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Give boys the songs. Mos cantandi, mos amandi: the custom of singing becomes the custom of love. We sing what we love, and we learn to love that which we sing.
Boys will not clear a bar set low. That is a paradox of their nature. They will not rise to the mediocre occasion. They fall below it. They do not need assistance and hand-holding. They need challenge and danger. That
All recommendations that boys should be tame and mild and inoffensive must break against the rocks of nature.
But boys cannot be really masculine unless they have engaged and fought and been victorious in the fundamental battle of the human soul. They must first conquer themselves.
We may think of John Greenleaf Whittier’s glorious tribute to the free ways of a good and healthy boy: Blessings on thee, little man, Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan! With thy turned-up pantaloons, And thy merry whistled tunes; With thy red lip, redder still Kissed by strawberries on the hill; With the sunshine on thy face, Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace; From my heart I give thee joy,— I was once a barefoot boy! Prince thou art,—the grown-up man Only is republican.
When women say to boys, “We don’t need you to do those physically strenuous things for us anymore,” besides its being quite false, it cuts their hearts right out. It is as if to say, “You are useless.” Boys need to be needed more than they need to be loved, or they need to be loved by being needed. It is indispensable to them that they should be dispensable, that is, needed to be spent up, for the women they love and the land they would protect, and, in the end, the faith they would affirm.
“When you are totally consumed by the Eucharistic fire, then you will be able more consciously to thank God, who has called you to become part of His family. Then you will enjoy the peace that those who are happy in this world have never experienced, because true happiness, oh young people, does not consist in the pleasures of this world, or in earthly things, but in peace of conscience, which we only have if we are pure of heart and mind.”
But he had the same boyish spirit of launching forth into adventure, and the same contempt for safety. “Death, rather than sin,” was one of his mottos.
