Defeat
LXIX. What a Misfortune!
1.If, MY dear young friend, you desire to incite and encourage yourself to persevere in the war you are waging on behalf of the pearl of virtues, you should reflect what a terrible misfortune it is to be defeated in this conflict, and what lamentable consequences such a defeat entails.
2. Rarely has a mother loved her child so tenderly as Blanche, the holy Queen of France, loved her son Louis, who subsequently occupied the throne of France, and became known to posterity as the saint of that name. One day when this good mother had been giving to her pious son, who was still a boy, many wise counsels, she said in conclusion, with a heart brimming over with maternal solicitude: "O my darling child, you are the most precious, thing I have upon earth, more precious than all the gold and jewels which surround us in our palace. Yet I would a thousand times rather see you lying dead at my feet, than know you to have committed one single mortal sin."
Thus also may parents, and those, who have the care of souls, thus may I more especially, say to you: You are dear and precious to us, but we would far rather that you should die this very instant in the grace of God, than that you should be conquered by the enemy of innocence, and fall into mortal sin.
I would fain imbue you with a wholesome horror of the vice which is opposed to chastity; therefore I will now depict the consequences of it.
3. To be vanquished by the enemy of innocence, and given up to the sin of impurity, what consequences does such a state of things entail. It is sad, my friend, but only too true, that when a young man has yielded to temptation, and become acquainted with vice, when after his grievous fall he does not at once arise and break with an iron will the fetters which habit is beginning to forge, the unhappy victim will fall again and again, sinking ever deeper and deeper, until ere long he will despair of being able to extricate himself from the slavery of impurity. Only too many examples of this kind are to be seen. Many a young man, who as a boy was innocent and good, blossoming like a lily in the garden of the Lord, the joy and hope of his parents and confessor, has got into bad ways, because he has become careless about transgressing the sixth commandment.
