children we say to her: 



20 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

TO OUR LADY 

Lovely Lady dressed in blue— 
Teach me how to pray! 
God was just your little Boy, 
Tell me what to say! 
Did you lift Him up, sometimes, 
Gently, on your knee? 
Did you sing to Him the way 
Mother does to me? 
Did you hold His hand at night? 
Did you ever try 
Telling stories of the world? 
0 ! And did He cry? 
Do you really think He cares 
If I tell Him things— 
Little things that happen? And 
Do the Angels wings 
Make a noise? And can He hear 
Me if I speak low? 
Does He understand me now? 
Tell me—for you know! 
Lovely Lady dressed in blue, 
Teach me how to pray! 
God was just your little Boy 
And you know the way. 

—From Mary Dixon Thayer's "The Child on His Knees" 
By permission of The Macmillan Company, publishers. 



"OUR BLESSED MOTHER" 2 1 

"The Woman, who is the Patroness of Youth" 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 
"The Mystical Body of Chr i s t " -R t . Rev. Msgr. Fulton 

J. Sheen, Sheed & Ward; $2.50 
«The Queen of Seven Swords"-Rt . Rev. Msgr. Fulton 

J. Sheen, N. C. C. M.; 10c 
"Mary, the Mother of God"-01ympe P. Gerbet, Kenedy; 

$1.50 I IS 
"The Madonna"—An Anthology-by Sir James Mar-

chant, Longmans, Green & Co. 
"Mary, Our Mother"—Mission Press; 10c 
"The Mother of God"—Queen's Work; 10c 
"When Mary Walked the Ear th" -Queen ' s Work; 1 0 c 
"Our Blessed Lady"-Kil ian J. Heinrich, St. Anthony 

Guild, 1988; $1.00 
"Our Blessed Mother"-Rev. Peter A. Resch, I. M„ Bruce 

Publishing Co. 
"Our Land and Our Lady"-Daniel Sargent, Longmans, 

Green & Co.; $2.50 
"Mary":—Sister M. Eleanore, C. S. C„ Bruce Publishing 

Co.; $2.00. 



SAINT ANNE 
Evelyn Carroll 

I am to have the privilege this morning of speak-
ing to you about Saint Anne, Mother of Our Blessed 
Lady—Grandmother of Jesus. It has not been easy to 
prepare tins talk because while Saint Anne as Mother 
of Mary is one of the most beloved and venerated saints 
relatively little is known about her life. She is not 
mentioned in the Gospels and we depend on apocryphal 
scriptures—namely the gospel of pseudo Matthew and 
the Proto-Evangelium of James—for the record of her 

• A l?d y°u k n °w the apocrypha must be taken with 
reservations but it is believed there is much real his-
tory in them and we are perhaps safe in accepting the 
main outlines of Saint Anne's life. 

I wish, however, to emphasize that devotion to Saint 
Anne does not rest on these apocrypha, but on the auth-
ority of the Church. 

Saint Anne lived at Nazareth—in lower Galilee—a 
short distance from Mt. Carmel. In the opinion of 
baint Augustine she was of a priestly family. She mar-
ried a just man, named Joachim, of the tribe of Juda 
and of the race of David. We are told that Anne and 
Joachim walked before God in the ways of most perfect 
justice, spending their days in prayer, labor and alms-
giving, as required by the teachings of the Old Law 
Theyawaited, with all the ardent faith of ancient days! 
the Messiah who had been announced by the prophets— 
the Messiah so long promised to Israel and who, accord-
ing to prediction, was soon to appear. 

It is related that Anne and Joachim were married 
twenty years and no children were born to them. It is 
related that on the great feast -day when Anne and Joa-
chim went to the Temple to offer gifts, Joachim was 
accosted by a priest called Reuben, who upbraided him 
saying It is not lawful for thee to present thy oifering 
tor the Lord hath not blessed thy marriage". Thus re-
buked, Joachim departed weeping, to the desert. There 



"SAINT ANNE" 23 

he fasted many days and nights saying, "I will not eat 
or drink—Prayer alone shall be my food until my God 
shall cast His Eyes on me". Anne retired to her home 
and redoubled her prayers and entreaties to Almighty 
God, reminding Him she had promised on her wedding 
day that if a son or daughter was born to her she would 
offer it to Him in His Temple. We are told an angel 
appeared to Anne saying, "God hath heard thy prayers, 
Thou shalt conceive and bring forth a child and the 
frui t of thy womb shall be the admiration of the whole 
world." 

Anne replied, "Long live the Lord my God—be it 
son or daughter I will offer the child to the Lord my God 
in order that it may serve Him during its entire life." 
And in due course Anne, sterile for twenty years, con-
ceived and gave birth to Her who was to bring forth 
the Son of God—the Divine Eedeemer of the human 
race. We know, on the authority of the Church, that 
the birth of the Blessed Virgin was normal. 

Thenceforth Anne could not but call herself blessed. 
Listen to the beautiful canticle in which she gives thanks 
"I will sing the praise of my God, I will sing the praise 
of my God, because He has visited me in His love and 
has not left my name to opprobrium." 

Twenty four days after the birth of her daughter, 
Anne went to the Temple to obey a Precept of the Old 
Law and mindful of her promise offered Mary to the 
service of the Temple. We know how great a sacrifice 
this must have been but in her gratitude Anne was only 
too happy to present to God that which He had bestowed 
on her. 

Anne returned home from the Temple and for three 
years devoted herself to prayer and the care of Mary, 
teaching her always the love of God and preparing her 
for life in the Temple. When Mary was three years 
old they returned to Jerusalem that Anne might fulfill 
her vow, and Mary was solemnly consecrated to God, and 
left in the Temple at Jerusalem. Anne returned to Naza-
reth alone. 

Of the later life of Anne we'know little. We do not 
know that she ever saw her grandson, the Child Jesus, 
with mortal eyes or that she ever knew His Mission on 



24 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

üirouffh M M t h e +
b e g í n n i n ^ o f Christianity down through the centuries to the nrpoent J*,- H L , held in veneration. Devotion to Saint h a f b e e " 

in the Orient at a very e S d a t . S- nt ' ™
S J"">™ 

I e h i » — — • » — m m mmmmmimmmmi 
• W v S n l r f n thTyear S / ^ r 

• M B H ffPFfffM • 

a ^ f f i w a s r f i d e n t t h a t 

i n H I ^ W m m 

m a m m m i l l r r z m A n n e í  

m 1 M B M i i i i i M B B B 

h e T S e S i o r h e r h o m a g e a n d ^ < 3 to 5 . 

W W S I our country has a church I 

t t t f íe t 0on r incTeeas:nd ^ ^ o n s 

A n J B R B K S I I B W I i y t h i s devotion to Saint 
part of H P widespread love and devotion on the 
thP nw t t i a n S , f 0 r t h a t J e w i s h Mother who lived bv 
M f o never knew the teachings S 

S i i i l a i H ^ M H H g 

has always realized. She is the patroness of Moth r" 
and housewives, and in" this connection, it may be noted 
she is also the traditional patroness of mfners-"nas 
much as by a beautiful symbolism C h r i s t T compared 



"SAINT ANNE" 25 

to gold and Mary to silver, and Anne as the Mother of 
Mary becomes the mine of both silver and gold. 

The glory of this Saint is, it is true, a reflected 
glory. She was the Mother of the Immaculate Concep-
tion, who was the Mother of the Eedeemer. Her fame is 
overshadowed by the greater radiance of her daughter, 
but God has manifested His approval of the love and 
devotion of His children to Saint Anne by the accom-
plishment of wonderful miracles at her intercession. 

The lesson this Jewish Mother has for us in 1940 is 
the same as it has been through the ages, namely, the 
value and esteem—the great importance God places on 
Motherhood. It is the Motherhood of Anne and Mary 
that has appealed through the ages to artists and poets. 
Saint Anne is usually portrayed holding Mary, and Mary 
holding the Infant Jesus. Innumerable legends have 
sprung up and been treasured telling of Saint Anne's de-
votion to Mary; of her eagerness that she should know 
and love God and walk always in His way; Her faith 
which after years of disappointment was still strong 
enough to pray, knowing well that in God's time all 
prayers are answered; her willingness to sacrifice her 
beloved daughter from a tender age to God's service; 
her modesty and humility which permitted her to re-
main unknown and unsung in her own lifetime, content 
to serve God and her family. It would seem that all vir-
tues which Christian Mothers desire and cultivate were 
possessed by this Jewish Mother who lived by the Old 
Law. 

In the present day when Motherhood is not always 
regarded as the high vocation and blessing which God 
intends; when private organizations and even some 
state governments are spending time, energy and money 
in disseminating information to prevent Motherhood; 
when the emphasis is placed on selfishness—not on self-
sacrifice or selflessness—when many women aim to de-
stroy life instead of create it, we might well reflect again 
and again on the life and example of Saint Anne and 
ask her intercession with her divine Grandson for a mis-
guided world. 

And one more virtue—one more example of the 
many she gives us I would call to your attention: Her 



26 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

patience, her perseverance. Think of the patience and 
perseverance which could pray for twenty years, in the 
face of all obstacles, confident that God would hear. And 
if Saint Anne could do this, without knowing the Mes-
sias and His Message of Love and Hope, how much 
easier it should be for us with the aids that her divine 
Grandson Jesus Christ has given us, His Church and 
His sacraments, to pray and to persevere in prayer, con-
fident that God will not forget His children in their 
troubles and afflictions in this present world. 



"SAINT ANNE" 27 

"O Good St. Anne, mother of the Blessed Vir-
gin Mary, you who are so powerful in heaven, heal 
us of all our bodily ills and pray for our souls' 
salvation. Good St. Anne, pray for us." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

"Good St. Anne"—Philip H. Burkett, S.J., America 
Press; 10c 

"The Life of St. Anne"—A Redemptorist Father, The 
Shrine, St. Anne de Beaupre 

"St. Anne"—Mary Mannix, Benziger— 



ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX 
Frances Parkinson Keyes 

Not long ago, I went to make a speech in a Mid-
Western city where I was a complete stranger. Await-
ing me was a letter from a local Nursing Sister who 
wrote to say that she hoped I would call on her, as she 
had learned through reading my book, "Written In 
Heaven", that we had a "mutual friend". The mutual 
friend proved to be the heroine of the book, Saint Ther-
esa of Lisieux, more generally known as the "Little 
Flower"! 

I have chosen to tell you this because I myself can 
think of no better way to begin my broadcast than by 
saying, "I am going to talk to you today about someone 
who is our mutual friend. She is not a dim and shadowy 
figure of the past; she is a vivid personage of the pres-
ent. There are many individuals still living who re-
member her well; indeed, if she had not died prema-
turely, she would still be alive herself. I know these 
associates of hers, and I have lived in Lisieux at the 
same ancient Abbey where she went to school. She seems 
very close to me, and I believe I can make her seem 
close to you for two reasons: First, because it is easier 
for most of us to look upon a modern saint as a friend 
than one who has been dead a long time. Second, because 
St. Theresa is not separated from us by her opportuni-
ties and her accomplishments any more than she is by 
the distance of the ages. There is nothing spectacular 
about her, nothing to deter the average girl from say-
ing, 'Here is a saint whose example I should like to fol-
low and which I believe I can follow. I could not lead 
armies, or sway statesmen, or evolve doctrines, but 
there are many little things I might do well and I am 
going to try to do those! If I succeed, I shall have a 
right to believe that St. Theresa is my friend, and to 
turn towards her just as I do towards other friends, but 
in a more wonderful way! ' " 

With thoughts like this in mind, let us review, very 
briefly, the main events in St. Theresa's early life, 



"ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX" 29 

She was born in the pretty little French provincial 
city of Alencon. Her father, Louis Joseph Martin, was a 
well-known watchmaker. Her mother, Zelie, was a de-
signer of those fairylike laces to which Alencon owes 
much of its fame. Both in their early youth had them-
selves hoped to become members of religious orders, and 
both had been thwarted in this desire; they had never 
ceased to long for a son who should fulfill the destinies 
they had missed. They had four little daughters—Marie, 
Pauline, Leonie and Celine—but they dwelt on the 
dream of a man-child who should go to the far corners 
of the earth as a missionary. 

On January 2, 1878 that sense of thrilled expecta-
tion which presages the greatest of all human events be-
gan to pervade the Martin family scene. When evening 
came snow had begun to fall, and the atmosphere had 
become more and more hushed. After Marie and Paul-
ine had gone to bed they lay still and listened ; as they 
did so, they were startled by the soft sound of their 
father knocking at the door. He told them that they had 
a little sister. Now that instead of the long-awaited son 
another daughter had been born to him, he never gave 
tongue to the feeling of frustration which must have 
been overwhelming. Eventually he had his reward. His 
last-born became his best beloved. She was also to be-
come, together with St. Francis Xavier, the Patron 
Saint of Missionaries. 

The baby was baptized by the name of Marie Fran-
çoise Therese. At first she was very fragile, but by the 
time she was ten months old, she could stand alone, and 
at the age of fifteen months she was talking too. Her 
pleasant little face was framed with fair curls and 
wreathed in bright smiles. All the family letters of the 
period reveal her as a delightful little girl. As she grew 
older she loved birds and their nests, flowers and their 
perfume, brooks and their music, trees and their shade. 

The whole tenor of family existence was peaceful 
and pleasant; only Zelie knew how gravely it was 
threatened. For years she had concealed a corroding 
cancer. The inevitable end was one of extreme anguish, 
and the blow of her death was a terrific one for the 
entire family. 



30 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

There was no one in Alencon who could help Louis 
Joseph give his daughters fostering care which they 
needed, but in the nearby city of Lisieux he had a 
brother-in-law with two little girls of his own, and whose 
wife was a woman of quick sympathies. They both 
urged Louis Joseph to bring Zelie's motherless children 
to Lisieux, which he did. Near the edge of the town he 
found a charming house. Its name, Les Buissonets— 
Little Thickets—was agreeably descriptive of its pleas-
ing character. Marie became the housekeeper and Paul-
ine her youngest sister's teacher. Therese had already 
learned her letters at her mother's knee; now she began 
to read and write in earnest. In the evening, the family 
gathered around the center table in the living room 
where a large lamp spread its cheerful rays over the 
little group and where a checkerboard had been opened 
up. After this had been put away, Marie read aloud, 
Pauline embroidered and Leonie did worsted work, while 
Therese nestled drowsily and contentedly in her father's 
lap. Then came the family prayers which always 
marked the end of the tranquil day. 

Winter was a season which all the children loved, 
but especially Therese, who had, in very truth, been a 
"snow baby" herself, and to whom snow-flakes, like field 
flowers, always seemed bright and beautiful. Stars de-
lighted her too. Once, coming in from her walk, she be-
came conscious for the first time of Orion, and reached 
ecstatically for her father's hand. "Look quickly, Papa!" 
she cried. "There is a T in the sky! It must stand for 
Therese. My name is written in heaven!" She believed 
this as implicitly as she believed in the watchfulness of 
a guardian angel and the companionship of the Christ 
Child, and it was the prophetic force of this belief that 
led me, in writing about her, to choose "Written in 
Heaven" as the title for her biography. 

The Martin family group was so sufficient unto 
itself that it was hardly conscious of a craving for com-
panionship beyond its own compact little circle. But 
when Therese was eight years old, it was decided that 
she should join the ranks of the day pupils at the Abbey 
Des Benedictines. She loved to study, and she was nat-
urally gifted; she almost invariably led her class in 



"ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX" 31 

everything except mathematics • and penmanship. But 
there is nearly always an element of jealousy among 
children for the companion who is their superior, and 
students who outstrip all competitors in the classroom 
are apt to lead lonely lives. It seems almost certain that 
Therese was the victim of circumstances such as these. 

She approached the experience of her First Com-
munion with a rapture which made her oblivious of all 
the ordeals connected with her life at school. Every day 
she went bounding joyfully off to her Catechism classes. 
At last the moment arrived which seemed to Therese 
the most marvelous in her life. At the altar rail, so 
reverently approached, she seemed to feel her being 
merged in her Maker's. "Saviour, with love I consecrate 
my life, to Thee!" she breathed. The words rose from 
her lips like a wellspring. Three years later she asked 
her father's permission to enter the Carmelite Convent. 

As she always saw straight and thought clearly, she 
was certainly not unaware of the arguments which 
would be used to dissuade her. But with her father as 
her ally, she met her adversaries composedly; and event-
ually the Bishop of Bayeux and Lisieux consented to her 
postulancy. Appropriately, on the last evening she was 
to spend at home, the little family gathered together in 
the pleasant living room. A blessing was asked, grace 
before meat. Afterwards there was a quiet talk of fam-
ily things, of happy hours and shared memories. The 
next day Carmel claimed her. 

As she was shown to her cell, her glance fell cares-
singly on each detail of the habitation that was to be her 
own-^the bare floor, the narrow window, the hard cot, 
the earthen bowl and pitcher. When she was left alone 
at last, her lips formed the words which rose from her 
heart: "Now I am here for always". It was an expres-
sion of supreme joy; but the period of her postulancy 
was strewn with thorns rather than roses; her self-con-
trol, her endurance, and her capacity for long suffering, 
were tested in every possible way. At the end of nine 
months however, no further excuse could be found for 
putting off the moment of her investiture. 

It took a magnificent form. On this day of days 
she was clothed as became the most beautiful bride. 



3 2 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

Her dress was white velvet, her veil fine lace; her crown 
Iragrant lilies. Eadiance seemed to stream all about her 
Inside the chapel was a blaze of glory. But outside, the 

n s a s w ? j t w a s ° n s u c h a night 
asi this that Therese had come into the world—still 
white, consecrated. Now, enveloped in the same trans-
cendent purity, she left it. 

It is not possible, within the limits of a few short 
moments, to talk to you about her life, in its entirety. 
Therefore I have purposely chosen to tell you about the 
part before she became a nun, when she was a young 
girl leading a life more quiet and uneventful, probably, 
than that of any girl who is listening to me this morn-
ing. It continued to be quiet and uneventful after she 
entered Carmel, though at times it was very trying too 
W i \ e i \ she died, at the age of twenty-four, after a long 
and dreadful illness, she left nothing tangible behind 
her but a few paintings and poems, and the memoirs 
which were later assembled as her autobiography. "Her 
life needed to be simple, in order that it might serve as 
a model for small souls," her sister, Celine, has said: 
and one of her best biographers has added, "It was to 
this multitude of small souls, faithful to the core but 
endowed with no extraordinary powers, that she hoped 
to reveal a part of the riches of heaven." 

I cannot describe her adequately as she stands, 
crowned with roses and enshrined with glory, her name 
indeed written in heaven. But now that I have outlined 
her story for those, who, like myself, see in her an ideal 
which they strive to follow, let me say what I believe 
l herese stands for in their lives and in mine. 

I believe first of all that she stands for purpose 
From earliest childhood, she knew what she wanted to 
do, what she could do, and what she ought to do Even 
when all the world seemed against her, she was still 
steadfast. She fought the good fight, she finished the 
course, she kept the faith. 

I believe that she stands for resourcefulness. She 
was, after all, a girl of rather limited opportunities She 
never had any special chance to develop her natural gifts 
or to reveal these. But the inconspicuous city where she 
lived has become famous because it was her home, and 



"ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX" 35 

the unpretentious book which she wrote has become a 
byword throughout the world. 

I believe that she stands for loving kindness. Little 
children turned towards her trustfully, and were never 
deceived. The poor, the weak, the sick, the suffering— 
for all these she had abundant sympathy, and with them 
she established those bonds of understanding which 
come from compassion. 

I believe that she stands for courage. There was 
nothing that could defeat her. She prevailed. Her life 
was a pean of victory to the very end, and the echoes of 
it will ring down through the ages. 

We, who are average persons, can pattern our lives 
after hers in purpose, in resourcefulness, in loving kind-
ness and in courage. The lessons which she taught can 
be put to the universal use. Her basic principles are 
applicable to every walk in life. The "little way" which 
she reveals to us, is not a hard one; it is not beyond our 
skill and our strength; it opens up to human beings 
everywhere. 

I believe that with God's help we can follow it. 



34 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"Help me to follow your little way" 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 
Catholic Dictionary 
"Written in Heaven"—Frances Parkinson Keyes, Mess-

ner; $2.00 
"The Secret of the Little Flower"—Henri Gheon, Sheed 

& Ward; $2.00 
"The Little Flower"—Rev. Joseph McSorley, C.S.P. 

Paulist Press; 5c 
The St. Teresa Picture Books—Ade de Bethune, Sheed 

& Ward; $1.00 
"St. Teresa of Lisieux"—Rev. Allan Ross, International 

Catholic Truth Society; 10c 
Her Autobiography—St. Teresa of Lisieux, translated 

by Henri Pebitot, O.P. Burnes, Oates and Wash-
bourne; Is 6d 

"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J. Bruce 
Publishing Co; $2.00 

Little Saint Therese by Elizabeth Von Schmidt Pauli, 
translated by George Shuster, Macmillan Co., 1933 

"Collected Little Flower Works"—Albert H. Dolan, O. 
Carm., Carmelite Press; $1.00 

"A Saint of Today"—Joseph J. Daley—Devin-Adair-
$2.00 

"A Little Saint of the Modern Home"—Rev. Bernard 
Fuller, Kenedy; 10c 

"A Little White Flower"—Rev. Thomas N. Taylor 
Kenedy; $1.35 



ST. FRANCES OF ROME 
Maisie Ward Sheed 

When I was young it was much the fashion among 
Catholics to read daily the short life of a saint in little 
books which contained one saint for each day of the 
year. These lives were, of course, the merest skeletons 
and I'm afraid many of us did our reading so hastily 
that we never transformed them into anything better. 
But if you look with sufficient earnestness at such a 
skeleton it will clothe itself with the living reality of a 
human being, shining with the light of supernatural 
grace. 

The life of St. Prances of Rome is in outline ex-
ceedingly short and simple. Over many saints two or 
more cities do battle; thus Saint Anthony of Padua is 
hotly claimed by Lisbon—for he was born there while 
he only died in Padua. But St. Frances was born in 
Rome in 1384 and died in the same place fifty-six years 
later. Married at the age of twelve, she was the mother 
of several children, she worked for the poor of Rome and 
the rich also, for she assembled her wealthy friends into 
a group of Benedictine Oblates who later came to live to-
gether as a congregation in a convent which she had 
built for them. After her husband's death she joined 
them and was made Superior. For the greater part of her 
life St. Frances was a rich woman but for several years 
she was thrown into poverty when her husband's estates 
were confiscated and he himself banished by the King of 
Naples who had invaded Rome, while her son was de-
tained as hostage. 

Such is the outline given in Butler's Lives of the 
Saints: Now let us try to fill it in. St. Frances was, 
the Catholic Encyclopedia tells us, one of the greatest 
mystics of the 15th century. It seems curious at first 
sight to think of a wealthy woman the mother of many 
children as a great mystic. A contemplative nun has 
her life geared as it were to sit with Mary listening at 
Our Lord's feet. But a wife and mother must like 



36 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

Martha be busied about many things and have little time 
for contemplation. 

How would you define a mystic? I like 
this definition, "A Mystic is one who loves God 
supremely and walks with Him always." St. Frances was 
among those mystics to whom this constant companion-
ship has been made easier by bodily vision. She saw her 
guardian angel and had long talks with him. Another 
kind of vision she had, I think unique in the annals of 
the saints. Some of us have seen the Passion Play at 
Oberammergau; or have seen revivals of the mystery 
plays of the middle ages and realized the help such 
dramas give in making faith more vivid. But St. Fran-
ces did not need to see men enacting the dramas of our 
salvation: They were played for her says Butler "by 
heavenly personages". Pleasant idea, that the saints and 
angels should throng to dramatize for a human being 
the glorious mysteries of our faith! 

What she learned from her visions might seem com-
monplace enough did we not know it is God's way to 
work out the stupendous values of our redemption in 
what seem the trifling matters of daily life. She learn-
ed to be a wise and gentle mother, to be the perfect 
mistress of a large household. "She treated her domes-
tics", says Butler, "not as servants, but as brothers and 
sisters, and future co-heirs in heaven: And studied by 
all means in her power to induce them seriously to labor 
for their salvation". I must, I think, borrow too his 
delightful description of the happiness of her married 
life: "Her obedience and condescension to her husband 
was inimitable, which engaged such a return of affec-
tion, that for forty years in which they lived together, 
there never happened the least disagreement; and their 
whole life was a constant strife and emulation to antici-
pate each other in mutual complaisance and respect". 

It was one of the great miracles of sanctity that a 
rich woman should learn not merely to give alms but to 
understand concerning the poor and needy. A special 
blessing is given to such understanding in the Old Tes-
tament and reaffirmed in the New. It is a still greater 
miracle to be able to bear with perfect patience as did 
St, Frances the loss of wealth, of world position, of loved 



"ST. FRANCES OF ROME" 37 

ones, of those very conditions which appear to make 
possible the doing of God's work in the world. But the 
saints know that this is one of our commonest optical 
illusions. They know too how to act safely on sayings 
that for us are highly dangerous. Such a saying is the 
oft repeated Laboare est orare. (To work is to pray). 
St. Frances was one day interrupted four times at the 
same verse as she recited the psalms of our Lady's 
Office. The fifth time she returned to her prayer she 
found the verse written in gold letters. That story is 
often told as meaning that God blessed her for leaving 
her prayer for the work that summoned her. But I 
think myself that what He blessed most was the way she 
kept going back to the prayer. Working is almost al-
ways- interesting and praying is so often hard work! 
If I had gone back twice I would have thought I had done 
pretty well. 

The saints never think that they have done even 
pretty well. After a long life of prayer, charity, and 
self-sacrifice, Saint Frances on the death of her husband 
begged admission to the convent she had built. But she 
did not go there like the benefactress to whom the nuns 
owed their home. She did not go like a great lady who 
confers a favor. She went barefoot and with a rope 
around her neck declaring herself unworthy of admis-
sion. Such a realization seemed to the nuns a proof of 
fitness not only to live among them but to rule them. 
So St. Frances finished her life as Superior of the con-
vent, But I like best to think of her as a patron for 
wives and mothers and for those who as wives and 
mothers would like to do in the world a little bit of work 
for God, and so I should like to end by reading you the 
little poem in which Marigold Hunt has told us about 
her. 

That you can be saint, 
In quite a rich home, 
Is shown by the case 
Of St. Frances of Rome. 

She had plenty of children, 
A husband, a cook, 



40 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

A household to manage, 
A housekeeping book— 

And they kept her so busy 
Both up and downstairs, 
She couldn't think when 
To get on with her prayers. 

She no sooner was kneeling, 
Than someone would call— 
She thought she would never 
Get finished at all. 

First her husband must see her, 
Then up came the cook, 
Then a little boy shouting 
To please come and look— 

Then a friend with a very 
Long story to tell, 
And a dozen poor people 
With troubles as well. 

And she never lost patience, 
Or said, "Not at home", 
And that's why we call her 
Saint Frances of Rome. 

—From Marigold Hunt's "St. Frances of Rome". 
By permission of Sheed & Ward, publishers. 



"ST. FRANCES OF ROME" 39 

"Laborare est Orare"—To work is to pray. 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

More Saints for Six O'Clock—Joan Wyndham; Sheed & 
Ward; $1.75 

"Great Wives and Mothers"—Rev. Hugh Francis Blunt, 
Devin-Adair; $3.00 

"Examples of Holiness"--Anon—Marlier Publishers; 50c 



SAINT BRIGID 
Mary Synon 

Saint Brigid, Brigid of Ireland, Brigid of Kildare 
died a little more than fourteen hundred years ago; but 
today she still lives, a vital, vivid personality, in this 
our war-torn world. 

Beyond all other women, save only the Mother of 
Christ, Brigid of Ireland is the saint of the sorrowing 
the saint of the starving, the saint of the stricken She 
is the saint of the Irish—but she is, too, the saint of 
men on the Maginot Line and men on the Siegfried 
Line, of homeless men and women in Poland and of 
children evacuated from the East End of London. She 
is the saint of our own nine million unemployed and of 
our more than nine million anxious, worried day-by-day 
workers. Of all the saints in the long, golden roll of 
the Catholic Church Brigid of Ireland is the saint of our 
common humanity. 

Through fourteen centuries the western world has 
seen the rise and fall of empires, the discovery of new 
continents, the growth of new concepts of man's free-
dom. It has seen the long, wide spread of the far-flung 
frontiers of the Faith of Christ. Through those cen-
turies the dust of Saint Brigid has rested in the holy 
hills of her native land. But the spirit of Brigid still 
stands, a living force, at the threshold of every h o m e -
in Ireland or away from Ireland—where dwells a man or 
woman of Irish blood. That spirit, however, transcends 
nationality. She is Ireland's own child; but, like many 
another child of Ireland, she is also a citizen of a wider 
world. 

For Brigid of Ireland is in death, as she was in life 
symbol of those virtues which are, preeminently, virtues 
most needed in these troubled times. She is the saint of 
the charity that begins at the door, that welcomes and 
blesses as well as aids, the saint of loving-kindness the 
saint of mercy. She is the saint of a democracy wider 
and deeper than any political form; a democracy of 
actual daily living of her belief that all men are brothers 



"SAINT BRIGID" 41 

under the fatherhood of God, a democracy that entitles 
all men to her sisterly love and devotion and succor. She 
is the saint of the true equality of mankind, an equality 
to be achieved not by mere laws upon statute books but 
by the living example of justice and charity. She is 
saint of hope because she is the saint of youth. Al-
though she lived to be an old woman her native Ireland 
has always held to the tradition of her youthfulness. To 
Ireland she has ever been "Sweet Saint Bride of the 
yellow, yellow hair," and dairymaid who gave away her 
master's butter to the poor, the girl who fell asleep while 
Saint Patrick was preaching, the girl who dared to defy 
a king, the girl who founded a convent when she was 
only sixteen years old, the slave girl who ended slavery in 
Ireland without shedding a single drop of blood. 

— Brigid of Ireland was born a slave. Her father, 
Dubtach, was a chieftain, a descendant of Conn of the 
Hundred Battles. He was forced by his lawful wife to 
sell Brigid's mother to a Druid before the child was 
born. He stipulated, however, that the child should be 
returned to him on his demand. The Druid did not 
interfere with the Christianity of the mother and the 
child, even though Christianity was forbidden to bond-
maidens; but when Brigid proceeded to dispense the 
butter from his dairy to the poor he naturally asked for 
an accounting. Tradition has it that Brigid was able 
to give him a greater amount of butter than she had 
given away; but that may be merely another way of 
saying the Irish belief that the only lasting wealth that 
any man enjoys is what he has given in charity. 

Brigid was nine years old when her father sent for 
her. Her stepmother induced the girl's father to try 
to sell her to the King of Leinster. Dubtach left Brigid 
outside in his cart while he went into the castle to con-
fer with the king. He also left a sword which had been 
given him by the king, a sword set with many jewels. 
While Brigid waited starving men and women came to 
the cart. One by one the girl took the jewels from the 
sword hilt and gave them to the suppliants. Her father, 
returning, raged over his loss and dragged her into the 
castle. "Why have you done this?" the. King of Lein-
ster asked her. "I'd give all that my father has," Brigid 



42 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

said, "and all that you have, yea, yourself, too, were it 
in my power rather than have the children of Christ, 
the poor, starve." "You'd be too expensive for me to 
keep," the king told her; but he gave her father another 
sword. 

Her stepmother tried to marry her off but the girl 
insisted that she must serve Christ in another way. 
Freed from bondage she walked for miles along the 
roads of Ireland to hear the great Saint Patrick at the 
Synod of Telltown. She was so weary that she slept 
as he preached but he sought her out and spoke with 
her. She was only sixteen years old when with seven 
other girls, some of them slaves like herself, whom she 
had persuaded to join her, she received the white veil 
of the Augustinian novitiate from Bishop Macaille at ' 
Usna in Westmeath. Nearby, at Ballyboy, she founded 
in that year her first community of the Brigittine Order, 
probably the first formal community of holy women to 
be established in the Catholic Church. Immediately it 
became a haven for the poor and the oppressed. From 
all over the island the needy came to it—and never went 
away unsatisfied. 

For seventeen years Brigid went around Ireland. 
She established communities at Waterford, at Tramore, 
at Limerick, in Leinster and Connaught. She took into 
these communities those women and girls whom she 
deemed spiritually worthy to do the Lord's work within 
them. She made no distinction of class. Princesses and 
peasants, free women and bondwomen labored together, 
spinning, weaving, churning, baking, teaching, sewing, 
doing metal work and illuminations which were the 
predecessors of the Book of Kells. Since the commun-
ities were definite centers of their neighborhoods the 
democracy of their constitutions immediately influenced 
public opinion to such an extent that, within Brigid's 
own lifetime, slavery was abolished. To her kings and 
slave girls were equals. By force of her own character 
and by virtue of the essential democracy of Christianity 
she broke down the barriers and levelled the ranks. 
Without revolution, without bloodshed the slave girl of 
the Druid's dairy freed the other slaves of Ireland, 



"SAINT BRIGID" 
45 

At Kildare she built that abbey which has for cen-
turies added its name to her own. There she fed the 
hungry, clothed the naked, nursed the sick, comforted 
the afflicted. The town that grew around her convent 
became a City of Refuge, an asylum for all the unfor-
tunate who sought it. There Brigid even built a monas-
tery for men, choosing the venerable Saint Conleth "to 
govern the city along with herself," as her chronicler 
has put it. Somehow for all her meekness, Saint Brigid 
seems to have had her share of those qualities which 
have distinguished the matriarchs of Ireland! It is 
told of her that once a priest who was instructing her 
and some of her Sisters as he drove them across coun-
try grew so excited in his oratory that he landed them 
in the ditch. Brigid took the reins and dragged them 
all out the while he continued his discourse. Perhaps 
it was this association of practicality and spirituality 
which endeared her to the women of her time and has 
helped to keep her fame so long alive. And perhaps it 
was her gay good humor, as well as her kindness that 
endeared her to every one. 

More than Patrick, more than Columbkill, more than 
any other of the thousand holy men and women who 
blessed their land, Brigid has been the Saint of the Irish 
exiles. Even her own body was not left to lie where it 
was buried in her convent of Kildare. The Danes des-
cended on the island; and the body of Brigid was taken 
for safekeeping to the great Cathedral of Down. The 
English came; and the head of Brigid was taken, for its 
protection, first to Vienna, then to Lisbon. Today, as 
an east-bound Dixie Clipper comes down from its swift 
flight overseas, you may see 'the cross of the Jesuit 
Church where the relic is still preserved; but the soul 
of Brigid rests in no one land. 

For the children of Ireland, fleeing tyranny and 
persecution, took their love of Brigid to a hundred coun-
tries far from the green hills and valleys of Leinster and 
Munster and Iar Connaught. The Wild Geese, saying 
goodbye to Ireland after the broken treaty of Limerick, 
called on Brigid to keep safe the women they loved until 
they could return to them. But no one of the Wild 
Geese ever came back. They went into the service of 



44 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

lands not their own. They died in glory at Cremona, at 
Lille, at Ghent, and on a hundred battlefields that chang-
ed the destinies of the Continents of Europe but did 
nothing for Ireland. How many of them, as they died 
called on Brigid to remember those girls in Clare and 
in Kerry and in Sligo who would never again weave 
Saint Brigid crosses in hope of their bridals! But, 
before they died, they had told and re-told their devo-
tion to Sweet Saint Bride and men who came after them 
built in her honor churches in Seville, in Placentia, in 
Tours and Besancon, in Namur and Cologne. In lands 
made war-mad by consciousness of national boundaries 
no frontiers held out this love of Saint Brigid. Even in 
Fleet Street in London there is a chapel dedicated to 
her. Up and down and across the United States, in 
Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand have risen churches 
that commemorate her virtues, her personality; but there 
is one church of Saint Brigid which somehow seems 
particularly the symbol of her own welcoming kindness 
to the stranger who comes to the door. 

It stands far down in the city of New York, close 
to the point where meet two rivers of Manhattan. It 
is a little church built in 1848, the Famine Year that 
drove hundreds of thousands of Ireland's children to the 
friendly shelter of the United States. How many of 
them thronged that little church—then but a stone's 
throw below the Castle Garden of their landing—no 
one is old enough to remember; but the tradition of its 
welcome to the immigrant has never been forgotten. 
Today men and women and children of other races than 
Irish, of other creeds than Catholic find their way to it 
through the narrow streets of Old New York to pray 
for strength, for guidance, for aid in facing their new 
lives in this land that is new to them—our United 
States. Perhaps they feel—without knowing the rea-
son for their feelings—that graciousness of kindness 
that was Saint Brigid's greatest gift to those who asked 
her for alms. Perhaps they know that she never denied 
help to those who came to her door. Perhaps they under-
stand that she, too, sought for freedom, freedom for 
herself, freedom for all those who had known the shack-
les of slavery. Perhaps they realize that a girl who was 



"SAINT BRIGID" 45 

born a slave and who, by her courage and holiness, freed 
. the slaves of her own land is truly the patroness of all 

who are still bound by shackles of want, of misery, of 
despair, of injustice and inhumanity. 

For seven hundred years after the death of Saint 
Brigid there burned before the altar of her abbey of 
Kildare a perpetual fire. Bride's Fire her people called 
it. Once a year they renewed their own hearth fires 
from its glow. In the year 1220 Henry Launders, Arch-
bishop of Dublin, fearing vandalism in the course of 
invasion, ordered the fire extinguished. 

For these latter seven hundred years the hearth has 
been cold. The stones of Kildare have long since fallen 
into ruins. But the deeper fires of Saint Brigid have 
never been extinguished. Those Bride's fires have ever 
burned in the hearts of the youth of Ireland, firea of 
kindliness and of charity, of justice and of mercy; and 
these are the fires that have crossed the seven seas to 
make and keep Saint Brigid of Ireland a living spirit 
even to this, our day. 



46 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"It has seen the long, wide spread of the far flung 
frontiers of the Faith of Christ." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

St. Brigid of Ireland—Alice Curtayne; Reilly, Philadel-
phia, Pa.; $1.50 

Life of St. Brigid—O'Shea, New York; 50c 

The Story of Saint Brigid, "Iona"—Talbot Press, Dublin 

Lives of the Irish Saints, O'Hanlon — Duffy, Dublin 

Lives of the Irish Saints and Martyrs—Conynghan Sad-
lier. 



SAINTS OF THE CANON 
Helen Walker Homan 

Seven women—seven Saints, who belong to all 
Christianity, died more than fifteen centuries ago, and 
yet have never died—for daily they are on the lips of 
thousands, as daily they are commemorated in that most 
ancient of all the liturgical prayers of the Catholic 
Church—the Canon of the Mass. Seven women—seven 
Saints who were martyrs, whose various lives and dra-
matic deaths spanned a period of more than one hundred 
years, were selected at least before the year 600, from 
many times seven, to be named forever daily by priest-
hood and faithful, in honor and supplication. 

Seven women, motivated by a single ideal—one a 
mere child of twelve, and at least three of the others 
very young girls,—seven women, two of them married 
and mothers, one a widow, and four of them virgins, 
died long ago when Rome was old and Christianity was 
young—died heroically in the torture of the arena, for 
their single ideal, Christ. 

As they are named in order in the Canon of the 
Mass, they are Felicitas and Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, 
Agnes, Cecilia, and Anastasia. Widow, wife and mother; 
affianced, virgin, child; noble and slave—rich and poor 

U—they represent every class of womankind as it moves 
in the world today precisely as it moved fifteen centur-
ies ago. It must have been for this diversification, as 
well as for their extraordinary sanctity that they were 
selected for perpetual remembrance. These seven are 
types of all womanhood everywhere—for as long as time 
goes on, we women will be either wives and mothers, 
widows, affianced, virgins, children. We will be either 
rich or poor, workers or women of leisure. 

Differing from one another as these seven women 
did, it is not easy in a brief time to attempt a portrait 
of each from their stories as they have come down to 
us in legend and tradition. It is significant that the 
first one named in the order of the Canon, is the slave-
girl, Felicitas. It is also significant that she is named 



48 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

in conjunction with that woman of noble birth and 
wealth Perpetua, with whom shte suffered and died 
These two are the wives and mothers of the Canon 
feaints. Their very names suggest what was perhaps 
the keynote of their personalities. Felicitas, happiness 
—Perpetua, steadfastness. 

They lived in Africa, in the city of Car-
thage, during the first half of the third century 
Rome, under the rule of the Emperor Valerian, 
governed their city. Felicitas was one of the little hunt-
ed group of Christians who met secretly, probably by 
night, to pay reverence to Him Who had died on Cal-
vary, in whose recorded life and words she had found 
surest peace. Very probably she had worn the shackles 
of slavery since infancy, and known all the privation 
the humiliations and hardships of one of her class It 
must have been that slaves were permitted to marry 
for tradition relates that she had a husband and also 
that she had borne him six sons. Then, somehow, one 
day a message reached her. 

But it was also a word which pointed the way of 
peace to those who possessed the rich things of this 
world and who were seeking that peace which the world 
cannot give. And so it had also reached the ears of 
Perpetua within her magnificent palace. Pride of race 
ran strong in that house, as Perpetua's adoring father 
was later to show. Perpetua, too, was married and had 
a son. The comings and goings of a humble slave-girl 
might pass unnoticed—but those of the highborn Per-
petua would be marked by a thousand eyes. What Per-
petua had to do, must be done cautiously, with dissimu-
lation. Her father, her husband, would never under-
stand. To them, Christianity was the sinister super-
stition of the lowly and the ignorant. To the civic auth-
orities, it was the religion of traitors and a threat to 
the State. 

The events which caused the detention of Felicitas 
and Perpetua in the common prison of Carthage, are 
not related. Possibly a group of Christians had 'been 
surprised at their devotions—possibly one of their num-
ber had proved a traitor. Perpetua and Felicitas, the 
noble-born and the slave, bound in the same dungeon, 



"¡SAINTS OF THE CANON" 49 

their difference in station swept suddenly away by the 
great leveler, Christianity, consoled each other. Per-
petua was moved with pity for the slave—for she knew 
that Felicitas would soon bear a child—her seventh. 

Each of these mothers was to be called upon to face 
the severest test of faith ever presented to any mother 
—the choices of the child she had borne, or the faith 
she had adopted. 

Perpetua's father, learning of her imprisonment, 
hastened in great distress to her side. An old legend 
relates that he cried: "Daughter, what have you done? 
You have dishonored the family! Never before has any-
one of our race been imprisoned!" When told that her 
crime was that of being a Christian, his shame and 
anger knew no bounds. Believing her deranged men-
tally, he brought her little son to her there in the prison, 
and thrust him into her arms. He hoped that this would 
restore her reason and enable her to give the authorities 
what seemed to him the easiest of promises—the prom-
ise to renounce Christ and worship the gods of Rome. 
Perpetua, the steadfast one, remained steadfast—at 
what cost only motherhood can reckon. 

Her companion, the slave, Felicitas, bore her seventh 
son there in the prison. She, too, was offered the choice 
of life with her children as a pagan, or death as a Chris-
tian—and she chose death rather than renounce the 
ideal which had come to mean more to her even than 
life, even than children—the Christ-ideal. 

Felicitas, the slave, and Perpetua, the noble-born, 
died together in the arena—in the words of Saint Aug-
ustine, "amidst fierce beasts and gladiators' swords."— 
Two women, two saints who were mothers, had unfal-
teringly met death for a single, great Ideal. 

Next of the seven women commemorated in the 
Canon, comes Agatha, the virgin. She lived during the 
same era as Felicitas and Perpetua, though far away 
from Carthage, on the Island of Sicily in the city of 
Catania. At the time when Agatha was called upon to 
choose between Christianity and paganism, she still was 
a very young girl, with whom the powerful Roman con-
sul, Quintianus, had fallen in love. As she was extreme-
ly beautiful and the daughter of a noble Sicilian family, 



50 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

the lowly-born Quintianus, who had risen to Roman con-
sulship through an unscrupulous life, desired to marry 
her—not only for her beauty but for the wealth and 
position she would bring him. Agatha persistently re-
jected his suit. 

Acceptance of it would have meant adherence 
to the gods of Rome. She must have been well-
marked with wit, the fruit of a keener mentality than 
that possessed by her suitor. This, he never forgave 
her; and one suspects that many of the tortures he later 
devised were inspired less by the rage of a rejected 
suitor, than by his irritation at her more logical brain 
and her far cleverer tongue. Finding that imprison-
ment and persecution availed nothing, Quintianus in 
despair, finally demanded why, since she was of noble 
birth, she persisted in the customs of a slave—the prac-
tice of Christianity. Agatha replied that she was the 
slave of Christ. 

"But if you call yourself noble, how can you also 
call yourself a slave?" he asked. And Agatha retortedi 
The slavery of Christ is the highest of all nobility" 

She then told him that she hoped he would find a wife 
like his own goddess, Venus; and that she hoped he 
himself would become like his own god, Jupiter. Insult-
ed and enraged, Quintianus commanded that she be tor-
tured, while she smilingly commented aloud on his in-
consistency—that he worshipped those, whose likeness 
in himself and in his future wife, he would consider an 
insult. 

There is a legend that Saint Peter appeared to her 
while she was lying, suffering from her tortures, in the 
prison, and that he assured her that, as much as Quinti-
anus had made her suifer, her repartee had made her 
suitor suffer more! In the midst of her tortures, an 
earthquake shook the city, and the terrified populace 
besought Quintianus to release her. But Agatha died 
in her prison from the results of the merciless rack. 
Yet in the minds and the hearts of the people of Catania] 
she had become their savior, their eternal protection 
from fire and earthquake.—One woman, a virgin, had 
given her life for the great Ideal. 

Lucy, who follows Agatha in the Canon of the Mass, 



"¡SAINTS OF THE CANON" 51 

lived a half century later, dying for the same ideal in 
the year 310. She, too, was a Sicilian, but of the city 
of Syracuse. A devout Christian, she was unwillingly 
betrothed at an early age to a pagan suitor. But Lucy 
had long before determined that her wealth should go 
to no husband, but should be distributed among the poor. 
Her mother, having been cured of a long illness at the 
holy tomb of Agatha, now venerated by all the faithful 
of Sicily, on Lucy's persuasions permitted her to break 
her betrothal and to distribute all their good to the 
poor. Finding himself cheated of her wealth, the jilted 
suitor carried the news of her Christian beliefs to the 
consul who devised shameful tortures for her. As she 
died, she again affirmed her belief in Christ. Another 
woman, another virgin, had met death, rather than re-
nounce the great Ideal. 

Agnes, little Saint Agnes, was the youngest of all 
these seven saints of the Canon. She was but twelve 
years of age when she elected death, rather than adher-
ence to the pagan gods. She lived in Rome about the 
middle of the fourth century. The legends of her ex-
quisite purity are so persistent and so ancient that one 
is sure the people of her own day loved and knew her 
best for this quality. She is the Saint of childhood; her 
name blossoms like a flower in the long and illustrious 
Christian martyrology. Though only a child, she had 
the courage of the exalted and the inspired, persisting m 
her fidelity to Christ through unthinkable tortures. As 
with Agatha and Lucy, it was again a disappointed sui-
tor who caused her arrest. Later, he repented and would 
have saved her—but it was too late to stop the iron 
hand of imperial Rome, bent on exterminating Chris-
tianity. Little Agnes died, as the others had died, with 
the name of Christ on her lips.—A child had now given 
her life for the great Ideal. _ _ 

Cecilia, next of the seven, was also a virgin and 
martyr who met death for the same cause. Her story 
will be told at length in a later broadcast in this series. 

Last of the seven women, the seven saints of the 
Canon, is Anastasia, the widow, who came from one of 
the great families of Rome. Her husband, resenting her 
Christianity, attempted to starve her to death, so that 



52 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

he might inherit her wealth. But his plans were thwart-
ed by his own sudden death. The Emperor Diocletian 
then gave her in marriage to one of his prefects. Ana-
stasia s only desire was to distribute all her wealth to 
the poor, and it was her insistence upon this, before and 
after her second husband's death, which finally led to 
her banishment from Rome about the year 287, and to 
a tortured martyrdom. And now, a widow had died for 
the great Ideal. 

Seven women, seven Saints, representing all classes 
ot womankind today as always, are the Saints of the 
Canon. Purity, steadfastness, courage, were their great 
virtues—virtues as needful to the girls and women of 
today as they were fifteen centuries ago. Of these vir-
tues, Felicitas and Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cec-
ilia, Anastasia, are the undying flowers whose exquisite 
perfume is recalled daily in the Canon of the Mass. 



"¡SAINTS OF THE CANON" 53 

"Into their company do Thou, we beseech Thee, 
admit us." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 
Catholic Dictionary 
"Little St. Agnes"—Helen Walker Homan, Longmans, 

Green & Co.; $1.00 
"The Saints of the Canon"—U. L. Kennedy, C. S. B., 

Sheed & Ward; $2.00 
"The Saints in the Canon of the Mass"—Rev. E. P. Gra-

ham, Liturgical Arts, Oct. 1939 
"Saints of the Canon"—Florence Maguire, International 

Truth Society; 10c 
Fabiola—Cardinal Wiseman, P. J. Kenedy; $2.00—Long-

mans, 80c 
"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S. J.; 

Bruce Publishing Co.; $2.00 
The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal 

Saints—Rev. Alban Butler, Benziger; $1.00 
Passion of St. Perpetua and Felicitas—translated by 

W. Shewring, Sheed & Ward; $1.50 
Life of St. Agnes—Rt. Rev. Aloysius Smith, C. R. S., 

Burnes, Oates & Washbourne 



BERNADETTE OF LOURDES 
Margaret Armstrong 

Bernadette Soubirous was born of a very poor fam 
ly on Jnauary 7th, 1844 near Lourdes S a n c e in a" 

small town in the foot-hills of the Pyrenees It was not 

? U s b t t r f a h r e r f r d a y T P r i i ! C i P a I , y f 0 r S t l l l l l 
leads to Spain ™ S f f l M d P a U ' ° n e o f - a d s 

K i JWs old town goes back to William the Conqueror 
and at the time of the first apparition it had a p o p T 
tion of about 4,000. Now it has about 40,000 visitors 
each week -o r had, until the war. Between Apdl and 

deT and " 1 9 3 ,9 I B m i U i ° n p i I ™ went toW 
t i L Z Z ™ S f H W 6 r e 1 0 0 ' 0 0 0 massed at one 
time in the square. A peaceful, orderly crowd—from all 
countries—of all nationalities-of many ?d ig ions -bu 

H « 9 ^ C a t h ° l i C S ' ° n e ° f greatest"hrines 

i t ® 6 ™ a d e t t e w a s the eldest in a family of eight 
Her father was a miller. He worked when he could find 

T V ! f I f h 6 r m o t h e r " T h e y were decent people 
who had a hard time to make ends meet. They w e S 
married January 9, 1843, and the girl was born on 
January 7 1844. She was baptized b / t h e T b b e Forgue 
and christened Marie-Bernard. Her god-father w a s a 
twelve-year old cousin, who later was a hero in battle 
and her god-mother was her maternal aunt, for whom 

• S E W f * ! W af k n 0 W n the diminutive of 
, B n . a d t e ' H e r family, though poor, were generous 
to a fault, never neglecting to share their own meagie 
fare with others poorer than themselves 
• ... : F ° r t h e I f f ! y e a r s of her life, Bernadette was often 

with her aunt and foster-mother. Here she tended 
sheep and it is recorded that as she had no companions 

t n Z v Z ^ 1 1 n 0 m S h e m a d e f r i e n d s a n d play-fellows of the lambs, saying she "found her heart going 

n
t 0 , t h e ' l t e o n e s " She was unlettered, but she had 

been taught her prayers, and she said with great devo-
tion her Our F a t h e r - t h e Hail M a r y - a n d her Rosaiy 



"BERNADETTE OF LOURDES" 55 

not once, but often during the lonely hours of her sheep 
tending. She was asthmatic and her people felt the 
open air was her cure. When fourteen she went home 
and there was prepared for her First Communion. In 
the Church, she was just one more little girl. No one 
dreamt that this child would bring the world to Lourdes 
later on« 

On Thursday, February 11, 1858, her mother being 
in need of a fire to cook the mid-day meal, told Toinette, 
one of the other children, to go out and hunt for fire-
wood. Bernadette begged to go too, but her mother 
knowing how delicate she was, desired her to stay at 
home. The child pleaded and the mother wrapping her 
up as warmly as her poor clothing admitted, sent her 
forth, accompanied by her sister and a little neighbor, 
Jeanne Abadie. The children went by a route where 
the river Gave crossed the canal. When the river was 
full there was a torrent, but as the tide was low, the two 
children were able to cross. Not Bernadette, however. 
She feared wetting her feet on account_of her mother s 
admonition, so she remained on the near side, trying to 
make a dry crossing by placing stepping stones across 
the water. It was a cold, grey day, and she was a timid 
child, so she waited. As she did, she heard a movement 
in the rosebush which was near at hand. The air was 
calm. The Angelus was ringing. The rosebush was 
bare—it was winter. 

Suddenly she saw the bush part, and in the 
centre she saw a young girl dressed in white. A 
figure no bigger than she herself, but all lustrous. 
The figure held out its arms and smiled. Bernadette 
was frightened. She tried to shut out the vision. She 
clutched her rosary. She tried to make the sign of the 
Cross. Her arm was limp. The "vision" held in her 
hand a rosary and she made a sign of the Cross which 
later on Bernadette described as the loveliest she had 
ever seen. The child got strength to bless herself too; 
she looked more carefully at the figure. She was beau-
teous, "white as wax" to quote Bernadette—eyes of blue 
—she looked like the statue in the church. Her robe was 
of stuff like the First Communion veils. Her sash was 
azure blue. Her feet were bare, and on each foot there 



56 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

rested a golden rose. Her rosary was white t o o - i t wa, 

I P string" 6 n S t r i n g ° r a S S l e d V « : 

i s h e d e r S f j / t i d h ! r r ° S a r y a n d t h e n t h e vision van-ished. She told her story on the way home to the two 
children-asking them not to tell her mother but To J 
ette did and the mother and the father, who wa l s d 
it was nonsense, imagination-and so did all the village 
once it was known-even the priests and the pre a £ 
who were summoned to hear about it. When the child 
returning from many more visits with the 4 e m o z e l " 
was followed by thousands-once 4,000-all h S g 0 
see something out of the ordinary, only the g i r e v e r saw 
anything although those who were p r e s e n ? a s o m e o f 
the eighteen appartions testified to her rapt look-to 

person.8 ^ ° f i f 1 * i n t h e P-sence'of Z t d r 

2 H ? W l i S h e k n o w t h i s w a s t h e M°ther of God? She 
did not. She repeated to the priest what the Lady told 
her to say. Thai they were to build a church on the site 
where she stood. That they were to have a procession 
Perhaps the most dramatic moment of it all occurred on 
the day when the crowd saw the girl creep on her knees 
up the hill to the rock of Massabielle, and then down 
again where she began to dig with her hands and where 
a tiny stream sprang up—muddy water, now crystal 
clear after all these years, and pouring forth 1 000 
gallons a day. She said the Lady had told her to tell 
the people to come and bathe there. Another point 
which interests me is that she described the Lady as 
wearing on her feet two golden roses, and this child 
could not have known that the order of the Golden Rose 
is the highest decoration given by the Catholic Church 
to women. It was created in 742, and only Catholic 
Queens have had it. Those who have lived saintly and 
humble lives. 

Bernadette said her lady always had a rosary in her 
hand. She was always smiling. She told her to prav 
for poor sinners. They needed prayers. She asked her 
once what saddened her and the Lady said "Prav—for 
the world is troubled". 

Bernadette did not speak French. The Lady spoke 



"BERNADETTE OF LOURDES" 57 

to her in her own Béarnais patois and when she made 
her great declaration it was in the patois. When she 
said "Que soy era Immaculado Concepiou"—"I am the 
Immaculate Conception", Bernadette had never heard 
that Pius the Ninth had four years before, defined this 
an article of Faith, "that the Blessed Virgin was born 
free from original sin", so when she told this to the 
doubting priests, they at least took notice and under-
stood that this might be something supernatural. I have 
not time to go into what happened at each of the eighteen 
apparitions. This is history and may be read. As a 
matter of science the girl was put to every test to prove 
that she was mentally ill, but she was proven very nor-
mal. The history is all so intensely interesting. For 
instance, one of her greatest doubters, M. Jacomet, the 
Commissioner of Police, an official of her time, had on 
his mantle shelf, years later, her photo as a nun. He 
had found faith in her. Hard-headed police—chiefs of 
government—prelates—doubted her. She was thought 
to be a day-dreaming child, and when she had gone 
away to be "quiet with God", as a nun, the Grotto was 
declared officially recognized, and the Emperor issued 
a Proclamation to this effect. A commission sat for 
four years, from the first accredited miracle, the cure of 
Louis Bouriette, down to today, going into every phase 
of the thousands of cures that have taken place there. 
On some • of the cases, over one hundred doctors have 
sat. Her family were offered every human inducement 
—money—gold—to capitalize the girl's value—but they 
never even took food they so sorely needed. 

To establish beyond doubt that the cures have been 
authentic, a Bureau was set up, and these cures must be 
proven beyond doubt any hint of mental suggestion, 
and nothing is adjudged a cure until at least one year 
has passed. 

The Lady's Basilica is there. It was built on the 
rock. Many of you who are listening to me have seen 
it. It is not fiction. It is very real, and over a million 
pilgrims a year have gone there. 

But now time is running on, so I will tell you brief-
ly that Bernadette, wanting to give her life to God, be-
came a nun after much study. She entered the convent 



58 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

of St. Gildard at Nevers, an old order devoted to nursing 
service. It was founded in 1680. She loved her people 
but she never saw them again. She fitted into her re-
ligious life as though she had never been signalled out 
for one of the greatest marks of predilection any mortal 
ever had. When one day asked by a nun how she liked 
being forgotten, she asked, "What does one do with a 
broom when finished sweeping. You put it behind the 
door. If Our Lady could have found one more ignorant 
than myself, she would have chosen her. She picked me 
from under a pebble". Bernadette died on April 16 
1879 of tuberculosis, and her last utterance was "Blessed 
Mary—Mother of God—pray for me". 

And now, what is the application to modern youth 
"A medieval saint" you may say, "Yes, but in a little 
modern body" as Margaret Gray Blanton says in her 
new book, Bernadette of Lourdes. Is this all true? 
Well, a million people journey there yearly who believe 
it is. The water which sprang up where Bernadette dug 
is carried all over the known world. It has no thera-
peutic value in itself. Scientists have gone to scoff and 
come away weeping. Entire train loads led by Bishops 
go yearly. Just recently, a year or two ago, 5,000 Eng-
lish working men were sent by public subscription. 
France annually sends five hundred pilgrimages. Is every 
one cured there? This is not claimed. We had an ex-
ample here in a recent American boy who had the faith 
to make the long journey in an iron lung, circumstances 
that would have kept most of us within the hospital 
Scientists have admitted it has baffled them. 

And what has all this to do with us today? This 
girl—who according to modern standards never knew 
comfort, style, college education, joy, as we know i t ' 
Where does she fit in? Where do we fit in? She was 
frail, but magnificently strong in character. She was 
human—she loved her people. She was noble in spirit 
Her wish was "always to do the Will of God—no matter 
what it cost her". She knew the value of obedience-
even to superiors who often misunderstood her. 

She was a Youth leader—for she pointed the way 
to God, to the Eternal Truths, while living her daily 
ordinary life—she did not complain of being misunder-



"BERNADETTE OF LOURDES" 59 

stood, of being maladjusted, or of not having a chance 
to express her individuality. She was selfless and un-
selfish, and she was Beatified June 14, 1925 and raised 
to Sainthood, December 8, 1933, the Feast of the Immac-
ulate Conception. 

In this America, in these days of stress for youth, 
much comfort could be found, if her example of com-
plete and perfect obedience to God's Will was understood. 
If the cultivation of things of thè spirit count—if a 
belief in God is of any avail, little Bernadette, now a 
Saint, may help us all to realize that sainthood is with-
in reach of many. 

St. Bernadette, ask our Lady, to kindle for every 
girl and boy in America, no matter what her or his 
religion may be, the light of Faith. Ask her to inter-
cede for them. That they may be given hope, that they 
may learn humility, and have strength to live well and 
die well. To become leaders for the right things—for 
America—for the truth—for God. That Youth of today 
may learn the value of dignity, of simplicity, of work. 
May American youth become inflamed with a desire to 
hold fast to principle, to honor, to integrity, and in this 
land where our nation is consecrated to the Immaculate 
Conception—the only country in the world that is—.re-
member that the great virtues of Bernadette were hu-
mility, simplicity and commonsense. 

Follow her leadership—American youth—and it will 
lead you, as the poet says "in the end, where you shall 
forever walk, in the Highways of Heaven". 



60 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"Pray—for the world is troubled." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 
Catholic Dictionary 
"The Sublime Shepherdess"—Frances Parkinson Keyes 

Messner Co.; $2.00 ' 

"Bernadette of Lourdes"—Margaret Gray Blanton 
Longmans, Green & Co.; $2.50 

"St. Bernadette of Lourdes"—Rev. C. C. Martindale, 
S. J., International Catholic Truth Society; 10c 

"Our Lady of Lourdes" (Bernadette) Philip H. Burkett, 
S. J., Our Sunday Visitor; 10c 

"Bernadette of Lourdes", Father Ralph, S. V. D„ Mission 
Press; 10c 

"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S. J., 
Bruce Publishing Co.; $2.00 

"St. Bernadette and The Apparitions at Lourdes" (told 
for children) by Rev. J. I. Lane, Burnes, Oates & 
Washbourne (no. 6 of a series) 40c 



SAINT MARY MAGDALENE 
Clara Mayr Lang 

One of the most common questions people asked me 
about the part of Mary Magdalene I played during the 
three hundredth anniversary performances of our Pas-
sion Play in Oberammergau in 1934 was which Mary 
Magdalene I portrayed. While in the Play there is men-
tion of only one, I had been aware from the very begin-
ning that there had been at least two, according to gen-
eral opinion. But personally I have always felt the Mary 
Magdalene of our Play to be a compromise of the two. 

In art, Mary Magdalene has been depicted in var-
ious ways: as a woman of noble birth, carrying a vessel 
filled with spices, or as in the case of Donatello's paint-
ing done with a realistic brush and consequently a more 
repelling than attractive effect. Guido Reni, another 
Italian artist, gives us a more sentimental picture of 
her. But we also remember seeing her washing the feet 
of Jesus, clasping the cross on Calvary, or meeting the 
risen Christ. 

Which is the real Mary Magdalene now, whose feast 
we observe on July 22nd? It seems that to this day no 
clear line has been drawn between her and Mary of Beth-
any, the sister of Martha and Lazarus. According to St. 
John, 12:1) she anointed her Divine Friend's head and 
feet when He called at Lazarus' house. But there is also 
Mary Magdalene, the Mary of Magdala, a little town on 
the western shore of Lake Genesareth in northern Pales-
tine. She is supposed to be one of the Galilean women 
who followed the Man from Nazareth (Luke 8) ; it was 
her privilege to witness Christ's death on the cross and 
to help carry Him into the tomb of Joseph of Arima-
thea (Matt. 27:55): and she was present after His 
resurrection (John 20:11) to see Him and bring the 
good tidings to her friends in Jerusalem. 

In addition to these two biblical figures, we read in 
St. Luke's (7) of a woman whom we have reason to be-
lieve to be identical with Mary Magdalene of Bethany, 
only that the former is branded with the mark of sin. 
She is a woman without a name, but solely a reputation 



62 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

that is torn to shreds. Might there not have been some 
reluctance to identify the "sinner" with the sister of 
Martha of Bethany? Or a certain unwillingness to have 
Mary Magdalene live so closely to Christ and His 
mends? It is also understandable that reverence for 
Him kept many from associating her with His more in-
timate surroundings. And Luke in speaking of two 
Mary Magdalenes may have done so deliberately, driven 
by sheer Christian spirit, not wishing to defame the one 
yet living. What little we know of their lives appears to 
coincide with all of them. Christ might have said of 
each one to the Pharisees: "Many sins are forgiven her 
because she hath loved much. But to whom less is for-
given, he loveth less". Mary Magdalene hears these 
words, and her sins are forgiven. "Thy faith hath made 
thee safe; go in peace," Christ says to her. Thus this 
penitent woman has regained her name, she, who sinned 
she of whom seven devils were cast out. And because 
such a woman was forgiven, the interest and fancy of 
more people has turned to her in serious contemplation 
It is then not surprising to find her—now that she has 
received a special blessing from this Man from Naza-
reth—identified with other women so near to the Divine 
Teacher from Galilee. 

In the end, it really does not matter at all on whose 
person this encouraging example and model of peni-
tence has been bestowed. To us, she is the woman healed 
by her own faith in Christ; the woman, who had the 
strength to turn away from the temptations of a life 
she had known but too well, and rise again to follow a 
Man, not of this world but of the one to come. She chose 
no privacy to accuse herself but stooped before Christ 
in the very presence of the men to whom she was an out-
cast, condemned, lost forever. Was it not to them that 
He once said: "Whosoever shall confess me before men 
him shall the Son of Man also confess before the angels' 
of God"? (Luke 12:8). 

Mary Magdalene washed Christ's feet under most 
humiliating circumstances, an act we might regard as 
symbolical of her own purification. Her Master refers to 
it with these words: "In pouring this ointment upon My 
body, she hath done it for My burial—wheresoever the 



"SAINT MARY MAGDALENE" 63 

Gospel shall be preached—that also which she hath done 
shall be told for a memory of her." Could it be true, that 
this woman thus honored and elevated by Christ should 
be barred from the cross to help at the descent or the 
entombment—and, what is more—be the first recorded 
witness of His glorious Resurrection? Not the woman 
who found her way back to Christ. • 

After pouring the ointment over His head and feet 
Magdalene is said to have broken the alabaster vessel, a 
gesture equivalent to the thought that nothing must be 
left to keep her away from Him; everything must dis-
appear to make her free for Him. "There shall be no 
more room in me for other love but Thy own. I want to 
begin all over, a new, a better life, for my God, from 
Whom I have been separated these many years through 
my own fault. His grace is calling me back into the fold 
with all its might. Oh Lord, I thank Thee from the bot-
tom of my heart that Thou hast reached out for me, 
speaking not one word of reproach, but taking me again 
in spite of the accusers about me, as a loving Saviour, 
me, an unhappy, wretched sinner". 

Such words as these she may have spoken; yet she 
must have felt them as she knelt there humbly before 
Christ. The Pharisees looked on, shocked. Only a short 
while before, they had stood there pointing at her, they 
themselves blinded by hypocrisy, determined never to 
admit their own guilt. Now, they seemed shamed, em-
barrassed, while Mary Magdalene rose in triumph, re-
warded for her confidence in His help, and filled with new 
strength and the will to face life as she has never known 
it before. What an inspiring contrast between this 
strong woman and those weaklings! 

We all are acquainted with Paul, or better, Saul and 
his conversion and the parable of the Prodigal Son; how-
ever, I believe there is no one whose reformation and 
repentance has impressed the Christian world more 
than that of Mary Magdalene. Little may we know about 
details concerning her life save that unrestrained love 
of liberty and pleasure had led her away in her early 
youth from the straight path into the clutches of vice 
and passion, until her Father in heaven touched her in 
her misery and her unsatisfied quest for earthly happi-



64 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

ness. The poison of the evil spirit may have penetrated 
deep into her heart; habits may have grown stronger 
than all reason with her, yet the call of God's grace, long 
neglected by her, wàs still ringing in the air, sending 
torth a sound, so strong that it eventually reached and 
iully embraced the gloomy soul of a seemingly abandon-
ed sinner. 

Here is the greatest thing of all: Mary Mag-
dalene heard the voice of grace, and realizing the utter 
futility of a young life spent in darkness and -filth her 
eyes began to open more and more. Looking backwards 
she beheld a field strewn with rocks, her shattered hopes 
the disappointments at her failure to find satisfaction in 
the way she had chosen for herself. Each one is covered 
with blood, that is the woe and misery she had caused 
to others. This whole sad scene reveals itself against a 
background into which is written the burning word- In-
gratitude. Did she once thank her Father for beauty 
health and youth, nature's best gifts, for happiness, a 
lite she might have enjoyed in decent surroundings and 
constant peace of mind? Instead she had decided on the 
easy road down. In disgust, she now turns away from 
this sickening picture. And what does she face now? 
Before her stretches the huge expanse of the blue sky 
m which is rising in all its brightness the radiant globe 
oi the sun, sending forth its warming rays, as if Christ 
Himself were holding out His arms to claim her, because 
she was truly sorry for all her sins. SHE IS SAVED 

Mary Magdalene, the sinner, has come home Tri-
umphantly, she rushes toward her Creator, and to me it ' 
just seems as though she could have spoken no other 
words than those it was my good fortune to. exclaim after 
the scene of the Resurrection: 

"He has come back to life again, the friend of 
the sinners, the Saviour of all who believe in Him. 
Oh, could I proclaim this abroad throughout thé 
whole world, that the mountains and the rocks, the 
heavens and the earth echo and re-echo the 'glad 
news: Halleluja! He is risen!" 

From whom could we expect more beautiful words 
expressing new hope and joy of living than from the lips 
of penitent Mary Magdalene. 



"SAINT MARY MAGDALENE" 65 

"Thy faith hath made thee safe; go in Peace." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

"Madness of Magdalene"—Edward Lodge Curran, Inter-
national Truth Society; 10c 

"The Great Magdalene"—Rev. Hugh F. Blunt, Macmil-
lan; $2.25 

"House of Martha at Bethany"| |H. J. Heuser, Longmans, 
Green & Co. 



TEKAKWITHA 
Frances Taylor Patterson 

nn 1 1 1 m 0 r n i n g 1 a m g o i n g t 0 a s k you to go with me 
on two journeys, one a journey in space, the other a jour-

i S i B S t h e / r S t ' WG m U S t g 0 »0 t 0 ^ e lordly 
Hudson River, almost to its end; then west along the 
quick, bright Mohawk. That is the journey in space The 

i n T t h e i T t h c r n t u r y " " U fij"« ^ B f t j ^ 
It is winter in the year 1660. We are entering tho 

palisaded Mohawk village of Ossernenon Lown to pre-
sent Americans as Auriesville. These were the first 
Americans, these Mohawks. They belonged, you will re-
member to the Five Nations, or the League of the Iro-
quois, which extended across New York State almost 
from Albany to Buffalo. They were what is known as 
cabin Indians. They built themselves long houses instead 
of temporary wigwams or tepees in the woods, and lived 
in more or less permanent villages. 

m m i s a tragic winter at Ossernenon. Plague 
stalks through the village. Everywhere there is death 
The medicine men howl and dance, seeking to scare away 
the evil spirits responsible for the disease, but the sick-
ness does not abate. It does not spare the Chief and his 
little family. He lies on his mat, stark and cold. Beside 
him is his wife an Algonquin woman, a baptized Chris-
tian, whom he had taken captive and married. Beside 
I f " 1S™er . d a u ^ t e r , Tekakwitha, who is four years 
old. The child is wretchedly ill. The mother is beyond 
help. An uncle, also a chieftain, picks up the little girl 
and carries her to his own lodge. 

T . Now let us make another journey, this time to 1675 
The Mohawks have moved their village further west 
? th® n V e r " T h e n e w v i I l a ^ e i s c a l l e d Gandawague. 
In the fifteen years that have passed Tekakwitha has 
lived m her uncle's lodge and has contributed a great 
t I # S h e i s n o sluggard, our little 
Tekakwitha. She does more than her share of the com-
mon chores. The illness of her childhood-scientists be-



"TEKAKWITHA" 67 

lieve it was a form of smallpox—left her eyesight im-
paired. Yet in spite of this handicap she could be found 
any day beside the fire making leggings and moccasins 
and tunics out of moose skins and embroidering them 
with porcupine quills. 

Now it is a bright October day and Tekakwitha is 
forced to stay at home in her uncle's lodge, although it is 
harvest time and everyone is in the fields. A tree had 
fallen while she was chopping wood and had hurt her 
foot. A neighbor who has come to stay with her tells 
her that the Black Robe, Father de Lamberville, is mak-
ing his usual rounds among the old and sick. 

Perhaps you will wonder how a priest comes to be 
living in the Mohawk castle. Were not these the same 
war-like Mohawks who had tortured and put to death the 
Black Robe Isaac Jogues? Yes, that martyrdom had oc-
curred among this people when they had lived only a 
few miles away at Ossernenon. But he had not died 
in vain. Many among the Indians had been irresistibly 
drawn to the message of divine love which he had 
taught. And now they had invited the Black Robes to 
return to the village that they might learn more of this 
creed of charity to all men. 

But the Black Robes were not invited to cross the 
threshold of the Chief, Tekakwitha's uncle. He tolerated 
their presence in the village; no more than that. As 
chieftain he must preserve the ancient, pagan rites. He 
must propitiate the spirit of the muskrat and the spirit 
of the moose and the spirit of the Three Sisters, the 
Corn, the Bean and the Squash. Otherwise, they might 
become angry and refuse to grow. The moose might not 
allow himself to be brought down by the arrow of the 
hunter, and the whole village starve as a consequence. 

The Black Robes taught there was only one God, 
the Master of Life, and He was not a malicious God, but 
a God of loving kindness. Tekakwitha had been drawn 
to Him from the first. On this autumn morning she 
came to a momentous decision. Pere de Lamberville was 
visiting the ill, and she was ill. If she were to send word, 
would he come to see her? The neighbor carried the 
message. Pere de Lamberville came. Tekakwitha asked 
him if he would baptize her a Christian. 



68 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

He explained that it was not a thing to be done 
hastily. She must learn about the Faith first so that she 
could accept it with her mind as well as her heart. 
Couldn't he start to teach her now, Tekakwitha asked 
eagerly. So Pere de Lamberville began to instruct the 
niece of the pagan Chief in the doctrines of Christianity. 
Curiously enough, her uncle did not protest. 

Now picture, if you .will, Easter Day in the year 
1676. The little bark chapel at Gandawague is decorated 
for the Feast of the Resurrection. There are no wild-
flowers yet, but the Indians have brought laurel and bal-
sam from the forest and have hung on the wall their 
finest beaver and buffalo robes. Besides being Easter 
this is the day the niece of the Chief is to become a 
Christian. Her baptismal name will be Catherine, after 
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, in Iroquois pronounced 
Kateri. Kateri is supremely happy. This is the moment 
she has so greatly desired. She is at last a Christian. 

But now the name of which she was so proud, be-
gan to be used as a term of reproach. Often the unbe-
lievers, once her friends, threw stones at her. Her aunts 
began to complain because she took time to go to the 
chapel on Sundays, although she worked longer and 
harder than anyone else in the lodge. And now her uncle 
showed his displeasure. He had arranged an excellent 
marriage for her, but she had run out of the lodge, re-
fusing to go through with it. This was very strange. 
Was not the first thought of every young Indian girl 
toward marriage? 

Many of the other new Christians were finding it 
hard also to practice their Faith as they should like. 
Some of them, Tekakwitha's stepsister among them, had 
left for a Christian village that had been founded on the 
St. Lawrence at the Sault St. Louis. By the Indians it 
was called Caughnawaga, which is Iroquois for "At the 
foot of the rapids". The rapids were the famous Lach-
ine Rapids in the St. Lawrence, named by the early ex-
plorers seeking a northwest passage to China. When 
they got to that point in the St. Lawrence, they thought 
they had arrived at "La Chine". 

At Caughnawaga Christian Indians from many 
tribes, Hurons, Algonquins, Iroquois, long at war with 



"TEKAKWITHA" 69 

one another, gathered and lived in peace. The stepsister 
and her husband urged Tekakwitha to come and make 
her home in their lodge, but Tekakwitha hesitated to 
leave her uncle. After all, he had been very kind to her. 
Finally, however, persecution in the village reached such 
proportions that she must either give up her new Faith 
or leave. A young brave had even rushed into the lodge 
with a hatchet, threatening her life. The courage with 
which she faced death disarmed him . . . for the time 
being, at least. 

It happened that in the fall of 1677 the brother-in-
law came down from Caughnawaga. Tekakwitha could 
return with him. It seemed a Heaven sent opportunity. 
Her uncle had gone to trade with .the Dutch at Albany, 
then called Rensselaerswyck. Under cover of night Tek-
akwitha stole away. 

For a while it seemed as if she would be overtaken 
and brought back. Her uncle, learning from scouts that 
she had left the village, took up his gun and rushed into 
the woods in the direction he knew the travellers must 
take. But they were warned of his coming and Tekak-
witha hid in the underbrush. When the danger was 
passed they went on toward what is now Saratoga and 
paddled their way up Lake George and Lake Champlain. 
Finally they were on the St. Lawrence and the journey 
ended at the Sault St. Louis, which the Indians called 
The Praying Castle. 

That Christmas Tekakwitha made her first Holy 
Communion. All the leisure she could find now she spent 
at the Church, no longer a bark chapel but a church with 
a belfry. When the tribe had gone into the woods for 
the winter hunt and she was unable to visit the Blessed 
Sacrament, she carved a cross on a tree in the forest 
where she went to pray before the others were awake 
in the morning and after they had fallen asleep at 
night. 

Because they could not understand it, or perhaps be-
cause goodness often arouses hatred and jealousy in the 
hearts of those who are not good, some of them believed, 
or pretended to believe, that she went to a rendezvous 
with one of the young hunters. And a woman actually 
accused Kateri of stealing her husband's love, an accu-



70 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

sation she later bitterly repented. But after that Tekak-
witha decided that she would never again go on the 
winter hunt. 

Now the stepsister and her husband were urging 
Kateri to marry. But across the river from the sault, 
in the new settlement of Montreal she had seen the Sis-
ters of the Congregation of Notre Dame taking care of 
the sick, teaching the Indian girls and doing a hundred 
useful things. She wondered if she and one or two 
others could not band together and live just such a holy 
life on a little island there in the St. Lawrence. Her 
spiritual director explained how impractical and even 
dangerous this would be. One need not go away and live 
by one's self in order to be good. 

Tekakwitha talked no more of founding a religious 
order, but she asked to be allowed to take the vow of vir-
ginity. This was an amazing request from a young In-
dian girl, but finally, on the Feast of the Annunciation, 
Kateri consecrated herself in this special way to 
the service of God. It gave her new happiness and 
seemingly new strength, for her health had been rapidly 
failing. Those who loved her were grieved because they 
felt they had let her work too hard and too unselfishly. 
Actually, her strength was all of the spirit. As the year 
went on she was hardly able to drag herself to church. 
In Holy Week she lay on her mat, unable to rise. At 
Easter time she had been received into the Church, at 
Easter time she died, the 17th of April, 1680. All the 
village grieved. This, they said, is not the passing of 
an ordinary soul. 

In 1884 the bishops of the United States petitioned 
the Holy See. to institute the process for her beatifica-
tion along with the martyrs Jogues, Brebeuf and the five 
other Jesuit missionaries. When the martyrs were 
beatified in 1925, preparations were made for the Cause 
of Tekakwitha. In 1938 the Historical Section of the 
Congregation of Rites, after studying the documents 
and testimony in the case, reported to the Congregation 
that they are genuine and a complete historical proof of 
her virtue and renown for sanctity. A year ago the Holy 
Father authorized the formal introduction of the Cause 
for her beatification. In November of this year her vir-



"TEKAKWITHA" 71 

tues will be declared heroic and she will be entitled Ven-
erable. Then will be investigated the miracles attributed 
to her, which fortunately are not wanting. 

To American youth Tekakwitha has a very special 
appeal. She is first of all a heroine of youth. She lived 
in the world only twenty-four years; yet she managed to 
make those years so beautiful in good deeds that they 
have been remembered for over two hundred and fifty 
years and are likely to be remembered forever. 

Second, Tekakwitha is in the truest sense American. 
She sprang from our soil; she is part of our root and 
race. She is the first really native American to hold up 
an example of holiness. She is truly the first lady of our 
land. 

Today we hear on all sides how troubled are these 
times; how hard it is to be good with all the forces of 
evil about us. But are our times nearly so hard as the 
time of Tekakwitha, when the minds of men were as 
dark as the uncut forests of this North American con-
tinent? Think of the courage it. took to embrace the 
doctrine of gentle kindness among the war-like tribes of 
the Iroquois who scalped their enemies and wore the 
bloody forelock as an ornament; whose survival depend-
ed on the principle: kill or be killed. For once when we 
think of the American Indian, let us not think of the 
warpath and massacres and tomahawks, but of a little 
Indian girl who was gentleness itself, kindness itself, 
goodness itself. 

When the French came overseas with their mes-
sage, "Love thy neighbor as thyself", many of Tekak-
witha's kinsmen fell upon them and put them to death. 
They were strangers; therefore, they were enemies. But 
Tekakwitha understood their message that all men are 
brothers. There is a striking lesson for us today in that 
17th Century settlement on the St. Lawrence where In-
dians of every hostile tribe were able to live together in 
friendship and felicity because they practiced the Gospel 
of Christ. 

If you will go sometime . . . and thousands ot people 
do go each year . . . to the Cote Ste. Catherine on the 
south bank of the St. Lawrence, opposite the City of 
Montreal, you will see Tekakwitha's grave. It is a beau-



72 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

tiful spot, simple as she was simple, lovely in its natural-
ness. In all seasons its chief ornament is the wide river 
with its strong, never ending currents. Perhaps it is 
symbolic that Tekakwitha should have lived her life be-
side two rivers. The force of goodness is like a tide. It 
cannot be turned back. She and her deeds have become 
part of the currents of our daily living. 

On the monument that marks the spot is written: 
"Fairest Flower that ever bloomed among true men". 
And through the years she has been known as "The Lily 
of the Mohawks". 



" T E K A K W I T H A " 73 

Tekakwitha—"truly the first lady of our land." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 
Catholic Dictionary 
"Kateri Tekakwitha"—in "Sanctity in America'—by 

Most Rev. Amleto Giovanni Cicognani, St. Anthony ^ 
Guild Press; $1.00 

"White Wampum"—Frances Taylor Patterson, Long-
mans, Green & Co. ; $2.00 

"Kateri Tekakwitha"-John J. Wynne, S.J., 226 E. Ford-
ham Rd., N.Y.C.; 25c 

"Catherine Tekakwitha"—Daniel Sargent, Longmans, 
Green & Co.; $2.00 

"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J., Bruce 
Publishing Co.; $2.00 

"Kateri, The Maid of the Mohawks"-Margaret Thorn-
ton, Tekakwitha League, 226 E. Fordham Rd., N.Y.O., 

$1.00 H 
"Our Kateri"—Sister M. Immaculata—Benziger ; $1.50 
"Lily of the Mohawks"—Dominicans of Washington, 

D. C.; $1.50 



SAINT MARTHA 
Ade Bethune 

Martha must have been in her late twenties when we 
first find out about her. No one could ever have guessed 
what adventures lay in store for her. If any rich girl 
ever had a dull life in a beautiful suburban estate, Mar-
tha certamly did. I never was able to find out whether 
or not she was the oldest of her brothers and sisters, but 
she always did seem to be the head of the family with all 
kinds of worries. She loved to have her brother Lazarus 
visiting. He was so enthusiastic about things. She al-
ways had his room ready and she made him feel the old 
home was his and he might invite anyone he wished. 

I was told that , they had a sister Mary, who was 
never mentioned to the family, because she was simple-
minded. I understand, however, that she was not really 
mentally deficient, as was commonly thought. But she 
was so rapt in the supernatural life in God that she 
never put her mind an anything less. She hardly ever 
spoke at all. If she did, she would just continue out loud 
her interior conversation with the invisible Creator, and 
her words sounded like a random simile from the Bible. 
They made little sense to anyone, not even to Martha' 
I'm afraid. 

There was also a younger sister, Magdalen. She was 
quite another character. She was tall, plump, witty, very 
good-looking and as temperamental as a Hollywood star 
Her fond parents had spoilt her childhood thoroughly" 
When they died, though she was only eleven, she went 
to live by herself, in her own mansion, in a fashionable 
resort on the lake in the North. There she spent all the 
money she wanted on lively parties. Crowds of brilliant 
people flocked, attracted by her wit and her charm. But 
she was not discriminate with this mob of admirers, and, 
gradually the intellectuals, the writers, artists and scien-
tists left her company, disgusted by the crowd that had 
crawled in for money, drink and questionable good times. 
Magdalen was ashamed and revolted by the baseness of 
these creatures, but she could not do without them. By 



"SAINT MARTHA" 76 

the time she was twenty-five she had been living in sin 
for years. Martha was very worried. But it seemed 
hopeless. 

Life must have been bewildering to Martha at times. 
After all she was but a young woman herself, leading 
a lonely life on a large estate, with one sister living only 
for heavenly things and another living only to degrade 
earthly things. It looked as though life held nothing in 
store for her outside a dull round of dinners, teas and 
deadly social functions. 

But all at once the whole course of her life was 
changed, and it was a young man who did it. He was re-
lated either to her family or to some close friends. Many 
people accused Him of being good-for-nothing, wasting 
His time wandering, from place to place and stirring dis-
content. 

Lazarus came home full of enthusiasm one day, after 
having heard Him talk. He had spoken boldly with a 
strong, clear voice, denouncing evil in high places. He 
had spoken with authority. He was fearless. Lazarus 
was all excited about Him. The oppressed Jewish nation 
was in dire need of a dynamic leader to revolt against 
the foreign invaders. This was just the Man. Lazarus 
was thrilled. He had to tell Martha at once. She must 
meet Him. Everyone must support His cause. It did not 
take long for Lazarus to make friends with Him and 
give all of his spare time to the rising movement. And, 
in a few months, when the young orator went through 
her town, Martha received Him into her house. This 
was the beginning. Things were never the same again 
after the day when she gave Him hospitality and she 
received Him into her house. 

Lazarus was so concerned about national freedom 
that he failed to see there was a much deeper meaning 
in the young man's words. I think Martha caught on 
before he did. She realized that the young leader's move-
ment was more than political when He asked to see her 
sister Mary and they both talked with unusual enthu-
siasm about God and the redemption of man. He told 
Martha that, after all, only one thing is ever necessary, 
and that is to know the joy of God. All else is pointless 
worry Martha was deeply impressed. If only she could 



76 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

have Magdalen there to hear these beautiful words. 
Magdalen was so intelligent and so sensitive. She'd be 
won over immediately. 

At last she made up her mind to take a trip to the 
Lake, in the hopes of persuading her sister to listen at 
least once to the young man's inspiring words. Of course 
she was not too well received. Magdalen did not like in-
terference from her family. She was busy with many 
guests. She kept Martha waiting. Martha on the other 
hand was far from appreciating such a high-handed re-
ception. But winning Magdalen over was more import-
ant than anything else. So she swallowed her pride and 
she waited, and she waited, and she waited. Finally she 
saw her, and, by dint of the most patient diplomacy, she 
managed to obtain a promise that Magdalen would come 
to hear the orator at the next big outdoor meeting, not 
far from there. 

Magdalen went. She was tremendously impressed. 
She decided to forget her past and come to live with 
Martha. But then she went back to Magdala, her estate, 
and neglected her promise. Martha was heartbroken. 
It had failed entirely. A second time, it failed again. 
Only a third time did the extraordinary personality of 
the Leader win her over completely. She wept her for-
given sins and began a new life. 

Martha also was a changed person. Her house be-
came a beehive of activity. She arranged with some of 
her friends to have accommodations for the young 
Leader and His followers, all along their road as they 
went from town to town. She'd been quite upset to hear 
that He and His group had often had to go without din-
ner or without a place to sleep, simply because they had 
come unknown into a city or because the population had 
been hostile. She contacted all of her out-of-town friends 
and made them promise to give hospitality to the little 
group. Then she collected money to pay for proper ac-
commodations at convenient inns, in the places where 
she had no personal friends. In fact she became so in-
terested in the movement that, after Mary died, she was 
less and less to be found at home at all. She was always 
taking friends out to hear the Leader's speeches, or col-
lecting money, food and clothes, or joining the women 



"SAINT MARTHA" 
76 

who followed the group, helping very efficiently in dis-
tributing to the poor all the contributions that kept 
pouring in. 

Then a tragedy occurred. Lazarus died. It was 
a terrible shock. Crowds of relatives and friends came 
to the funeral. The Leader did not come. Martha was 
very worried. She'd sent word to Him to come when 
Lazarus was sick, because He was such a close friend of 
the family. There were rumors that He'd been perse-
cuted, that some people had attempted to kill Him. It 
was far too dangerous for Him to come. He couldn't 
come. But Martha wouldn't listen. And when He did 
come a few days later, she ran out of the house to meet 
Him. He'd cured so many sick people. He'd made the 
blind see and the deaf hear and the dumb sing. If He'd 
even converted Mary Magdalen he could easily have 
cured Lazarus. She scolded Him almost. "If You'd been 
here", she said, "my brother wouldn't have died". So He 
reassured her: "Your brother shall rise again". "I 
know", Martha answered Him, "That he will rise again 
at the resurrection on the last day". But He said: "I 
am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, 
though he die, yet he shall live. And whosoever lives 
and believes in me, shall never die. Do you believe this?" 
—"Yes Lord", she told Him, "I firmly believe that you 
are the Christ, the Son of God, the one who is to come 
into the world". 

It was good that Lazarus was brought back to life. 
His cheerful confidence was a great help. Things were 
getting harder to bear all the time. People were now 
criticizing Martha for neglecting her estate and for ne-
glecting the social functions of her rank. She was in-
viting the riff-raif into her own house. They ridiculed 
her for organizing picnics for street urchins, as they put 
it. They said she had gone out of her mind on account 
of Jesus, the Leader. 

But she merely smiled. That didn't worry her. She 
knew better. She knew now that He was not an ordinary 
man And then it happened, the very night after the 
Passover, that suddenly, He was arrested, and, before 
anyone could do anything, He was executed at once, as a 
criminal On His account she was now persecuted also'. 



78 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

Tradition holds that one day, she, Mary Magdalen, Laz-
arus and a friend of his were all taken to jail for having 
been active followers of Jesus. However they didn't stay 
long. A big purge was going on and the four of them 
were tucked into a leaking boat, with not a sail, an oar 
nor a rudder; and thus abandoned to the sea. But Mar-
tha didn't worry. The four of them sat praying in the 
boat and Jesus was in the midst of them. They did not 
drown. The boat landed them clear across the Mediter-
ranean, into southern France, where is now Marseilles. 
There they found a pagan population to whom they im-
mediately told all about Christ and His life. 

Martha and Mary Magdalen both continued into the 
interior of Province. Martha was afraid of nothing by 
now. The people became devoted to her. She saved them 
from their plagues and pestilences. She cured their ail-
ments. She taught them how to be clean in body and 
soul. She taught them to be hospitable towards all, as 
they would to Christ Whom she had recognized, and 
Whom she had taken into her house. 

She founded a village, a whole community of wo-
men, probably the first idea of a convent in that part 
of the world. She died right there and her tomb still 
receives the visits of thousands of people. Today she 
is inviting us to be gladly and generously hospitable to-
wards all, rich or poor, friend or stranger, as toward the 
Master Himself, Whom she recognized. 



"SAINT MARTHA" 
76 

"Only one thing is ever necessary—To know the 
joy of God." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

"Lives of the Saints"—Butler, Vol. 7. 

"House of Martha of Bethany"—H. J. Heuser, Long-
mans, Green & Co. 

Holy Gospels 
The Golden Legend—a 13th Century compilation of leg-

ends of Saints by Jacques de Voragine, Dutton; 65c 

The Liturgical Year—by Abbot Gueranger, 15 vols., 
Benziger; $23.00 a set. 



SAINT ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY 
Dorothy Day 

Somebody said once that a saint was like a letter 
written to us by God, a message of joy and beauty and 
gladness that lifts our hearts to Him. Sometimes those 
letters seem all too brief, sometimes they are yellow and 
faint with age and it is hard to read them. So that we 
are fortunate today in having a series of biographies of 
saints which make them alive and glowing again. The 
best biography of St. Elizabeth of Hungary is that of 
Ida Coudenhove, a young Austrian girl who wrote a 
book called "The Nature of Sanctity" a few years ago 
and brought Elizabeth of Hungary to us again. 

All that is known of this young saint of the thir-
teenth century comes to us from the process of canoniza-
tion which used the sayings of four servants, two of 
whom were her intimate friends and companions from 
her childhood; and the letter of Konrad of Marburg, 
the Franciscan spiritual adviser written to Pope Gregory 
IX. During the Romantic age, many flowery stories 
were written about her, and more recently psychologists 
have tried to analyze her warm and glowing personality.-
What they did not seem to understand, and what they 
felt had to be explained, was how so human a creature, 
so passionately in love with her husband, so full of life, 
should be also a saint. 

The bare facts of her life which have come down to 
us are these: She was born in Hungary in 1207. She 
was the daughter of King Andrew and Queen Gertrude 
of Hungary. She was a member of a violent, ambitious 
family, with a will to power. "She learnt in childhood 
the tragedy and bitterness of this thirst for power," Miss 
Coudenhove writes, "when her mother was horribly mur-
dered during a rising in Hungary." This happened when 
she was eleven years old. Some analyists of her charac-
ter have tried to explain her sanctity by saying that she 
was doing penance for the sins of her family, for their 
pride and greed and violence. 

When she was four years old, she was engaged to 



"SAINT ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY" 81 

Count Louis of Thuringia and Hesse, and went to that 
kingdom to live until her marriage. Hence she grew up 
with the boy who was to be her husband, and with his 
sister and two brothers. When she was fourteen and 
Louis twenty-one, the marriage was celebrated, against 
the wishes of his mother and brothers and sisters, who 
wished Elizabeth to go to the convent. They were al-
ready afraid of her warm-hearted and reckless charity 
which expressed itself in giving away everything she 
could to those who were poor and ill. She liked to sit 
with her serving women, dressed as they were, and spin 
wool, and her proud mother-in-law and sister-in-law said 
she was more fit to be a kitchen drudge than a queen. 
But her young husband loved her as devoutedly as she 
did him, and did not object that she gave away not only 
her own wealth which came with her as a dowry, but 
emptied his store houses of supplies. Elizabeth and 
Louis had three children during their brief marriage of 
six years When news was brought of the death of Louis 
during the fifth crusade, she was carrying her third 
child She did not react at all like the conventional 
saints pious biographers hold up to us. She stormed and 
wept and would not be consoled. Pictures of her unres-
trained grief, as well as pictures of her violent love and 
joy in her husband have come down to us m the stories 
of her serving maids. 

After the death of her husband her life was not any 
too easy in the home of her in-laws. The story differs 
as to whether she left voluntarily or whether she was 
driven from her home. All that we know is that the 
three years of her life that remained, she spent in the 
hospital which she had founded at Marburg, nursing the 
sick and ministering to the poor. One of her maids how-
ever said' "She would not receive her support from 
the robbery and plunder of the poor as is usual in prince-
ly houses, but chose rather exile and to earn her living 
with her own hands." It must indeed have been a fright-
ful struggle to separate herself from her children, but 
she could not call upon these young ones to share her 
very real hunger and want. What she took upon herself 
from choice, she could not impose upon them. So she 
left them to be educated and brought up by her relatives. 



82 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

IM i JV S , * V e r y r e a l m e s s a ^ e i n the life of this beau-
UJ a n d delicate and privileged young woman. And" I 

say privileged not because she was born to a life of 
wealth and comfort, using privileged in the commonly 
accepted meaning of the word. She was privileged be-
cause she was chosen by God to exemplify love in a time 
of strong hates. And I am speaking now of her human 
love for her husband. If we believe that human love is 
a reflection of the love of God here on earth, then cer-
tainly the warm human love of man and woman in its 
intensity must convey to us some idea of the greatness 
and the warmth and the beauty that typifies the love of 
the saints for God. Not an abstract love of the will 
alone, not a weak sentimentality, a matter of feeling 
but a real enlivening love. The love of a woman for a 
man will make her endure hardships with joy, will make 
her leave home and friends and travel with him to the 
far corners of the earth. To be with him means to her 
that there is no more loneliness, that even to suffer pain 
and hardship with him is a privilege. To suffer for him 
and with him is even a joy. 

It was not only after the death of Louis that Eliza-
beth loved the poor. Throughout her girlhood she chose 
to be with them, to work with them, and through her 
companionship she knew them. Every moment not spent 
with her husband was spent with them. It is good to 
remember the contempt she earned from the court which 
said that she was more fitted to be a kitchen druge. They 
must have despised her "low taste." 

And after Louis' death, she became one of them. So 
we can be assured that she knew them. Father Pierre 
Charles, a great teacher of the present day, says that it 
is not enough to love the poor. It is first necessary to 
know them. A love without this knowledge may become 
sentimentality and condescension. And how can one 
know the poor without living with them, becoming one 
of them? When Christ came on earth, He was born in a 
stable. Out here in California where I am now broad-
casting, there are 350,000 migrant homeless families, 
transient workers. Many of the babies among them 
have been born in stables. During the public life of 
Christ, He said, "the birds of the air have nests, and 



"SAINT ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY" 83 

foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has no place to lay 
His head." These migrant workers go from camp to 
camp, from district to district, and they too have 
no place to lay their heads. They are an army of home-
less. 

In the city, the municipal lodging houses are full, 
millions are on relief,—they too are not sure in having 
a place to lay their heads. Today as in the time of St. 
Elizabeth of Hungary, there is need for those who know 
and love the poor. Charity has come to be a word that 
sticks in people's throats. The true meaning of the word 
charity has been lost and that true meaning is "love". 
It is indeed good that the state recognizes its obliga-
tions imposed on it in time of crisis. The work that is 
being done is necessary and yet with all the work there 
is a grave danger of Christians forgetting and losing a 
sense of personal responsibility. It is refreshing to 
read in the story of St. Elizabeth of Hungary about her 
simple, direct way of working, a way which cuts through 
all red tape, a way which does not wait for legislation, 
necessary though it may be; does not wait to see what 
others are going to do; but proceeds directly to the heart 
of the trouble. 

The great need of the time is to remember the coun-
sels of perfection laid down in the New Testament, that 
Christian manifesto which is just as good for the pres-
ent time as it was 1900 years ago. We are to love our 
neighbor as our selves, and our neighbor may even be 
our enemy, as the wounded Jew on the roadside was to 
the Samaritan who helped him. We are "to give to those 
who ask us," and when our brother is in need we should 
not say to him, "go, be thou filled," If anyone asks for 
our coat, we are to give him our cloak too. In other 
words we are to have some of that lavish, reckless, un-
inquiring love of our brother which St. Elizabeth showed 
so constantly. We have an example in the lavishness of 
God who rains gifts upon us, who shines on the just and 
the unjust. 

I think that in every heart there is this generous 
desire to give. What marked the saints was that they 
never tired, they never expected gratitude, they were 
never disillusioned by those they served, with those they 



84 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

lived. They cared for the meanest and most disagree-
able. Indeed it is easy to care for the good and the 
grateful and well-ordered ones. But the saints saw 
Christ in the meanest. They saw Christ in them be-
cause Christ took on our humanity and so ennobled it, 
because Christ died for each one of us, and who were 
they to judge whether or not the sinner of today might 
not be the saint of tomorrow like St. Paul ? They recog-
nized how close we are to one another, that we are all 
members, or potential members of the Mystical Body of 
Christ, whether we are Jew or Buddhist, Mohammedan, 
Protestant or Catholic, or unbeliever. And they recog-
nized that when the health of one member suffered, in 
the words of St. Paul, the health of the whole Body is 
lowered. They knew this so well, they felt it so keenly, 
they never tired of the work they set themselves. That 
burning zeal and love only increased, founded as it was 
on the love of Christ. 

If it is true, as one story goes, that St. Elizabeth 
was driven from her home after the death of her hus-
band, then it is also true that she no longer had money 
and gifts to dispense. It is good for all of us who are 
without the financial means of helping in this time of 
need, to remember this. I heard recently a group of 
Young Christian Workers in this country, organizing 
themselves into unemployed sections. Instead of wear-
ing themselves out in the seemingly fruitless search for 
work, they are dividing up their timé and employing 
themselves a good part of the week in their work in 
Catholic Action. In this way they are using the talents 
God has given them, they are using the training they 
have had in the schools. They are working in their 
parishes along social lines, finding what there is for 
them to do, and doing it. They are continuing their 
studies of the best ways of rebuilding a social order, and 
at the same time they are not losing their self-respect in 
the aimless quest for work. They are beginning once 
again to believe in Divine Providence and to follow in 
the footsteps of their Master who Himself had no ma-
terial goods. 

The poverty, the hard work of the saints would pre-
sent a pretty grim picture without that burning love of 



"SAINT ELIZABETH OF HUNGARY" 85 

the saint to show us what we are working towards. Even 
to speak of such love is hard, it is a word so much mis-
understood today. But "love is the fulfilling of the 
law." "Love is the measure by which we shall be judg-
ed." Love knows no nationalities as we are all brothers 
in Christ, sons of a common Father. 

In the words of the author of the "Following ôf 
Christ," who wrote the century after St. Elizabeth—"A 
great thing is love, a great good in every way ; which 
alone lighteneth all that is burdensome, and beareth 
equally all that is unequal. For it carrieth a burden 
without being burdened and maketh all else that is bitter, 
sweet and savory. 

"Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stranger, 
nothing higher, nothing wider, nothing more pleasant, 
nothing fuller or better in heaven or in earth; for love is 
born in God, and cannot rest but in God." 

And since we need the strength which love brings 
to meet the heavy problems of our times, it is good to 
remember to pray to St. Elizabeth to teach us how to love. 



86 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"She was privileged because she was chosen by 
God." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encylopedia 
Catholic Dictionary 
"Sanctity"—a play by Violet Clifton, published by Sheed 

& Ward; $1.50 
"St. Elizabeth of Hungary"—Franz Johannes Weinrich, 

translated by J. J. Collins, Burnes, Oates and Wash-
bourne; 3s 6d 

"St. Elizabeth of Hungary"—Thomas B. Reilly, Paulist 
Press; 5c 

"St. Elizabeth of Hungary"—Mrs. John Dillon, Inter-
national Catholic Truth Society; 10c 

"The Church and the Child" (pages 12 to 17), Rev. Paul 
Hanley Furfey, Ph. D., National Council of Cath-

. olic Men; 10c 
"Great Wives and Mothers" (page 98)—Rev. Hutrh F 

Blunt 
"The Lives of the Saints"—Butler, Vol. 11- Kenedy 

$2.75 per Vol. 
"The Nature of Sanctity"—Ida Coudenhove, Sheed & 

Ward. 



SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA 
Katherine Burton 

The city of Rome has two patron saints. Saint 
Peter, of course, is the first. The second, declared so by 
Pius IX in 1866, is Catherine of Siena, that small, frail, 
indomitable woman, who,. in the fourteenth century, 
brought back the Popes from Avignon to Rome, who cut 
through all political alliances, who had no army to back 
her, no powers of earth to sustain her, who had only, 
as she phrased it, God and herself for the task. 

She was born in 1347, on the Feast of the Annuncia-
tion, which happened also to be Palm Sunday. She was 
the twenty-third and youngest child of a dyer of Siena. 
At an early age she dedicated her virginity to Christ 
and from that vow to her Lord she never deviated. There 
were times of temptation in her early girlhood-evenings 
when she heard outside her room the singing and dancing 
of a fiesta in the village and she wondered how it would 
feel to know a handsome youth, to be loved with an 
earthly love. Once or twice her sisters persuaded her 
to come out and join them, but afterwards she fought 
off such temptations in her little room, as she fought out 
many things there—the room where later Our Lord 
came to her, had long talks and where Saint John and 
Saint James and Saint Mary Magdalene came to sit on 
her couch and talk, while she sat on the floor and listen-
ed to them. . . 

As she grew to marrying age, her family insisted 
she become engaged to a youth in the village. But she 
cut off her long fair hair in token that she was consecrat-
ed to God, and refused. Her angry family would not 
allow her a room of her own for her devotional life. They 
made her do the work of the house as a servant. She 
did it obediently but she never yielded in her deliberate 
intention until at last her father said to Lapa, his wife 
and to his sons, "She is to be left free and in peace to 
serve her Bridegroom and continually pray for us.^ We 
could never get a bridegroom of mightier kindred." 

Now Catherine, who had been praying when and 



88 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

where she could find the time away from the hard work 
of the house, was given a room of her own. It held no 
furniture but a couch and a chest and its only light was 
the lamp before her crucifix. Here, in solitude and dark-
ness, Catherine performed her penitential exercises, here 
she talked with her heavenly visitors. In a short time 
she persuaded her parents and the Dominicans to allow 
her to become a Dominican Tertiary. In the Church of 
San Domenico there is a chapel now closed and walled up. 
A few steps are left standing and an old inscription 
says, "Catherine mounted these steps to pray to Christ, 
her Bridegroom". It was here that she was clothed in 
the white habit and the black mantel—here she drew 
them proudly about her for the first time—the white 
robe of purity, the black cloak of death to the world. 

Now she lived for three years in solitude and silence, 
like a desert anchorite, her only contact with the world 
outside her daily visit'to the church. For the rest with-
in four small walls she prayed, did penance and talked 
with her Lord. 

In 1366 she resumed her life with her family and 
began caring for the sick and poor of the town, but her 
devotional life filled all the hours left. The Dominicans 
sometimes grew weary of this girl who stayed after they 
wanted to lock up the Church, who burst into tears in 
the middle of the Mass, who in a tranced state they 
sometimes removed firmly from the Church. There were 
even grave moral charges brought against her, and Cath-
erine, aghast and sad, was obliged to go to Florence to 
clear herself. And when she was cleared, she hurried 
home to tend the plague-stricken. 

She taught herself to read too—at twenty, and then 
the Breviary, the Mass, the Gospels and the Epistles 
were hers to study, and this gave her the information 
she needed later in her letters to recalcitrant prelates. 
But Fra Baimondo her confessor thought her quick 
grasp of the written word was an intuitive thing. She 
knew, he felt, without being able to give a reason for 
her knowledge. Sometimes, when she could not read for 
him a single word, she nevertheless comprehended a 
whole sentence. 

By the time she was twenty-four her fame wag 



"SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA" 89 

spreading, her renown as a woman who was set apart by 
God, who could do wonders with the sinful and obstinate. 
There were many conversions and some of them remark-
able—hardened criminals, gay young men of the world. 
She had about her now a group of young people who 
listened eagerly to the words that fell from her lips, to 
whom she was a spiritual mother. From far beyond 
Siena people were coming to her for spiritual aid. And 
there was the Franciscan scholar, Fra Lazzarino, who 
detested her and tried to trip her up on her interpreta-
tion of the Scripture. He went away dissatisfied with 
her answers, still sure of himself. But next morning he 
awoke unhappy and weeping. He could not stop weep-
ing, could not meet his lecture classes in theology. He 
could only stay in his room and sob, and wondered if he 
were ill of some strange malady. Suddenly what was 
wrong came to him—he went back to Catherine for help. 
"I have only the shell of Christianity", he told her, "you 
have the kernel." 

Now Catherine could tell him what was wrong—that 
he had betrayed the brown robe and the cord he wore, 
that he was living for self and not for God as he had 
promised. And Fra Lazzarino went back to his beau-
tiful convent, ate no more of the rich food, gave away 
his money and clothing and the furnishing of his room 
and began to live like a true Franciscan. He was perse-
cuted for it too, but he was happy. That was the effect 
of Catherine: She took away all a man or woman valued 
because it belonged to the world and she gave them back 
a hundred-fold of happiness because she took away the 
self-love and filled her converts with the selfless love for 
God—the one thing that she knew could change a man 
or a world. 

In 1375 the ruler of Pisa invited her to help rouse 
enthusiasm for a proposed Crusade and at the same time 
prevent Lucca and Pisa from joining the Tuscan league 
against the Pope. It was at this time and on this jour-
ney that Catherine is said to have received the Stigmata, 
which, at her earnest prayer, Our Lord permitted to 
remain invisible to all but herself. 

In 1376 began her first attempts to bring the Pope 
back to Rome from Avignon where fear and politics and 



90 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

!°v e ^ easy living had driven the Popes. Since 1305 
they had lived there. Saint Brigitta had striven to show 
Clement IV his duty, and Marcus VI and Urban. And 
now Catherine took up the work with Gregory, for Brig-
itta had died the year before. But there was a great 
difference between them, for Brigitta was a wealthy lady 
of the Swedish court and Catherine an unknown dyer's 
daughter. But the letters she began writing to Pope 
and prelates read like the letters of the daughter of a 
King. 

H J " I t , i s t h e w i n o f G o d a n d ™y desire," she wrote 
It displeases God and me". And one amazed man wrote 

of her, "This woman cares little whether she says what 
is pleasing or displeasing." And of course she did not 
for to her politics were a part of ethics and she took it 
for granted that a politician should be, like anyone else 
first of all a follower of the Faith. 

Her first letter to Gregory was gentle enough mere-
ly urging him to know that he was above all a father 
and a prince of peace. But when nothing happened she 
was soon on her way with a group of her followers 
going in person to distant Avignon, where the Pope 
received her well and gave her the task of trying to 
make peace with Florence. She was heartbroken at the 
insults to her Master she witnessed daily. She began to 
rain letters on Gregory now. And after four months 
she had done her work. For Gregory left his palace and 
set out for distant Rome, while the French Cardinals 
wept and his father threw himself at his feet to stop 
his going. But Gregory walked: past him. And Cather-
ine was happy at this victory for her Lord. 

Back in Rome Gregory was an uphappy man, long-
ing for Avignon but afraid to go back. He felt he must 
speak to Catherine about it, but he could not send for 
her to come to him. So, dressed as a simple priest, and 
all alone, he came one evening to the amazed Catherine 
Whatever she told him, served to fortify him and he 
stayed in Rome. And Catherine for a brief time went 
back to her peaceful life, her disciples and her prayers. 
Then word came that Gregory wished her to go to Flor-
ence to treat for peace with that city and while she was 
at work there she had news of his death. But to her joy 



"SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA" 91 

peace was signed with Urban, the new Pope, and Cather-
ine, her political task completed, went home again, only 
to be called to Rome at the outbreak of the schism. 
There she helped quell the revolt of the people and began 
trying to win for Urban the support of Europe, firm in 
her conviction that he was the true Pope. 

Urban VI was a very different Pope from easy go-
ing Gregory, severe and strong. To him now Catherine 
began a series of letters—this time on the decay of the 
Church and the vices of the clergy. When he made peace 
with Florence and raised the interdict, she. put a leaf of 
olive in her letter to her disciples at home. "Peace-
peace," she wrote joyfully. 

Back in Siena she worked on her book, dictating for 
long hours to her secretaries. Then back again to Rome 
to aid the cause of Urban. She spent Christmas there, 
sending the Pope a gift of oranges gilded by herself. 
Lent found her still there and the various candidates for 
the papacy still warring. When spring came to Rome it 
found Catherine very ill and sending farewell messages 
to the worried disciples at home: "Love one another as 
I have loved you," she urged thém. 

The terrible strain, the heavy work, the difficult 
travelling, her fasts, her unhappiness at the dissension 
after her happiness to have a pope back in Rome—all 
together proved too much for the frail body and in April 
of 1380 she died. There is no record of her actual words, 
but surely in sentiment if not in fact they were those of 
Pius Eleventh, who-as he was dying, worn out with anxi-
ety and love, said faintly, "There is so much still to do— 
peace—." 

Catherine lives on in her writings. Her Book of 
Divine Doctrine is often compared to the Divine Comedy 
as one of the two supreme attempts to express the etern-
al, to paint the union of the soul with the suprasensible 
while still imprisoned in the flesh. She has left us many 
prayers and almost four hundred letters written to kings, 
popes, cardinals and political corporations as well as to 
ordinary individuals. And those who know compare her 
beautiful Tuscan sentences with those of Petrarh. 

No saint of any day shows so well two things. First 
that it is wrong to stay in an ivory tower and dream, 



92 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

when the call conies for action. And no saint shows so 
well the fact that peace can never come from clashing 
armies. Yistory may be gained thus but never peace. 
For peace is the thing within. War is always self-love 
of some sort. Peace is the love of God. And'only in 
and with peace can humanity, high or low, practice the 
sense of the presence of God. 

She was greatly daring as many a woman must be 
greatly daring today. But hers, even when it seemed 
political, was so only for the sake of God and of the 
Faith. She was a feminist of her day, there is no doubt 
of that. But there was a difference. Our modern fem-
inists have won the vote and other things—all material 
Catherine fought for a greater thing—the spiritual king-
dom of God here on the material earth. She used ma-
terial weapons but it was always to fight a spiritual 
battle. And the sword of the spirit was her only weap-
on. 

The world today is in a bad way just as it was in 
Catherine's day. But the troubles were not our modern 
troubles, save that their reasons were the same self-love 
and lack of love for God. Today there is no need of a 
Catherine to call a pope to his duty, to write flaming 
letters to urge him to his course. That darkness is far 
behind us, gone with the material armies and politics of 
long ago. Today the papacy is strong and united 
yet with so little material wealth and power that it would 
no doubt have dismayed the men of her day. But there 
are other and terrible problems for us of the Faith. 

Catherine's followers were called Caterini—at first 
in amusement, but they accepted the name and bore it 
proudly. Perhaps among the young people of today— 
for it was the young who were especially drawn to Cath-
erine—there is need of Caterini. There are probably no 
Catherines among us for they are rarely given by God 
There can always be followers of their example; any of 
us can be that. The characteristics of one who would 
belong to the Caterini are fearlessness to brave the forces 
of evil, even if that evil seems to quote Scripture and 
bear a fair face. Fearlessness to press for peace on 
earth and to know that the way to acquire that peace is 



"SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA" 93 

to work to make the world a place where men of good 
will may live at peace with one another. 

To be followers of Catherine means sometimes com-
ing out of a quiet room into the hurlyburly of politics. 
It means coming from a gay pleasant Avignon to a Rome 
where one is looked at with distrust, perhaps even by 
one's own friends. When things went hard with Cath-
erine at home and she had not even a place to pray, she 
made herself an oratory in her heart, scrubbing or clean-
ing, or cooking, there she could betake herself from 
everything and pray. And that is what is necessary to 
be a follower of Catherine—first the oratory within, the 
praying to fit oneself for God's work, the casting out of 
love for self—and then the brave setting out as she did 
to go into the world about her Father's business. 



94 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"Nothing great is ever accomplished without much 
enduring." 

Catholic Encyclopedia 
Catholic Dictionary 
"St. Catherine of Siena"—Alice Curtayne, Sheed & 

Ward; $1.50 
"St. Catherine of Siena"—Johannes Jorgensen, Long-

mans, Green & Co.; $3.50 
"The Flame: Catherine of Siena"—Jeanette Eaton, Har-

per; $2.00 
"St. Catherine of Siena"—London Truth Society, Paul-

ist Press; 5c 
"St. Catherine of Siena"—from Saints vs. Kings, Rev. 

James M. Gillis, C. S. P. Catholic Hour, N. C. C. M • 
20c 

"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J., Bruce 
Publishing Co.; $2.00 

"Life of Saint Catherine of Siena"—Blessed Raymond 
of Capua, P. J. Kenedy & Sons; $1.50 



SAINT ROSE OF LIMA 
Minerva Bernardino 

Saint Rose of Lima, the first native-born saint of 
America and declared to be the Patroness of Spanish 
America, the Philippine Islands, was born in Ciudad de 
los Reyes, the old name for Lima, on April 30, 1586. 
Her father, Don Gaspar Flores, a Puerto Rican of hum-
ble origin, and her mother Dona Maria de Oliva of 
Lima, had been married in Lima in 1577. Her father 
was a member of the Viceroy's Company of Musketeers, 
while her mother taught needlework to the young ladies 
of Lima. When she was baptized one month after her 
birth, the Peruvian saint was given the name of Isabel, 
but when she was three months old her mother, struck 
by the extraordinary beauty of the infant, decided to 
call her Rose, and it .was with this name that she was 
confirmed when she was eleven years of age. 

From her earliest years Rose revealed supernatural 
gifts which even surpassed her great physical beauty. 
First to attract attention was her unalterable patience 
whenever annoyed. While still a very little girl her 
vocation for the religious life became apparent, and it 
is said that when she was very young she made a vow 
of perpetual chastity. In early childhood she voluntar-
ity practiced self-discipline and penance which in no 
way detracted from her naturally happy and jovial dis-
position. Always docile, she applied herself to take 
advantage of the cultural opportunities which her moth-
er struggled to provide for her, which included lessons 
in singing and playing the harp, the zither and the 
guitar. She joyfully shared the blessings of her talents 
with others, but she utilized these great gifts especially 
to glorify God and often in secluded spots of the orchard, 
in the shadow of the trees and with only the birds as 
witnesses, she expressed her love of God through her 
poetry and musical accomplishments. 

Throughout her life Rose devoted herself to the 
humblest tasks and practiced every virtue. Because of 
her great charity and consideration of the lowly, she 



96 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

won the title of "Mother of the Poor." She was reward-
ed by being uplifted in transports of holy joy, for which 
she is sometimes considered one of the great mystics in 
the history of the Church. We may also think of her 
as the predecessor of our Visiting Nurses of the Twenti-
eth Century, for she devoted most of her efforts toward 
aiding the needy and caring for the sick who, because 
of limited hospital facilities, could not obtain admission 
to the Holy Ghost Hospital in Lima. To contribute to 
the support of her parents and to secure additional funds 
for her charitable works, she did embroidery and sold 
the flowers from her garden which she cultivated with 
great care. No sacrifice was too great nor penance too 
heavy to endure for the love of God and of her fellow 
men. Her desire was to share the sufferings of Christ, 
and she enlisted the help of her brother Fernando in 
building a grotto where she might spend hours in pray-
er and contemplation. 

When Rose was in her 'teens, her parents wished to 
arrange an advantageous marriage for her, but for the 
first time she refused to concede to their wishes, and 
told them of her vow and her preference to live a life 
of service for others. She mortified her vanity on every 
occasion and voluntarily wore the habit of the third 
order of St. Dominic; at the age of 20 she received the 
regular Dominican nun's habit from the hands of her 
confessor and took the name of Rosa de Santa Maria. 
She remained in the home of her parents, however, be-
cause it was not until seven years after her death that 
the daughters of St. Catherine of Siena established a 
convent in Lima. 

In a gold ring which she wore until the end of her 
life she had engraved the words of the invitation of the 
Infant Jesus: "Rose of My Heart, be My spouse." 

One August morning in 1617, at the age of only 31 
years, Rose died at the home of her friends and protec-
tors, Don Gonzalo de la Maza and his wife, Dona Maria 
de Usastegue. Her death was mourned by the entire 
city. Religious communities, the clergy, the royal court, 
the nobility and her dearest friends, the people of Lima,-
accompanied her mortal remains to the Church of St. 
Dominic where her body lay in state for three days. 



"SAINT ROSE OF LIMA" 97 

Rich and poor, high-born and lowly joined in paying 
tribute to the beautiful and saintly woman, filled with 
gratitude for her extraordinary bounty and with admira-
tion for her exemplary life. 

Some fifty years later world-wide recognition was 
given to the sanctity of the lovely maiden when she was 
beatified by the Church. The following year she was 
declared the Patroness of Lima, and Pope Clement X 
honored the Dominican Order of that city by presenting 
them with a statue of the Saint, the work of the well-
known sculptor, Caffa. Her canonization was celebrated 
in 1671 and August 30 was named her feast day. 

Grateful friends and beneficiaries of her continued 
bounty erected a sanctuary for her veneration on the 
site of the house where she was born, and a community 
of eight Dominicans established there carried on her 
works of mercy by conducting a free school where poor 
children were taught reading, writing and Christian 
Doctrine. This convent school has since been demolish-
ed to make way for the construction of a church which 
in 1912 the Government entrusted to the care of Domini-
can Sisters and the Padres de la Montana. Here are 
preserved and treasured many souvenirs of thé Saint— 
here one may visit the infirmary in which she sheltered 
and cared for the suffering ; the garden where she spent 
many hours glorifying God with her poetry and music. 
Here also still grow a lemon-tree and an orange-tree 
which flourished in the garden she cultivated. 

Another shrine where the memory of St. Rose is 
especially venerated has been erected on the site of the 
place where she breathed her last, the home of her pro-
tectors Don Gonzalo and Dona Maria, now the Monas-
tery of Rosas de Santa Maria, where numerous relics are 
kept—her golden ring, two letters in her handwriting, 
the original casket of carved wood, and paintings of 
scenes from her life. 

During the eighth Pan-American Conference held 
in Lima in 1938, the public saw for the first time the 
model of a basilica which is to be erected in honor of 
the Patroness of the Americas and of Peru. Ecclesias-
tical authorities in Peru and the Peruvian Government 
are cooperating enthusiastically to complete this great 



98 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

edifice in which the people of Peru and of all the Ameri-
can countries are interested. The government has ceded 
the site and devotees of St. Rose are working incessant-
ly to raise funds for the basilica, which will contain 
twenty altars, one for each of the American Republics 
that venerate her with profound devotion arising partly 
from the deep religious spirit that for centuries has 
dominated these American countries, and partly from 
the legitimate boast that this sublime Saint was a 
"Woman of the Americas." 

And truly this great American has left a model for 
her fellow-Americans of these later generations. By 
imitating her patience, her gentleness and meekness, we 
of the twentieth century can also find consolation for the 
troubles of this life and the sorrows that often bow 
down the soul, weaken the understanding and fill our 
paths with shadows. Like her we can share with others 
the blessings of our God-given talents, the joyousness of 
a happy disposition, and the stability of a character 
strengthened by the willing endurance of pain. She set 
a pattern for happy family life by giving us a model of 
strict obedience to parents, of self-discipline, of cheerful 
cooperation with brothers and sisters in work and in 
play, of responsibility in sharing the support of the 
family. Yet in this picture of family devotion we have 
also a picture of the young girl radiating happiness and 
love and service beyond the confines of the home, giving 
of herself unstintingly wherever there might be a physi-
cal or spiritual need. 

To the Americas whose generosity has become al-
most proverbial she is indeed a source of inspiration. She 
teaches us to love the poor not merely with empty, words 
and financial contributions from well-filled purses, but 
by working for them and with them, nursing them in 
sickness, teaching their children and sharing their bur-
dens. We can turn confidently to our patroness to im-
plore her fervent intercession with the Divine Author 
of Creation that He free the world from the horrors of 
barbarity, hate and warfare. Let us pray that America, 
placed under the protective mantle of St. Rose of Lima, 
may advance always in the paths of progress and of 
peace, inspired by the teachings of Christ our Lord. 



"SAINT ROSE OF LIMA" 99 

"This sublime saint—A Woman of the Americas." 

Bibliography 

Catholic; Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

"St. Rose of Lima and Her Peru"—George Stuart Brady, 

The Sign, August 1938, 20c 

"Isabel de Flores"—Light Magazine, August 1938 

"Maidens of Hallowed Names"—C. Piccirillo, Kenedy; 
60c 

"Lives of the Saints"—Butler, Vol. 8, Kenedy; $2.75 per 
Vol. 



ST. HEDWIG—(JADWIGA) OF POLAND 
Marie Wankoivicz 

Where the mountain slopes become steeper and the 
forests wilder stood a castle, majestically overlooking 
the lands of Silesia. Merchant caravans, from distant 
countries, passing it, wondered at its splendor, but weary 
pilgrims, beggars, poor and sick marvelled at the grac-
iousness and goodness of its inhabitants. For in this 
castle surrounded by riches and luxury lived their clos-
est friend, the poorest one of them all: The Duchess 
of Silesia, Jadwiga. 

Jadwiga was born in Bavaria. As a very young 
child she was sent to a monastery in Hizingen, Fran-
conia, where she was to get her education. She loved 
the life at the convent, and already showed a great devo-
tion to the Blessed Sacrament, and compassion for-the 
suffering. Soon afterwards she was betrothed to Henry, 
the Duke of Silesia, and in her teens she was taken from 
Hizingen to marry him. She left the convent with sad-
ness, but well did she realize, that from that moment 
she had a life of responsibility ahead of her. 

It was in 1202 that her husband became the succes-
sor of his father as the Duke of Silesia. At once Hed-
wig took up her task as the lady of the land. She yield-
ed her entire dowry into Henry's hands, with the re-
quest that he build a monastery at Trzebnica. The work, 
started at once, lasted 15 years. Cistercian Sisters from 
Italy settled there as soon as it was finished. 

The amount of suffering and (sick Jadwiga saw 
around her hurt her heart. There was no one to care 
for them, and their misery was unbearable. Hand in 
hand with her beloved husband, she founded many hos-
pitals and hospices. Among these was the hospital she 
founded for the lepers at Movy Targ; she was especially 
font} of it. Often followed by many of her poor, she 
went there and spent her days in caring for those liv-
ing there. She performed the most unpleasant duties 
without a word; she dressed their wounds, helped them 
in their small tasks, and encouraged others when their 



"ST. HEDWIG—(JADWIGA) OF POLAND" 101 

suffering seemed to be too great for them to bear. Jad-
wiga's deep faith in God and her love for her fellow-men 
filled her whole life; there wasn't a thing she would not 
do for them, not a thing she would not give up to help 
them. Charity was Hedwig's virtue and poverty her 
delight.- Her motto was: "To rejoice in suffering". 
She spent her life in serving others. 

Her great concern was to implant the principles of 
Christianity deep into the hearts of her dear Silesiens. 
Often she taught them, sacrificing her time and energy 
to that cause. One day it is said, the Duchess learned 
that a servant in her household didn't know the Lord's 
Prayer. She called the girl into her apartments and 
stayed there with her until she knew and understood it. 
Another time, Hedwig accompanied the washerwoman of 
the Cistercian Sisters for over a month in all her duties, 
and worked with her in order to teach the good woman 
the principles of faith. Jadwiga stopped at nothing if 
she could do the slightest bit in bringing her people 
closer to God. 

Hedwig's charity was known far and wide. People 
from all the country came to her in search of help. She 
went around attending to them consoling, helping, if 
any help could be given. Every day she passed the pal-
ace gates with her companion, Dermudis, on her way to 
Church. They both carried baskets, filled with supplies 
for the sick and poor she visited, after the morning devo-
tions were over, bringing food for the hungry and reme-
dies for the sick. While at Church she knelt on the cold 
stones for hours, until all the Masses were said. All 
those present in Church told many a time how her face 
lighted up with ecstatic joy, and how they heard angels' 
singing fill the Church when she prayed. Her contem-
poraries, knowing how very devout she was made a 
proverb about her piety; which was often heard at the 
palace: 

"In una missa non est contenta Ducissa, 
Quod sunt presbiteri, missas totoporteri." 

"There is but one thing that does not 
content the Duch^sg 



102 ' 'THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

She wants as many masses as there are 
priests." 

Another one of her contemporaries said of her: 
"Whenever a priest visited the palace the first thing the 
Duchess would ask of him would be a Mass, such was 
her devotion to the Blessed Sacrament." 

The morning was. still gray when the Duchess start-
ed on her daily journey. She went from home to home, 
dressing wounds, caring for children, whose, parents 
were busy in the fields, or hunting in the forests, she 
encouraged those who in suffering lacked strength by 
bringing into their minds the sufferings of their Saviour. 
Frequently she returned home only at sundown, weary 
after a day's work, not having had a thing to eat. When 
finally she would come to the table, it would be surround-
ed by many visitors, who always found shelter in her 
home. 

Seated at the table were pilgrims, telling of the Holy 
Land and of hardships of their journey; destitute pau-
pers, refugees from villages attacked by one of the belli-
cous neighbors of Silesia; or beggars hungry, in tattered 
clothes. Hedwig always had a good word to say or aid 
to give them. She would forget her hunger and serve 
them, although she was often weak from exhaustion. 
When Henry worried about her health, begged her to sit 
down and eat, she exclaimed: "They are hungrier than 
I am, how can I make them wait." 

When winter came with all its severity and snow 
covered the ground, Jadwiga's desire to help her poor 
grew. One saw her wandering in her thin cloak, bare-
footed over the snow and ice, carrying relief and conso-
lation for her needy children. The Abbot of Leuben, 
her confessor, met her once on her way. Seeing her feet 
frostbitten and wounded by her long walk, and knowing 
that in her spirit of mortification and sacrifice she 
would go to extremes, insisted that she wear her shoes. 
"I'd rather have one of my poor wear them", answered 
the good Duchess. The Abbot seeing that she would not 
get herself another pair of her own accord presented 
her with a pair the next day, and made her promise that 
she would never go on her visits in winter without them. 



"ST. HEDWIG—(JADWIGA) OF POLAND" 103 

Not long after he met her again Jadwiga was barefooted. 
The Abbot, displeased by her disobedience, admonished 
her: "Where are your shoes?" he asked. "Did you not 
promise never to go without them?" "Yes," replied Jad-
wiga, "And I did not break my word" she said, taking 
them out from under her cloak. And it was true, the 
kind Abbot just nodded his head—all he made her prom-
ise was not to go without them! 

Jadwiga's married life was a happy one. Henry 
loved her and admired her, she respected him for his 
great heart and clear soul, answering to his love with 
equal affection and devotion. They had six children, 
.the oldest of which, Gertrude was the prioress of the 
Sisters of Trzebnica. The other daughters were mar-
ried. Henry, the successor to his father, was loved by 
everyone for his justice and magnanimity, even during 
his life he was surnamed, "The Good" or "The Pious". 
But both Henry and Jadwiga had a good deal of worry 
about Conrad, the youngest son, who was of a wild and 
unruly character. His mother was, through her under-
standing and assuasiveness, the only person who could 
calm him and make him listen to reason. 

After the birth of their sixth child, both Henry and 
his wife decided that they would consecrate themselves 
entirely to God, so with the permission of the Bishop of 
Breslau they separated and to a large extent lived in 
different places. Neither of them wore gold, silver of 
purple, and Henry vowed not to shave his beard, hence 
came his surname the "Bearded". Jadwiga loved her 
husband more than ever, and when he needed help, she 
was there at his side. As it happened when he was 
severely wounded after a battle she nursed him back to 
health again. 

It was not until thirty years after their separation 
that Henry died and Hedwig entered the Convent at 
Trzebnica while her daughter was prioress. She begged 
to be admitted and to be allowed to work as the least of 
all Sisters. Her wish was granted and she stayed at 
the monastery until her death. While she was there, it 
happened that the Tartars invaded the country and fin-
ally came to Silesia, burning villages and towns, pillag-
ing Churches and monasteries. Henry the Good, now 



104 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

the Duke, went with his knights to defend Christianity 
and his land. He fell at the hand of a Tartar. That day 
Jadwiga said to Dermudis:—"I have lost my son, he 
has gone from me like a bird in flight and I shall never 
see him again in this life." A few days later news was 
brought by a messenger telling of the death of Hedwig's 
beloved son. The nuns were in tears, but Jadwiga, dry-
eyed, comforted them saying: "Would you oppose the 
Will of God? Our lives are His, our will is whatever 
He is pleased to ordain, whether our death or that of our 
dear ones." 

The serenity of mind, with which she urged the 
duty of resignation to the Divine Will showed even more 
than her words how perfectly faith and hope triumphed 
in her soul. She had recollection and control over her-
self and lively consciousness of eternity. She felt deeply 
the nothingness of temporary, • worldly things. In her 
last illness she foresaw, long before the others that her 
end was close, even though feeling better she insisted 
upon being anointed. She died a few days later on the 
seventeenth of October, 1243. 

She left Silesia in tears, but with her death her deeds 
did not perish. Like waves from a stone thrown into 
placid water, they spread further and further over the 
land. Her example was followed by many others. The 
love for God and the faith that she imbedded deep in the 
hearts of her people, last until our day and helps them 
to pull through these hard dark days, without losing 
hope and with faith in victory. 



"ST. HEDWIG—(JADWIGA) OF POLAND" 105 

Her motto—"To rejoice in suffering." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Dictionary-

Catholic Encyclopedia 

"Lives of the Saints"—Butler, Vol. 10. Kenedy; $2.75 
per vol. 



SAINT CECILIA 
Kathryn Hammer 

While St. Cecilia's loveliness has been perpetuated 
for us by Raphael, Rubens, Carlo Dolci and many other 
great masters, I daresay that most of us hold in our 
mind's eye St. Cecilia as the middle 19th Century artist, 
Gustav Naujok envisioned her, seated at an organ, her 
exquisite purity and holiness shining through her radi-
ant beauty, and I venture to add that each one of us has 
secretly longed to be as lovely as she. 

Skeptics have considered purely legendary many of 
the facts surrounding St. Cecilia's life, but the accumu-
lating evidence unearthed by archeologists through the 
centuries gives convincing and substantial support to 
most of the statements in the "Acts of Martyrdom", the 
principal source of information concerning her. The 
numerous Masses written in her honor during the fourth 
and fifth centuries, the tributes paid to her beauty, 
chastity and charm in the Odes of Pope and Dryden, 
and finally, the most important, her inclusion in the 
Canon of the Holy Mass, bespeak the great love and high 
esteem in which this noble virgin was held by early 
Christians and by the Roman Church, which set aside 
November 22 as her special day of honor in the church 
calendar. 

Cecilia, a Roman maiden of noble birth, from earli-
est childhood was of the Christian Faith, inherited most 
probably from her mother. Her father, a pagan, seems 
to have been a member of the Roman Senate. The steady 
growth of Christianity from the date of St. Peter's com-
ing to Rome to Cecilia's period, despite many violent 
persecutions under the Roman Emperors, vividly illus-
trates the fact that many wealthy pagans did not oppose 
the Christian education of their children when such 
education was rendered possible, recognizing, perhaps, 
that under Christian direction their children became 
more docile, obedient and respectful. 

Cecilia, a beautiful, virtuous girl, was betrothed by 
her pagan father to the pagan, Valerian, a noble and 



"SAINT CECILIA" 107 

handsome youth. Despite her earlier pledge of chastity, 
she did not oppose her parents' plans for her marriage, 
because to a girl of Cecilia's character it would be not 
only imprudent but impious to question the supreme 
authority of a Roman father. 

Valerian, persuaded by her goodness and beauty, 
consented to seek the truths of Christianity. It must 
be remembered that at that time the Faith was practiced 
in darkest secrecy at the risk of life. Living in the con-
cealment, St. Urban instructed many of the pagans of 
that day in Christian doctrine. Cecilia directed Valer-
ian to his hiding place, and through this holy man, Val-
erian joined his beloved Cecilia in the Fold of Christ. 
Through their joint influence Tiburtius, his brother, also 
became a Christian. 

Confiscation of the property of the persecuted was 
a part of the program of the persecutors of the Chris-
tian Faith then, as later, and even as it is today where 
religious persecution prevails. The wealth and social 
position of Cecilia, Valerian and Tiburtius made them 
attractive prey for the ruthless and cruel Roman officials 
in their dual pursuits of Christians and increased wealth. 
Valerian and Tiburtius preceded Cecilia in sacrificing 
their lives for love of their Saviour. Their heroic exam-
ple moved one of their executioners, Maximus, to seek 
enlightenment on the Christian Faith and ultimately to 
suffer cruel martyrdom in its defense. 

Cecilia anticipated her own execution, hence distrib-
uted much of her wealth to the poor, whom she loved. 
Her dying wish that her palace" be converted into a 
church was fulfilled. Today the Basilica of St. Cecilia 
is one of the most venerated sanctuaries in Rome. 

Refusing to obey the command to abandon her 
Christian Faith, she was placed in a steam bath in her 
own home, in an effort to suffocate her. She emerged 
miraculously without injury after a day and a half thus 
GnsGftlfid. 

Their first attempt frustrated, her Roman persecu-
tors then decreed death by beheading. Only three blows 
of the axe were permitted under Roman law. Here again 
Cecilia miraculously escaped immediate death. The exe-
cutioner, perhaps unnerved by the girlish beauty of his 



110 
''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

victim, fumbled his blows and the third one struck, fail-
ed of its purpose. For three days Cecilia survived, lying 
in the position in which she had fallen under the blows 
of the axe. It is in this position that her body was 
found centuries later and perpetuated by the sculptor, 
Moderna, under a commission from Pope Clement VIII 
to reproduce exactly the body as it was found. The 
original of this statue bears the inscription "Behold the 
image of the most holy Virgin Cecilia, as I myself saw 
it lying incorrupt in her tomb. I have in this marble 
modelled for thee the same saint in the very same pos-
ture of body." 

Pope Paschal, had located the body after an ex-
haustive search, in the cemetery of Calixtus, which occu-
pied a tract of land said to have belonged to Cecilia's 
family. In or around 1599, excavators, under the direc-
tion of Cardinal Sfondrati, while making extensive re-
pairs in his church, St. Cecilia of Trastevere, Rome, 
came upon the body where it had been transported cen-
turies before by Pope Paschal, still incorrupt and ans-
wering perfectly the description left by him. 

Cecilia is frequently associated in the modern mind 
with the Greek St. Katherine, the patroness of literature 
and philosophy, as Cecilia is the patroness of music. 
This association seems to have arisen from her prac-
tice of singing the praises of God in her joyful heart. 
There is no record of accomplishment in this art, but 
since Cecilia was a lady of noble birth, it is highly prob-
able that she was verspd in the arts and possessed musi-
cal gifts. 

In desiring to place the inspiration of the life and 
work of St. Cecilia before this audience of the air, I hope 
to portray the Saint as a notable example of Catholic 
•Action and replete with possibilities of imitation in our 
own day. 

Catholic Action, after all, when properly under-
stood, can be dated back to the period in the life of Our 
Lord when He sent forth the seventy-two disciples to 
carry the message of His coming to the towns and vil-
lages where He would visit. The cooperation which 
makes one united action in proper hierarchical gradation 
from the Head of the Church to the humblest lay worker 



"SAINT CECILIA" 109 

is the very essence of Catholic Action. Such cooperation 
could never be more manifest than when the royal vin-
tage of martyrs' blood was fructifying the soil of the 
early Church. 

We are justified, therefore, in considering for our 
own edification the life of one who exemplified so well 
the very qualities most needed in the world today. When 
we have stripped away from the traditional figure of St. 
Cecilia the beautiful and apocryphal legends which have 
come to cluster about her name, we find the reality of a 
noble woman whose virtue influenced all who came in 
contact with her, whose loyalty made her patient 
throughout the varied forms of suffering which perse-
cuting hatred could force upon her. The outstanding 
quality of her life was that her virtue shone at its best 
in the intimate circle of those who loved her. We are 
so apt to relax in the privacy of our own homes the good 
qualities we strive to show in our outside contacts. To 
have been so striking an example of Christian virtue as 
to have won to the true faith her pagan husband and his 
brother gives us material for careful examination of that 
high means of holiness which consists in patience, in 
helpfulness, in thoughtfulness of others manifested in 
the intimate circle of the home. 

We cannot believe that the sweetness of the virtue 
of St. Cecilia had anything of the pietistic in it that 
could make virtue distasteful to those who had witnessed 
it. To be truly holy is not at all to be pietistic. To keep 
one's self at one's highest and best means keeping one's 
self lovable in the sight of God. He Who made us in His 
own image by giving us the faculties of mind and will, 
desires that we so use our power to know what is right 
and our free will to choose the good, that we make His 
image in us so lovable that, when we are imbued with 
His sanctifying grace, He, the God Who made us, must 
love us. 

Consequently, the opportunities of holiness are with 
us even in our dullest moment; indeed, the moments 
when no one sees us can well be the most important. Our 
very thoughts can carry the power of our holiness, mind-
ful always that it is in choosing to keep ourselves at the 



110 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

highest and best that we fulfill all that our Creator can 
possibly ask of us. 

We are living our lives jn a world that is infected 
with indifference to religion. We must breathe the very 
air in which there is a disregard of all religious obli-
gations. It is common to hear of the neo-paganism of 
our day. This is far worse than the paganism of old. 
The early pagans worshipped idols created by man's 
imagination. Sacrifices were offered to these imaginary 
idols but the idols remained always figments of man's 
imagination. They always remained apart, outside the 
worshipper. 

Today, in what we call neo-paganism, men 
and women, turning from the worship of God, have ac-
cepted false gods, money, power, and the fruits of am-
bition. These are not figments of man's imagination. 
They are fruitful evils which do not remain outside their 
worshipper's personality. They are fruitful evils that 
can enter into our minds and hearts and warp and domi-
hate, corrupt and destroy them. We grow so accustomed 
to seeing low standards around us every day, hearing 
expediency or even mere pleasure put forward as a de-
fense for such conduct; we live in an atmosphere con-
cerned only with this world, and little by little we come 
to a sort of spiritual malaria. 

Our vision of right and wrong is dimmed, we can-
not distinguish clearly what is harmful, what is helpful, 
our resistance is lowered and we come to accept a stand-
ard for ourselves much lower than our highest and best. 
This lowering often takes place in our own homes where 
we give way so easily to irritation, impatience and even 
spitefulness. This neglect of the trifles of love in the 
very place where they should be most precious, in the in-
timate circle of the home where those who love us must 
put up with us, should be a matter of our constant 
watchfulness. The example of Saint Cecilia, so sweetly 
a power of love in a pagan home that she won all in that 
home to Christ, can be a very helpful force and the 
thought of her, a gentle reminder of our own desire and 
will to be at our highest and best. 

It is a happy gift of our faith that we can turn back 
to one who, in a scene of violence and bloodshed, could 



"SAINT CECILIA" 111 

wait in patience as she kept herself ready for the hour 
when her blood would make of her a sacrificial victim to 
the love of her Creator. We can take from the very 
thought of St. Cecilia's heroism a new power of patience 
in our own petty trials. We can learn today, in the little 
measure conceded to us in the evil days upon us, some-
thing that will make us in our own halting measure ex-
amples of loving submission to the trials of the day and 
of persistent loyalty in keeping ourselves worthy of the 
Lord Who wants to love us. 



112 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"She won all in her home to Christ." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Encyclopedia 

Catholic Dictionary 

"St. Cecilia"—Rev. S. A. Parker, 0. S. B., International 
Catholic Truth Society; 10c 

"Ode to St. Cecilia"—Dryden 

"Heroines of Christ"—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J., Bruce 
Publishing Co; $2.00 

"St. Cecilia"—P. L. P. Gueranger, Kenedy Publishers; 
$1.50 

"Examples of Holiness"—Marlier Co. 



ST. JOAN OF ARC 
Anne Sarachon Hooley 

As I greet you in this closing broadcast of our 1940 
Call to Youth program, I send to each of you a deep 
appreciation of the response which you have given 
throughout the past four months. Your telegrams, your 
letters, your continued expression of enthusiasm week 
after week have been gratifying to the National Coun-
cil of Catholic Women Youth Committee and, I am cer-
tain, to the spendid guest speakers as well. 

They have given us a magnificent series, but you the 
radio audience have expressed your appreciation far 
more eloquently than I could ever do. I can only add 
that N.C.C.W. acknowledges a deep gratitude for their 
generous cooperation. Then too as always we mention 
our sincere thanks to National Broadcasting Company 
and its educational director, Mr. Franklin Dunham 
whose initiative and constructive vision for youth have 
made this possible. 

The heroine of whom we are to think a few moments 
this morning is one possibly known best of all to the 
American world at large, Joan of Arc. On Riverside 
Drive in New York City, looking down upon the rushing 
millions below, there stands the gallant figure of her 
statue, the only statue to a woman erected by this great 
metropolis. In the World War, it is said that many a 
doughboy in France, Catholic and Protestant alike, wore 
her medal beneath the khaki uniform, and perhaps many 
of them wear it still there where they lie beneath the 
poppy blooms in Flanders Field. Today when all our 
hearts are heavy with world sorrow, in dozens of French 
villages and hamlets far behind the Maginot line, un-
doubtedly women kneel to place a loved one in the care of 
little Jeanne, asking that she who knew well the horrors 
of war may watch over him amid bursting bombs and 
crashing steel on steel. 

On January 6, 1412 Joan of Arc was born in the 
little French village of Domremy. Her father was a 
peasant farmer of some standing in the community and 



114 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

as she grew up, Joan helped him in many small ways 
about the farm. Like all such homes of that day, it was 
a serene and happy home. Joan never learned to read or 
write, but this was not uncommon among children of 
her station, and she did learn to spin and sew, to plant 
her flowers, to visit the poor, and to love her country. 
She was a gay and lovable child, referred to by one 
biographer as "that winsome daughter of Jacques d'arc." 

At the age of thirteen and a half years, she became 
very serious because of visits which she had from St. 
Michael, and later from others, among them Margaret 
and Catherine. In her deep humility she doubted and 
prayed and was reluctant to believe, but the visits be-
came frequent and finally the Voices warned her that 
she, the maid of Domremy, was to save France by lead-
ing the army of the King. She protested it was impos-
sible, but they assured her that the command was direct 
from God and that they would be always with her. 

Now, as you know, France at that time was torn by 
internal strife, divided between the rule of Charles, the 
Seventh, the uncrowned King and the Burgundians who 
were allied with the English. Joan was directed to go 
to Robert de Baudricourt who commanded that section, 
and after repeated refusals, he enabled her to reach the 
King. Her convincing dauntless manner as well as the 
fact that she revealed to each of them information which 
she could not have known by natural means, forced them 
to give credence to her plan, so that in March 1429 she 
lead her army to raise the siege of Orleans. Always from 
the beginning she had to fight the indecision of her 
King and the prejudices of his advisers, but she was de-
termined with a detached calm which indicated more 
clearly than any other outward sign that she was direct-
ed by a great strength. 

She wore at first the rough garments of a 
soldier which had been given her, but it is reported 
that there was something in her dignity of manner 
which marked her in any surroundings, in any 
circumstance for a tribute of respect. Finally helmeted, 
clad in silver mail, and bearing the banner which car-
ried the inscription, "Jesus, Maria", she began her suc-
cessful battles which terminated in the crowning of 



"ST. JOAN OF ARC" 115 

Charles at Rheims. There she stood by his side in the 
pomp and splendor of its ceremony, holding fast to the 
standard of which she said, "It has shared in the toil, 
and it is just that it shall share in the victory". 

She was eager to continue until France was com-
pletely restored, but Charles was weak, and misled by 
treacherous advice held her inactive. Her wound in 
battle, her capture by a follower of John of Luxembourg, 
and her subsequent sale to the English fill sad pages of 
history. "The enemy", one reporter says, "could not con-
demn her, because she had saved France, so they con-
nived to have her tried as a heretic". Political intrigue 
and men of unscrupulous ambition were tools ready at 
hand then as in our own day. Through the long mockery 
which was called a trial, Joan fearlessly met their at-
tacks with a gentleness and intelligence far beyond her 
years She begged to be permitted an appeal to the head 
of the Church but she was refused. Finally when, for 
her own protection or through force of her cruel jailers, 
she donned her soldier's attire, the enemy seized this 
flimsy pretext as proof of her heretical tendencies, and 
ordered her burned at the stake where the crackling 
flames mingled with her insistent avowals that her 
Voices had been Divine. 

Twenty four years later her trial was reopened at 
Paris, and after a long searching inquiry in the appellate 
court set up by the Holy See, the first trial was pro-
nounced illegal and Joan's innocence was declared. Grad-
ually the world came to know her heroic sanctity, and in 
1920 she was officially admitted to the great galaxy of 
Eternal Heroines, one of the bravest of them all. 

This is a thrilling story and she was a gallant, 
lovely creature, you may say to me, you practical 
straightforward youth who listen, but what has it to do 
with us today? This was all very well in the fifteenth 
century when knights rode forth wearing a fair lady s 
token but this is America and the year of nineteen hun-
dred and forty. We are of other times and other cus-
toms, and the spirit of Joan of Arc would be sadly out of 
place There is no Orleans for us to save and if there 
were,' we could not do it. It would be fantastic to think 
of a modern girl entering alone into the complicated 



116 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

machinery of war. Well, I might remind you that when 
Joan was first told by the Voices that she herself was 
the one who would deliver France from the enemy, she 
answered, "But I am only a poor girl; I cannot ride a 
horse or go to war". However, I would rather say to 
you that I believe I have seen the spirit of Joan of Arc 
in your own day in your own surroundings on more than 
one occasion. 

I saw it the other evening in the corner drugstore 
where a crowd of young people were chattering noisily 
over their "cokes", and apparently deciding where they 
would go for the evening. It was a lively discussion 
and suddenly, quite distinct above the din, rose the voice 
of one girl saying, "Well, if you're going out to that 
place, just don't count on me. It isn't a decent place and 
you all know it". There followed protestations about 
not being a sissy and it being different this time, but 
finally she slid down from the counter stool and stood a 
moment reflected in the many mirrors of the modernis-
tic store. She might have been one of a thousand seven-
teen-year-olds in her blue sweater suit, her halo hat, and 
wedgies, but in her eyes glowed a lovely courage which 
for the moment at least made her strikingly beautiful. 
Taking the arm of a somewhat bewildered escort, she 
said, "Well, I'll be seeing you", and went out the door 
to the cries of "Good-bye Marty", and "Don't go off 
mad", and the like. She was not to know probably that 
after she left the enthusiasm waned considerably and 
when someone suggested that they go to his home and 
dance, there was a quick general acceptance. If, that 
night Marty dropped her head on her dressing table to 
shed a few tears, because she was young and it was gay 
to be with the crowd, we can remember that Joan of 
Arc wounded in battle at the age of 17 cried a little 
when the lance was drawn from her side because it hurt. 
And if you think that it takes more courage to face the 
King of France than to defy a group of one's own age 
on a moral question, then you have never tried it. 

Again I was reminded of it when a student in a 
state university was telling me of an incident which took 
place in his history class. The discussion was on the 



"ST. JOAN OF ARC" 117 

achievement of the democratic ideal and as it proceeded, 
there entered subtle though unmistakable inferences 
that help lay in the establishment of moral and econo-
mic policies like those of Soviet Russia. Finally one 
girl took the floor to contend quietly, logically, and with 
convincing proof that democracy itself rests squarely 
upon the supposition that man possesses certain inalien-
able rights endowed by a bountiful Creator and that he 
holds those rights by virtue of his immortal destiny. 
When we restrict those rights for any man or any group 
of men, then we strike at the wellsprings of democracy. 
The young man who was telling me the story concluded 
with this remark, "I'll tell you, she got me thinking, but 
when she finished I said to myself, 'There goes a general 
in any man's army'". Only a current slang phrase he 
was using, I know, but it served to bring up the picture 
of the other general who marshalled her men and cap-
tured the enemy because she knew she had the truth. 

0 yes, American youth has need today for the spirit 
of the little French maiden. You may hear no miracul-
ous voices perhaps, but you hear the voice of faith and 
who is to say that it is not the loveliest miracle of all. 
Although you are the favored of the earth for the pres-
ent because of your securities, your freedoms, and your 
civil rights, you live in a society of moral and economic 
disorder. If tomorrow your world is to be restored to 
fruitful order, then today we must have valiant youth. 
You possess an invincible standard of charity, purity, 
justice, and wisdom, but if you are to raise the siege of 
the enemy, then you must know that standard, your lips 
must be praising it, your hearts must be loving it, and 
your lives must be living it. Standing at the crest of the 
day, may you have the glad joy of the morning in your 
hearts, the brilliant flame of courage in your eyes, and 
in your hands the wide-furled banner of truth, so that, 
having proved here your service to the King of Kings, 
you may one day walk to the cathedral crowning by His 
side. 



118 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

"Then today we must have a valiant youth." 

Bibliography 

Catholic Dictionary 
Catholic Encyclopedia 
"Joan the Saint"—Stanislas Fumet, translated by F. J. 

Sheed, Sheed & Ward; $1.00 
"Joan of Arc"—Thomas DeQuincy, edited by A. A. Pur-

cell, S.J., Longmans, Green and Co.; 60c 
St. Joan of Arc—J. B. Milburn, International Catholic 

Truth Society; 10c 
Joan of Arc—Hilaire Belloc, Little, Brown and Co.; 

$1.75 
Heroines of Christ—Rev. Joseph Husslein, S.J., Bruce 

Publishing Co.; $2.00 
St. Joan of Arc—Rt. Rev. Msgr. Segrave, P.P., Inter-

national Catholic Truth Society; 10c 
"Maid of the Sacred Sword"—Rev. Francis E. Benz— 

O.S.V.; 5c 
St. Joan of Arc—Justin Rousseil, translated by Rev. Jo-

seph Murphy—Benziger, $1.00 
St. Jeanne D'Arc—Minna C. Smith, Macmillan, $2.25 



THE N. C. C .W. COMMITTEE ON 
YOUTH 

"The Ultimate Wisdom of Living is to serve." 

The purpose of the Youth Committee is: 
1. To aid Youth Councils throughout the country 

T^OL'To give to our Youth, particularly to the 
girls and young women of our day, a knowledge, 
a love, of Catholic truth and a determination to 
carry it out both in personal life and as a mem-
ber of Catholic organizations." 

2. To establish a channelizing net-work—National, 
Diocesan, Deanery and Parish. 

3. -To bring Catholic standards to the leisure time 
programs of the country and to interpret the 
Catholic philosophy of recreation to all. 

The National Committee: 

Each parish has a parish chairman of Youth. 
The parish chairmen compose the deanery commit-

tee. 
The deanery chairmen compose the diocesan com-

mittee. 
The diocesan chairmen compose the national com-

mittee. 
The National Chairman of Youth is appointed by 

the National Board of Directors, as is the Field 
Secretary of Youth. 

The Function of the Diocesan Chairman Is: 
1. To aid in the organization of the Diocesan 

Youth Councils. 

2. To interpret to the laity the program as ap-
proved by the Ordinary. 

3. To assist in carrying out a well-rounded pro-
gram of activities throughout the Diocese. 



120 ''THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

4. To aid in the development of Diocesan Youth 
Conferences and Diocesan-wide Crusades. 

5. To relay to district or deanery chairmen and 
others all source material sent out by National 
and Diocesan Headquarters. 

6. To report on the Youth work of the diocese to 
National and Diocesan Councils at conventions 
and through letters. 

The Function of the District or Deanery Chairman Is: 

1. To aid in the organization of the district or 
deanery Youth Council. 

2. To assist the diocesan chairman in extending 
the Youth program. 

3. To encourage local efforts in organizing and 
programming. 

4. To aid in the development of Deanery Youth 
meetings and inter-parochial activities. 

5. To relay materials received from national and 
diocesan to parish chairmen or parish groups. 

6. To report on District or Deanery Youth Coun-
cils to diocesan chairmen and to local district 
or deanery Councils of Catholic Women. 

The Function of the Parish Chairman Is: 
1. To work in harmony with the pastor and his 

parish plans. 
2. To aid in the organization of the Parish Youth 

Council. 
3. To aid Youth groups within the parish—to 

"walk with Youth and show the way." 

All chairmen, diocesan, district or deanery, and par-
ish should make a real study of the Youth set-up, pro-
grams and helps. All should know the Youth Leader's 
Handbook and have it at hand for ready reference; 

All should take part in the Call to Youth radio lis-
tening-in groups and use the pamphlets, "Call to Youth" 
for local leader's training; 

All should be informed on the general background 
and policies of the National Council of Catholic Women, 



"THE N. C. C. W. COMMITTEE ON YOUTH" 121 

by attending National, Diocesan, and Deanery meetings, 
reading CATHOLIC ACTION and the Monthly Message 
regularly, and in giving strict attention to all letters 
received from the National Chairman; 

All chairmen in Dioceses, with Youth organized or 
unorganized, need to work toward a completely set-up 
Youth Council, to make the need for such programs ap-
parent and to interpret Catholic thought to the commun-
ity. 



"Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus 
Imperat." 

GENERAL RECOMMENDATIONS 
NATIONAL COUNCIL OF 

CATHOLIC WOMEN 
1. The Catholic Youth Program should be 

National in scope 
Diocesan in authority 
Deanery in participation 
Parish in function 

A National program definite enough to aid 
Flexible enough to serve local communities 

A program varied enough for all interests 
Allowing selection to suit need 

A program adaptable to all organizations 
Giving aid and direction to all youth groups 

A program fitted for three age levels 
Juniors 
High School groups 
Out-of-School groups 

A program with a standard framework of organiza-
tion 
That of the National Council of Catholic Women 

A program of oneness so that the girls will develop 
from the Junior groups, through the high school 
and post high school groups into the adult program 
of Catholic Action 

A program of balanced activities to provide wise in-
terests and to assure well rounded development. 

2. A program of youth by youth 
Youth should plan and execute all activities, under 
the guidance of sponsors. 

3. A complete program of Catholic Action, based on 
Prayer, Study, Service. 



"Catholic Action takes in the whole of human life" 

SUGGESTED PROGRAM ACTIVITIES 
Religious 

Group Prayers 
Assisting at Church 
Missions 
Apologetics 
Retreats 
Corporate Communion 
Communion Breakfasts 

Days of Recollection 
"Our Lady" Days 
Field Mass 
Study of the Liturgy 
Confraternity of Christian 

Doctrine 

Study Clubs 
Discussion Groups 
Libraries 
Reading Groups 
Music 
Art 

Cultural 
Dramatics 
Radio Programming 
Museums—Collections 
Trips—Tours 
Radio Script-writing 

Vocational 
Vocational Conferences Home Economics 
Vocational Guidance Handcrafts 
Career Discussions Home Arts 
Preparation for Parenthood Commercial Training 
Preparation for Home-

Making 

Hobby Clubs 
Sports—Games 
Hiking—Camping 
Swimming 
Play Days 

Catholic Action 
Crusading for Christ 
Youth Leadership 

Recreational 
Dancing 
Picnics 
Parties 
Community Nights 

Service 
Social Service 
Civic Cooperation 



N. C. C. W. "HELPS" 
Youth Leaders' Handbook _..$ .25 

Youth Today and Tomorrow 10 

Youth Leadership and Catholic Action 10 

The Call to Youth—1937 25 

The Call to Youth—1938 25 

The Call to Youth—1939 25 

The Call to Youth—1940 25 

General Plan for Leisure Time Activities 05 

Culture for Young People 05 

The Needs of Youth | 10 

Proceedings N.C.C.W. Conventions _ 1.00 

Youth Leaflet . free 

Handcraft Notebook 1.00 

CATHOLIC ACTION AIDS 
Encyclical on Catholic Action $ .10 

Conferences on Catholic Action—by Most Rev. 

Giuseppe Pizzardo, D.D.—25c; 5 copies 1.00 

Fields for Catholic Action—10c; 5 copies 25 

The Holy Father and Catholic Action—Discourses 
of the Apostolic Delegate 10 

Unity Among All Catholics—by Rt. Rev. Msgr. 

John J. Burke, C.S.P 10 

Catholic Action Magazine $2.00 a yr. 

Monthly Message „..,....,„„„,,..„„„.., $1.00 a yr, 



ADDRESSES OF PUBLISHERS 
America Press, 53 Park Place, New York City 
Ave Maria Press, Notre Dame, Indiana 
Benziger Bros., 26 Park Place, New York City 
Bruce Publishing Co., 524 N. Milwaukee St., Milwaukee, 

Wisconsin 
Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., 43-45 Newgate St., 

London, E. C. 1, England 
Carmelite Press, 55 Demarest Avenue, Englewood, New 

Jersey 
Devin-Adair Co., 23-25 E. 26th Street, New York City 
Dominican House of Studies, 487 Michigan Ave., N. E., 

Washington, D. C. 
E. P. Dutton & Co., 286-302 4th Avenue, New York City 
Harper & Bros., 49 E. 33rd Street, New York City 
B. Herder Book Co., 15 S. Broadway, St. Louis, Missouri 
International Catholic Truth Society, 407 Bergen St., 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 
P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 12 Barclay Street, New York City 
Light Magazine, 407 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Little, Brown & Co., 34 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass. 
Liturgical Arts Magazine, 60 East 42nd St., New York 

City 
Longmans, Green & Co., 114 Fifth Avenue, New York 

City 
Macmillan Company, 60 Fifth Avenue, New York City 
Marlier Publishing Co., Beach and Kingston Streets, 

Boston, Mass. 
Julian Messner, Inc., 8 West 40th Street, New York City 
Mission Press, Techny, Illinois 
National Council of Catholic Men, 1312 Massachusetts 

Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C. 
O'Shea & Co., 39 Vesey Street, New York City 
Our Sunday Visitor Press, Huntington, Indiana 
Paulist Press, 401 West 59th Street, New York City 



126 "THE CALL TO YOUTH" 

The Queen's Work, 3742 West Pine Blvd., St. Louis, 
Missouri 

The Peter Reilly Co., 133 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia, 
Pa. 

William H. Sadlier, Inc., 9-11 Park Place, New York 
City 

St. Anthony's Guild Press, Paterson, New Jersey 
Sheed-Ward Publishers, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York City 
Shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre, Beaupre, Quebec 
The Sign, Monastery Place, Union City, New Jersey 
Universal Knowledge Foundation, 19 Union Square, New 

York City.