i . . .. I . . " - . m£Qy££NS'WORJ( ~ • • ~- : _~~.i ".J." '-: • • .. ' .' .. • " •• ~ • If you dance or if you tall~, If you race or if you walk Down the street, a line of chalk . .. Keep your balance. If ;you driye a plane or tank, Driye a horse or walk a plank, If you'ye money in the bank, Keep your balance. If the great you'd like to match, Dodge the jailor booby hatch, Wealth or fame or halo catch, Keep your balance . • First printing, O ctober 1948 ANY FINANCIAL PROFIT mane by the Cenlral ORia Q/ the Sodality 'will be used for the advancement of t h~ Sodality M ovement cmd the cause 0/ Catholic Action. "Printed wi:h ecclesiastical approval" Copyright October 1918 THE QUEEN'S WORK, INC. Daactdtfled Written and Designed hy Daniel A. Lord, S. J. Designs Executed hy Lee Hines THE QUEEN'S WORK 3115, South Grand Boulevard St. Louis 18, Missouri It's a Beautifully Balanced World N o scientist has ever been 'able to count the substances that make up the world and the combinations that these substances can form. It would make quite a catalogue- and no truck could carry it. No astronomer has ever counted the stars; what's more, none of them ever will. Far, far out into space they stretch, some of them beyond all possibility of sight or computation. Yet with all those combinations it's a nicel y balanc~d world, thank you. Take our little solar system for example. There is the sun, behaving itself very beautifully-giving us a nice degree of temperature, handling our gardens and meadows and orchards and sun tans very adequately, giving us light by day and thoughtfully arranging it so that we have some darkness for comfortable sleeping. Here is the little earth, close enough to the sun to use the sun's light and power, not close enough to be sizzled to a French-fried onion. And there is Mars off yonder, and Saturn and Venus and the other planets . .. and they all get along in neighborly fashion and make up a contented little solar system. Even the moon, which is a chilly and pretty dull prop~si­ tion, serves to light the romance of lovers and remains a perpetual warning that men on earth, like the man in the moon, go through a variety of changes. No one worries much about the solar system. We rise in the morning, and so does the sun. We harvest our crops by the light of the harvest moon. We gaze through the telescope 2 on 42nd Street and find that Jupiter and Mars haven't gone to war and that nobody has swiped Saturn's rings. The laws of nature take care of all that. Gravity and the forces that hold the planets in space keep the planets in their stately dance, don't let- them barge into one another, and make this a well-balanced universe. Pleasant and reassuring, isn't it? 3 Hey! What Happened? I 'VE often w~mdered what might happen if the were suddenly given free will. universe Of course right now the sun, the moon, the other planets, and little old earth have no more free will than my typewriter has. They obey the laws of nature blindly. Gravity says, "Come here," and they come here. Gravity says, "Stay there," and they stay there. The sun continues to turn out its atomic power and heat. The earth rotates so accurately that by comparison the' most exact train schedule in the world seems slaphazard compared to it. But suppose God gave the various elements of the universe freedom to do as they wished. He would add of course, "I wish you to be sensible and -wise, not to harm yourselves or others; nonetheless I make you free." Mars might decide that in proper warlike tradition he had better make war on . Jupiter. Jupiter, he might argue, has been making eyes at Venus lately. Venus in intense jealousy might wonder why Saturn, after all a mere male, has rings and she has none. The moon might determine to see whether it couldn't stop basking in reflected glory and work up a little light and . power plant independent of the sun. The earth might be annoyed at the monotony of its schedule and start revolving about the sun once a century instead of once a year and start to jitterbug back and forth on its axis. Wow! Wouldn't we be in a beautiful spot? Mars and Jupiter in a blitz ... Venus vamping Saturn's rings away from him ... the moon going into complete bankruptcy ... 4 and on earth days and nights each five hundred years long, with sunstroke heat in the mornings and deep-freeze weather in the afternoons_ The balance of the universe would be gone_ We should be living in complete chaos ___ for the brief seconds that we would continue to live_ , Let's hope that this supposition never gets beyond a Walt Disney cartoon film. 5 Remember Hiroshima O NCE upon a time all ~he electrons lived in peace and harmony with one . another. Together they made up a peaceful and happy society. The Gamma Rays and the Neutrons minded their own business. Heavy artillery had not as yet started to bombard peace-loving particles. They had their own little world, and they were minding their own affairs, and they used to boast, "We're a well- balanced race, we are; and we hope we stay that way." Each went around in its own social circle. Because some were positive and some were negative, they didn't think they had to start a debate ... or an argument . . . or a lawsuit .. . much less a war. Anyhow they had to behave. They weren't free. But alas! men were free. And men decided to see what they could do to break up this little peaceful, well-balanced world. Scientists started to bombard the atoms. They got the positives and the negatives fighting with one another. They led the Gamma Rays into an insurrection. In fact they set class against class and race against race . • Each circle just wouldn't have anything to do with any other circle. Eventually each circle "Vas just waiting for a chance to blow up. The atoms weren't free, but we human beings were. They 6 , V · .. , r '" • • • :t i ~ J,. .s.,..1 • , were getting along, but we humans weren't. Then one day, bingo! the man·made rebellion broke out. The whole little universe that had got along so well inside the atom blew up. So we had Hiroshima. We had the exploding atom bomb. 7 A Well-Balanced Mind and Body M ~ YBE we understand the idea of balance better from Its opposite. "The man is unbalanced," we say. That means that he is distinctly off his top. "I have to go back on a balanced diet," we resolve, after we've paid a visit to our physician. "I'd say he's lost his bank balance" is the comment that means probably bankruptcy. We recognize the positive approach too. "He has beautifully balanced judgment," we say of a man whose mind is fine. "Healthy fellow, isn't he? Beautifully proportioned." That word proportioned rea II y means balanced. "He leads a highly balanced life." We mean that there is in his life the right proportion of work, play, mental exercise, professional occupation, friendship, books, cultural interests. A man may lose that nice mental balance in a dozen ways. He loses his memory, just one of his faculties. His imagina- tion becomes distorted, too exaggerated. He loses his ability to reason logically. He grows fiercely self-willed, or he shows no will at all. If the lack of balance is pronounced enough, he falls into a mental state that we call insanity. He is mentally unbalanced. A man may lose his physical balance. His eyes play him tricks. He loses his hearing. His heart fails to tick reliably. His lungs .no longer function smoothly. One of his internal organs gets out of line. He can only with difficulty control his feet. His joints are stiff and refuse to bend. Surprising how small need be the physical unbalance to make a man very miserable. 8 But the sound man, the mentally and physically happy man? He has ... a well-balanced mind. a nicely balanced body. We know such a man when we meet him. And we feel that there is something wrong with us when "reason totters" or our feet no longer go where we order them to go. 9 Heyl You're Off Your Balance A LOT of things can apparently unbalance a man. We know that so well. We've seen it happen to others. We have felt it happen to ourselves. Here's a simple case. The fellow has been drinking. He can't balance his tongue any longer. He's unsteady on his feet. His hands spill the liquor when he tries to lift the glass. He struggles to make a sensible statement, and he sounds like a fool. "Watch him. He's losing his balance." There's the poor chap who's seasick. The semicircular canals in his inner ear aren't functioning properly. His stomach is diving off the high springboard. He staggers to the rail . . . and he is so sickly unbalanced! There is the man that we call mentally unbalanced, insane, mad. He may be harmless enough. Or he may think he's Napoleon. Or he is convinced that he is a piece of stale buttered toast . . There is the person who is mentally retarded; his brain never developed with his body's growth. Perhaps he can't remember anything. Or the simplest ' problem in mathe- matics stumps him, and he's not sure whether two and two make five .. . three ... or twenty-two. Or there are brief unbalances: the tenderfoot for the. first time on a mustang . .. the kid on his first bike ... the amateur trying out a first pair of skates .. . tbe pedestrian slipping on a spot of wmoticed ice ... the street-crossing victim tossd by a passing. motorcar. These are all states of unbalance . . . all mighty unpleasant ... sometimes very dangerous ... always a little degrading, humiliating, inhuman. The victim of lost balance is for a while a little less than a man. 10 That is why people cling to their health. That is why sensible people don't make fools of themselves with dtink. That is why the well passenger among the seasick struts it a little. That is why a man is proud of his mastery of a horse, a plane, a pair of skates, a difficult dance step. Happy the welJ·balanced man. Don't mind that I stress the obvious. We have a point to make-and here it comes. 11 Man Is a Little World T HAT is the point. Man is a microcosm. The philosophers said that a long time ago. Man is a little world. In himself he has something of all creation. He eats the mineral salt, and he has calcium for his bones. He absorbs . the vegetables, and he has a kind of spinach that grows from his head or his chin. He eats the animals, and he has a body not unlike theirs. He has a soul, which is spiritual as the angels' are. He can think and will freely, as God can. Mineral, vegetable, animal, angelic, divine-man is all these things. Man lives in his own little universe. He bears a re- lationship to everything in that universe. There is God all about him, God who made him, who redeemed him, who watches over him, who loves and sanctifies him. There are his fellow men, who depend upon him and on whom he in turn depends. They inhabit the same world that he inhabits, and toward them he can feel love or friendship, dislike or hate. There is all the visible world-with its beauty, variety, and richness, things he can see and touch, accumulate as the stuff of riches, use to exchange for other things. There is truth, a world outside himself that he must dis- cover and accept. There is beauty-()f earth and sky, of flowers and animals, of art and culture, of men and women. And there is himself, his own mind and will and emotions, his body and his soul. Somehow he must live in a state of balance in relation to 12 this universe. He is almost like the sun in relation to earth- in the center, with everything else swinging about him. But the sun must obey the laws of nature,; the sun cannot run amuck. Man has a law of nature, a law of God ... and he is free. He can break that law and wreck his universe, as the crazy planets did in our fable .. . as the atom did at Hiroshima. Man is a little world . . . in a little world ... with law. 13 The Bond Is Law THAT'S a mighty important world we each live in-and in a way are the center of. In many ways it is more important for each of us than is the universe. It's a dangerous world too. For a man can crack it wide open. He can run wild. He is free to do a good job by his universe or 'a bad job. He has to make the decision himself. Come to think of it, what holds that world t9gether? The physical laws operate on our bodies . The laws of thought work on our minds. But what about our wills? What about that power that makes a mall a physician or a murderer, a lawyer or a liar, a humanitarian or a miser? The thing that holds the world together is God's law. It is deep in all human hearts. But in order that there be no mis- take about it, God wrote it deep into the tables of stone. We call that law the Ten Commandments. We also know them as Christ's great two commandments. How do we bind ourselves to God? He bound Himself to us in creation, in redemption, in providence, in sanctification. We in turn love, honor, and obey Him, our Father, our brother, our friend. Commandments one, two, and three-- Christ's great first commandment. What about our fellow men? They serve us, provide our food, minister to our needs. They brought us into the world. We on our part love them, work with them, respect their lives, their reputations, their possessions. Commandments four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten--Christ 's great second commandment. What about ourselves? We must love our neighbors .as ourselves. So we must love ourselves too ... the great second commandment. l4 GOSPEL I II CHRIST TO HIS CHURCH Possessions? God gave us command over the world. But he forbade us to steal or to use things to hurt them or to hurt ourselves by our using those things . .. commandments five and seven, nine and ten . Truth? No lies ... commandment eight. No false gods before God; no theft of a neighbor's wife .. . commandments one and six . . . and the great first commandment. This is a balanced world if the moral law is obeyed. It is a hell and chaos on earth if the moral law is broken. 15 Happy the Good W HAT'S the purpose of religion? . Once and for all let's get it clear: The purpose of religion is to make men and women good and .hence happy. It is to safeguard the balance that God wants in His world. It is to keep men safe from their own crazy and evil inclinations and safe from the evil of other men. God gave us all we need for our happiness. He indicated the way that we are to act toward everyone and everything around us, from the God above to the violet under our feet , from the diamond dug from the hill to the babe in our arms, from conversation to government, from work to play to mar- riage to property to books to beauty-and back. God said in His law, "This is the way to be happy." He added His don'ts to cut away from us the things that would make us unhappy and others unhappy. He lifted our eyes to Himself, the God who loves us and watches over us. "Don't forget me," He cried. "Don't pro- fane my name. Don't be as the beasts, working always, but rest and w!llk with me at least one day a week." He pointed to the things that would make, that have made, that do make, that will always make men unhappy, and He cried out in His law of the Ten Commandments, "Don't kill ... don't steal .. . don't lust .. . don't lie ... don't break the hearts of your parents ... don't cultivate a mad craving in your souls for the things that pass." Here is a network of laws holding the universe of men to- gether. With His law God lays the foundation and rears the walls of a noble house of earth in which we can live happily. 16 Then Christ the divine lawgiver added his great two com· mandments: to love. The nablest of laws is the law of love; the greatest of creative forces is love; the closest of bonds is Jove. . Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. If men followed this Jaw of love, this would be a happy world. Since so many men don't follow this law . . . well what has experience taught you of the answer? 17 Man Smashes His Own World BUT men were free. Th y could obey God's law and be happy. They could smash it to pieces and be miserable. They decided that they'd rather be miserable. "We do not want a God over us, at least not the great, good, loving Trinity," they cried. Flatly they refused to believe in Him. They pretended that they were just animals, and they acted like animals. They cried out, "We do not want a Father, a Savior, a comforter." In rage they tore down His Churches, burned them, or let them remain empty and neglected. They built themselves other gods . .. or they picked their gods from among the animals and the devils. They defied God to make them happy .. . and they made war upon Him. And when they could finally get their hands upon Him, they nailed Him to the cross so that, imprisoned, He could no longer do anything for them. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," the dear Savior cried. They answered, "Is there a God to love? Well we don't want Him . .. or His Law of life and love and happiness." "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain," said God. But they filled the air with screams and blasphemies a..t'ld called Hi.m foul names while they besought crocodiles and brazen calves and cruel, lustful men to be their gods. "Rest upon my day," the Lord begged. But on that day 18 they bought and sold to make money ... to sin .. . to forget Him in their play and their sport. Came the time when they said, "We should all be brothers and friends." . .. But they no longer believed in a Father in heaven. They said, "We are afraid to die." ... But they had said, "We do not want to live with you forever in the happi- ness of heaven." "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God." So too has said the utterly unhappy. 19 Man Makes His Fellows Miserable "THOU shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," said the Savior and lover of mankind. "Do none of the things that make men miserable," God commanded on Sinai. "Oh yeah?" sneered the sinners. What did they care that they made others unhappy? They took the easy way of murder, theft, lust, lies. What did they care that they themselves became criminals, less human than the animals? They ended up as murderers, robbers, libertines, liars. They crushed the weak. They preyed on women and chil- dren. They turned the world upside down, loving lies instead of truth, grabbing more than they could use and stealing from others who were too weak to defend their goods. Instead of giving life, they gave death, and they invented great things called wars to make death widespread. They stole each others' wives and good names and broke up homes and families. Stupidly they wondered all the time why they were unhappy. Their great literature told them, "You are unhappy be- cause you have ,thrown your world out of balance." All the religions, true and false, cried out, "Don't do evil. It upsets the world. It creates chaos." The planets have to obey the laws . .. and the universe is beautifully balanced, calm, serene, dependable. Men and women could obey God's law if they wished; but they did not 20 wish it, and they wrecked their world. They up-tipped their universe and went madly out of balance, running after crea- tures instead of God, dealing out death when they might have given life, forgetting that men are happier when they give than when they receive, making their f«;llows wretched . .. and finding for themselves suicide graves. God forgive us for our unbalancing of His world. No .. . let us ask our fellow men to forgive us. Let us ask ourselves to forgive ourselves for our total stupidity and folly. 21 The Perfectly Balanced Man INDEED men messed up their world. They filled it with blood and tears, broken homes and broken lives, lies and lusts, idolatries and murders. Weakly they cried, "Weare wrong. But who will teach us what to do and how to do it? How can we balance our world again?" Then He came, the one perfectly balanced man in all his· tory, Christ Jesus, the Savior. He showed us how to live. He so ordered His world that those who met Him knew happiness. He laid down His rules for happiness: "Happy are you, blessed indeed if you do these simple things .... Love God . . . love one another." But He didn't merely talk. He did. He loved His Father in heaven and served and worshiped Him. He reverenced His name and kept His law. He loved His fellow men and did them nothing but good. He spoke truth so eloquently that the whole world has never forgotten what He said. He loved beauty-and He was Himself a poor man. He grew in wisdom and age and grace-loving Himself and developing Himself as a man should. Always He loved and served His neighbors .. . His mother . . . the people who came to His carpentershop ... the crowds on the hillside ... the sick who needed miracles .. . the poor who needed strength. 22 In the end He died to restore the balance of the world and to bring man back to God, and God back to men, and men back to their own senses ... to bring happiness to all. The more you are like Him, the better balanced you will be ... . . . and the happier and more perfectly balanced will be your world. 23 Says Father McCarthy • •. "It's amazing ... how many people go around thinking other people's ideas. What's worse, they act, not because they are thinking, but because they are feeling somebody else's emotions .••• "How many people there are who believe any- thing they read in the newspaper! They gulp down whatever their favorite radio commentator says. They repeat as gospel truth the chance rema'rk of the last person they were talking with. They say, "It's true; I read it in a book." And if you ask them what proof they have that the newspaper, radto commentator, gossip, or book was telling the truth, they stop stock-still, their mental processes dissolving in a vacuum, and admit that they never thought to check or confirm .••• " •.. and a great deal more in ..• "WHO'S PUSHinG YOUR minD eROUnD?" Order from THE QUEEN'S WORK 3115 South Grand Boulevard St. Louis 18, Missouri Father Lord's CARTOOn-A-TRUTH Watclt ~o't ••• succeeding CARTOOn-A-TRUTH pamphlets by Father Lord your Split perjonalify What Catho!icj Jhink o/the Church from . . . 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