Be a Light to your Children and your Neighbors

And next we come to the exterior duties which are, as I have already said, that outward manifestation of our inward condition. You have duties toward your children, and have to look after their mode of life, their work, etc. Al this should be done without exaggerating anything, or allowing yourself to be absorbed by one thing at the cost of another, or by one child to the detriment of the rest.

The duty of a mother, who is not dependent upon her own exertions from the material point of view, is to provide for and arrange everything, watching over all, but not claiming the right to do everything herself. These household cares and the organization and arrangement of her home, accounts, etc., do not take up all her thoughts, when things are done regularly day by day, and all is in the right plan. What a mother ought to do, and what she alone can do, is to look after her children's moral development, to acquire an insight into their minds, and to awaken in them the highest aspirations. By merely coming into contact with them, she can give them a sense of quiet strength that nothing is able to ruffle, and thus she becomes a second conscience to them. Whoever is happy enough to be able to pass on to her children the results of her own inward experiences is bound to do so.

Toward those whom we call by the pleasant name of neighbors, you, who enjoy a favored existence, have duties and responsibilities. You are responsible because you possess means, intellect, and moral worth. You are an educated woman, whose heart and mind can grasp and sympathize with many things; you enjoy the privilege, in this age of hostility, of hating nothing but hatred, and so you do much good, if you know where to look. The heart has a power of insight, more or less keen, which enables us to discover needs and sufferings that others would pass unnoticed. My own experience of life has convinced me that never a day goes by without our meeting someone in distress of body or soul, some case of sorrow or poverty, and there must certainly be many such that we overlook. Look around you, my dear friend, and you will soon find out that your good heart does not need spectacles.

Let me give you this little book, written in haste, for in it I have put a scrap of my heart for you. It still contains a reserve of affection, sufferings, and personal experiences, for which it thanks God daily, and which it offers you whenever you like to draw upon it. What proceeds from God must be given back to Him in the form of love for all our fellow travelers on our earthly way; and this is a very pleasant duty in the case of a companion such as yourself.

- Elisabeth Leseur, The Secret Diary of Elisabeth Leseur: the Woman whose Goodness Changed her Husband from Atheist to Priest, Sophia Institute Press, 2002

(Elisabeth addressed this to a friend who was an unbeliever)