THIRTEENTH LESSON
On Duty towards Those in Authority.
"Obey your prelates, and be subject to them, for they watch as being to render an account of your souls. "—ST. PAUL, Hebrews 13:17.
Parents are the first in authority over a child, but they are not the only ones. There are others to whom the child is under sacred obligations: these are his teachers, the priests and the aged.
Your teachers, my dear children, your tutor, or those in fact who take charge of your education, stand towards you in the place of your parents, just as your parents in the place of God. To your teachers has been intrusted the care of bringing you up, of lavishing on you that care your parents cannot always bestow on you themselves. Thus a child owes his teachers respect, on account of the authority they have a right to exercise over him, and of the confidence his parents have in them. I regret to say, my dear children, that there are not many amongst you who fulfill this important duty towards teachers. A child who respects his parents as he ought, will behave towards his teachers with haughtiness and contempt; his greatest pleasure to find fault with them, to laugh at their manners or dress. Schoolboys consider this a great amusement. Such behavior is very much to be blamed, and is certainly displeasing to God, who bids us to respect our superiors.
My dear children, be then full of deference towards those who instruct you; listen also to their lessons with docility. This duty is not less important than the first, and your faithfulness in fulfilling it will be an advantage to you, as well for your education as for your disposition. By not listening to the advice of your superiors you injure yourselves only, and not those who bring you up; because if they suffer from the indocility of the children they instruct, it is only because of the deep interest they take in the welfare of their pupils. You must therefore obey your teachers like your parents, and if you cannot love them as tenderly, be at least grateful for the care and zeal they have shown you. It would be a great want of feeling and of justice, to think you are not in the least indebted to your professors because they have been paid for their lessons; and good education is such a precious benefit, that money can never sufficiently repay it, and that in return it deserves a sincere attachment.
Priests and your confessor in particular, are your teachers, my children, in that most important of all knowledge, the knowledge of religion, by which you learn to be virtuous. Priests are the Lord's ministers, the pastors of His Church; they teach the people the word of truth; every day they offer up for them to God the holy sacrifice of Mass: by their ministry we receive the sacraments at the different periods of our life; from the moment of our birth, to the day of our death, the priest calls down upon us the choicest blessings of heaven. We have then, as you see, many motives for considering them as kind and useful friends.
The Priests, following the example of their divine Master, are, above all, the friends of childhood: childhood is the cherished portion of the flock God has confided to their care. Those of you, my young friends, who have begun to attend the religious instruction given by God's ministers, can truly say, that of all their teachers, none have showed them more tenderness and kindness.
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