Page:Jesuit Education.djvu/580

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
560
JESUIT EDUCATION

attainable in youth is placed before the eyes of the students. They see in this Saint a noble youth who, in the midst of wealth and luxury and the allurements of a courtly life, preserved unsullied the white robe of innocence; a youth who from early childhood measured all things, as he himself expressed it, secundum rationes aeternas, non secundum rationes temporales, i. e. according to the value which they possess for his final destination; a youth who always followed the dictates of conscience with a chivalrous energy and steadfastness, and who heroically spurned the pleasures that prove so fatal to many young men; a youth who renounced the inheritance of a principality in order to follow the evangelical counsels, and to devote himself to the glory of God and the service of his fellow-men. Surely, a devotion which places before the admiring gaze of students such a type of youthful holiness for imitation, is a practical devotion, one that cannot fail to elevate the character of the students and make their lives purer and holier. Here we may also mention another most salutary exercise, namely, the annual retreat in which, following the directions of St. Ignatius, the end of man, the means of attaining this end, and the motives for striving after Christian sanctity are set before the mind of the pupil. What untold blessings result from these exercises, only he is able to realize who has made them.

Then there exist in every Jesuit college the Sodalities of the Blessed Mother of God, pious associations originated by the Jesuit Scholastic Leon, and solemnly recognized and highly eulogized by many Popes, beginning from Gregory XIII. (1584) down to Leo XIII. It is worth while to read the high commenda-