❀ ❀ ❀
When, in the course of my last six instructions, I warned you so earnestly against the enemies of the lily of purity, you may perhaps have said to yourself: “If things have really gone so far in the world, how difficult it will be to do right and remain pure! How gladly would I fly far, far away from all this wickedness; but I cannot do this—my youth, my parents, my circumstances render it impossible.” You certainly ought not to leave the world so long as it is your vocation to remain in it. I desire only to give you a thorough acquaintance with its dangers, not to estrange you from it altogether. My fatherly admonitions are not intended for nuns, but for good, Catholic girls, the great majority of whom are destined to remain in the world, and later on to become mothers, and rule a household. In the world you will be launched, as it were, upon a dangerous, wide, and storm-tossed ocean. How necessary, how important it is that you should learn to steer your course true, that you may not be shipwrecked, but may safely guide your little bark amid the rocks and quicksands which beset youth, and one day land upon the blissful shore of the celestial paradise.
I have to speak of yet one more of these various perils, to point out one more of these enemies of innocence; it is the enemy in the theatre.
What was said about dancing is true of the theatre, even to a greater degree. The theatre is not without its effect upon religion and morals; it has a powerful influence for good or evil. Good plays of a religious tendency raise the tone of morals. The histrionic art resembles the other arts—poetry, painting, rhetoric, sculpture and music—in the elevating powers they exercise. For this reason the Catholic Church has taken the fine arts one by one into her service, and thereby aided them to attain their highest perfection. The mystery plays of the Middle Ages were employed by her as a means of religious teaching. For the same reason, Catholic educational establishments in our own day, convent schools, and colleges conducted by Religious, annually have theatrical entertainments. It is the same with Catholic guilds or societies for young men and young women, under the superintendence of priests. It is an innocent and harmless pleasure for girls to attend such plays as these.
Dramas, on the contrary, which are performed by professional actors on the stages of large cities are frequently fraught with danger for young people. There the spirit of evil, evening after evening, dwells upon its old theme: the concupiscence of the eyes, the concupiscence of the flesh and the pride of life. Immorality is not seldom, at least indirectly, inculcated. Everything combines to half intoxicate youthful spectators, to lull to sleep their understanding and their will, and, on the other band, to excite their imagination to its highest pitch, and fill it with most undesirable pictures.
Therefore, you must see for yourself that you ought never to visit such theatres, unless indeed a play should chance to be acted there which obviously contains nothing injurious to young girls. Never go to a play that is performed at a theatre of doubtful reputation.
A certain French writer of plays has himself given an indubitable proof of the immoral tendency of many plays. Why did he forbid his daughters to witness the performances of the dramas which he had written? For no other reason, surely, than because he believed that their attendance at the theatre on those occasions would be injurious to their morals. What a testimony does this afford to the deleterious character of too many plays!
Therefore, do you, my dear child, stay away from all such performances of a doubtful nature! Make an exception only in cases when you have a guarantee that the play is harmless. Otherwise the saying holds good:
Though you may take care when you go to the mill,
Some dust of flour will cleave to you still.
Be on your guard lest your love for the theatre develop into a passion. Seek rather to take delight in simple pleasures, which are within the reach of every one. Take delight in beholding the beauteous sights which God offers to our view in the works of creation. Strive by the practice of virtue to be yourself a spectacle to angels and to men. Thus, when the toils and trials of this life are past, shall you be permitted to contemplate a glorious sight which shall never pass away—the beatific vision of God! Therefore:
Lift, O Christian, lift thine eyes
To thy home beyond the skies;
Eternal bliss awaits thee there
With which earth’s joys cannot compare.
The Faded Lily.