52. Marian Education according to the Laws of Transference and Transmission
This is a central text on Fr Kentenich’s spirituality. To start with he describes in practical terms how nature and grace are connected and harmonised both in the ascetical and pedagogical fields – through transference and transmission. In the process his description takes in the fundamental principles of an organism and the building principles of creation according to God’s intention.
The text then dwells on the central position of the Blessed Mother in this ascetical and pedagogical process – in particular for our present times.
This is probably the first historical document in which Fr Kentenich develops how he saw the laws governing an organism. He considered their application central to his mission, and it was to lead him to conduct a “crusade of organic thinking” in contrast to mechanistic thinking, and to conflict with Church authorities, which resulted in his exile from his foundation.
The early years of National Socialism (Nazis) in Germany forms the background to his description of mechanistic transference. Hitler’s form of leadership left no room for transmission; it attempted to replace God, not to represent him.
The text is taken from Fr Kentenich’s 1934 Congress on “Marianische Erziehung” – Marian Education, p. 154-174.
We have now come to the heart and centre of Marian education. From the dogmatic point-of-view a Marian attitude is the most valuable element, but from a psychological and pedagogical point-of-view it is attachment to Mary: it is the heart and centre of Marian education. So, if you do not bring about this attachment in your educational work, you will not have carried out your task. If you want to help to prepare and deepen a really deeply penetrating and comprehensive movement of faith among Catholics through educating the people in a Marian sense, you must also set great store by creating this attachment to Mary. So it is worth our while to discuss this in detail. I want to highlight two points: The essence and the importance of this attachment.
I. The essence of attachment or bonding
Let us analyse the individual concepts somewhat, and to start with pause to consider the concept itself: Attachment or bonding to Mary. It means being attached to the Blessed Mother in our deepest depths. How is it to be understood?
1.1 To begin with I want to look at the general laws governing personal attachment – but immediately add: organic personal attachment – and then apply these laws to attachment to Mary. Please take the idea of the organism home with you as a central reality.
You can immediately sense that what we are saying about personal attachment hits the nail on the head with regard to our present-day problem with leadership. Since people today are again striving to put heart and soul into the basic human drives and instincts, and since the personality constitutes an elemental power, everything I am saying is also an essential contribution to the pedagogy of the personality. This organic personal attachment contains a whole system of pedagogy. So let me discuss with you in detail how this personal, organic attachment follows two great principles: firstly, the law of organic transference, secondly, a law of organic amplification or transmission.
1.1.1 The law of organic transference has two roots: one is metaphysical and one is psychological.
1.1.1.1 The metaphysical root is the great law of governing and redeeming the world: Deus operatur per causas secundas liberas – God acts through free secondary causes. The law of organic transference, therefore, is this: God transfers his power, his perfection and his rights to secondary causes.
Take, for example, our parents. We should be attached to our parents. According to which laws does this happen? According to the law of organic transference: God transfers his perfections and rights to parents. However, that is the law of organic, not mechanistic transference! What does God want? He wants to be seen in our parents, he doesn’t want to be separated from our parents. According to God’s intention, our parents stand before us as his representatives.
It is the same with every person to whom I am attached in an educational sense. I may not see that person in isolation, because God is behind that person. So the metaphysical root is that God transfers his rights and perfections to this person, but he does not want to be seen apart from this person.
Mechanistic transfer can happen in two ways: firstly, so that I am only attached to a person, but not as God’s representative; secondly, I could see that person as an idol. You understand what I am trying to say. I can be attached to a person as God’s representative, but also as a replacement for God. A leader may never try to be a replacement for God in the narrowest sense of the word.[67] God only acknowledges the law of organic transference. That is the metaphysical root.
1.1.1.2 Secondly, the psychological root. What do I transfer? I should really give all that is within me ultimately to the Triune God: My ability to give myself, my love and my abilities; I should really give him my need to be sheltered and my will. However, God wants to work through secondary causes, so that in the normal course of events we transfer this attitude to people who represent him. The law of organic transference is, therefore: I give and attach my ability to give myself, my love, my need to feel sheltered, by attaching them in a justified sense to a “stand-in for God”, but not to a replacement for God, and in this way I attach them to God.
Look at our children. Children don’t know these academically founded laws, but they still love their parents. They feel: If I love my parents, I also love God. That is an analysis of what is invested in sound human beings, but it has largely got lost today. We have to try to discover these laws so that we can apply them meaningfully in practical life.
1.1.1.3 It is worth our while to pause here and ask ourselves: What is the effect of this law of transference? What is the effect of organic bonding to a person? The answer: It has a uniquely creative effect. It is the most creative principle in human nature. Ask all those who have experienced it for the first time. When you are profoundly attached to someone in a God-willed way, a whole world, a rhythm of life, is awakened, and this happens in a very brief space of time. It is possible that people would have taken decades before they arrived by some other route at what was brought about by this creative power of attachment or bonding.
Let us look at the personality as a principle of education. We may then say: The creative power of bonding consists in a profound and unique transfer of life, a communication of life. Allow me to describe this briefly and succinctly in scientific[68] terms. I want to give the answer in the spirit of ancient philosophy, modern philosophy and the simple feeling and thinking of the people.
In the spirit of ancient philosophy. Allow me to point out that attachment – which is another word for love, being fond of someone – has a twofold power: It has the power to unite and to create resemblance. These are only other expressions for the transfer of life. I am only expressing in philosophical terms what is an archetypal phenomenon in life.
I would like to add that the power to unite is organic, not mechanical. That is the heresy of our present times, and also the heresy of those who become infatuated with people without being drawn to God. How deep this uniting force is in human beings! There is a strong interconnection, not opposition: I in you and you in me, and we two in each other.[69] This is how life shows us the act of love. This interconnection is so strong what we may talk about an awareness of identity: I in you and you in me, and we two in each other. If you apply this to God, you will be able to understand a great deal of the teaching of the Church better. What should we and may we do even now, but above all in the visio beata?[70] We may share in God’s life. I in you and you in me! What you see in Church teaching follows the psychological laws of love. So we have to see these things in practical everyday life.
However there is not just the force that unites, there is also the force that creates resemblance: idem velle et idem nolle,[71] the harmony of hearts, the inclinations. The philosophers of ancient times already saw this. It goes so far that without even wanting it we can become outwardly like the person we love, even to the depths of our being. That is the communication of life.
What does it mean for us if this archetypal phenomenon of organic attachment to a person is again to become more strongly effective in our present times? If we are true educators, we have to attach those entrusted to our care to ourselves, because we know that the deep and God-willed meaning of this attachment to us is communication of life. First of all, we have to communicate our own life. The other receives my life, whether he or she wants it or not. That is the psychology of attachment, that is the creative principle.
Do you want to follow up these thoughts in the sense of present-day philosophy? If we express in modern psychological terms what the ancients said in the past, we will be better able to reach our goal. The new thinkers are amazed at what they discover, and yet the ancients knew it already. According to modern thinkers, the effect of love, of attachment, is twofold: firstly, our need to be sheltered is satisfied – the ancients said for this: the unifying effect; secondly, through this attachment we adopt the attitude of the person we love, not just on the level of ideas, but also on the level of the drives and instincts. Here let me emphasise the concept “instinctive” in a special way: The thinking of the beloved person is accepted not just intellectually, but also instinctively. That is the most important thing today, at a time when we are looking for a way to move from the essential to the existential. That is the great thing of our times, that we don’t get stuck with what is in the mind, but see that the heart, the instincts and drives, have to be satisfied. This is particularly important if, as an educator, I have a strong personality. The normal way to arrive at this goal is through saintly parents, teachers and priests. And if we may no longer use the penultimate means[72] – associations, etc. – we may not complain. Although we may fight for as long as we can fight, but we also have to emphasise that in ourselves we make up for what we have to give up. The personality is the original principle of all education.
[The simple thinking and feeling of the people.] Do you want to hear the same thoughts repeated? What do ordinary people have to say about it? How did our parents have an effect on us? Through the power of their good example. We are surprised how simple everything is, and we are surprised by the way we can put it in learned terms. Can you understand what I want to express in the concept “the law of organic transference”?
1.1.1.2 There is still a second law that is at work in organic attachment. It is the law of organic amplification or transmission. Please take note of how I repeat the word organic. Look at God’s great plan of redemption! God wants to have us for himself; there is no doubt about that! He wants us absolutely, with every least fibre of our being, as well as every instinct and drive: our childlike instinct, our fatherly, motherly, sisterly, brotherly and bridal instincts: God my all! God wants to attach all our instincts of love, even to their ultimate ramifications, to himself. So what does the law of transmission mean in this context? I may not allow people to get stuck with me; I have to see to it that they grow beyond me into the heart of God. That is why it is so important to distinguish between God’s “stand-in” and God’s replacement. The leader may not be a replacement for God; he or she may be God’s representative, God’s “stand-in”. I may not allow people to get stuck with me.
May I express this in more simple terms? God is a wise psychologist, so he built up the whole organism of the world. He lets down a cord and wants to tie us to himself with human bonds. Although he is pure spirit, God is nevertheless humanly very wise. He wants to draw people to himself with human bonds.[73] That is why he sees to it that we may allow ourselves to be attached by the bonds of childlike love, parental love, bridal love. However, he then draws the cord upwards and knows no rest until everything is bonded to himself. The key to it all is always: organic. The law of transmission and amplification is always a law of organic amplification and transmission. You may not say, however, “We’ll do it this way: I have cherished you for eight months and six days, so now the law of transmission has to get to work. Good-bye!”
This is really a very difficult point in our present-day Catholic asceticism. We are far too easily inclined – and the highest striving people are most easily inclined to do this – to tell people too quickly: My God and my all! Everything in the world is trampled upon and beaten; all joys and all other attachments have to go! My God and my all! The tragedy is that as a result so much that is sound in our nature is destroyed. God-willed attachments exist, and I have to take them with me into God.
I am expressing all these key questions in just a few words. However, if you know life, you will know how many of us are in great danger of saying too mechanically “My God and my all”. I am thinking in particular of Novice Masters, even if it is dangerous to say this if one of you is here. The world and all that is human is repeatedly kicked aside. Do you know what effect that has? The more rapidly we want to reach God, to become spirits, the more rapidly our instincts and drives will go into reverse from a certain height, and we will sink down into the lowest sexualism.
These are serious matters we are touching upon here. They have all to be seen in connection with the law of organic transmission. I may participate in every God-willed and sound attachment; it has to be taken along with me organically. In the Triune God all our attachments are in harmony, even in eternity. This is how we must imagine ourselves in eternity. This is how you must see the laws of organic transmission and transference. They are the two laws on which we base our personal and organic bonding as a creative educational principle.
1.2 Allow me to apply what I have said in very general terms to attachment to Mary. I believe we will soon reach our goal. I have only to apply the reasoning about organic transference to the Blessed Mother. After all, I am attached to her.
1.2.1 First of all the law of organic transference.
1.2.1.1 From God’s vantage point where do we have the metaphysical root? God transfers his perfections to the Blessed Mother. We may say that when God created the Blessed Mother, he worked and created in an ecstatic vision.[74] Do you know what an artist creates when he is in ecstasy? If God is in ecstasy, just imagine what a masterpiece he will create! God worked on Mary in an ecstasy, creating a first rate work of art. God created his perfections, placing them quite uniquely into this person. The law of organic transference, the metaphysical root.
1.2.1.2 Now the psychological root. I transfer my need for love and shelter to the Blessed Mother. Isn’t that absolutely understandable? It is exactly the same psychological process with which I love my parents or anyone else. However, please note that this is the law of organic, not mechanical, transference, because Catholic children know that when they love the Blessed Mother, they also love God. The law of mechanical transfer – if I don’t love the Blessed Mother for God’s sake, but for her sake alone, it would be the worship of an idol.
However, I am saying that many people transfer their own pathological development to others; they create a false image of God and rail against devotion to Mary. They only see their own development, but not the development of Catholics, because when the latter say “Mary”, they are also saying “God”. I have only to ensure that the law of organic transmission functions better. Don’t try to destroy a “self-made image” that doesn’t exist, but see to it that the law of organic transmission functions properly!
I should not get stuck with my attachment to the Blessed Mother, but be led on through her. Just as every attachment to a person means a transfer of life, so it is with the Blessed Mother. If I love her quite simply, where can I find the creative force, the power that unites and makes us resemble each other? You in me and I in you!
This is how you can understand the saying that is so harshly rejected: Don’t just live with the Blessed Mother, but also in her. We must only have the courage to apply what we take for granted in life to the supernatural world. If I really love someone, I not only live with, but also in that person. And if I live fervently with the Blessed Mother, I also live in her. I only want to show how healthy such an attitude is.
1.2.2 However, attachment to Mary is not only a force that unites, it also creates resemblance, so it is the classic means to acquire a Marian attitude. So if I have managed to attach the children to Mary, they will have a Marian attitude. That is the law of transmission. It is part and parcel of the psychology of organic bonding and transference: If I am attached to a person, the law of transmission is automatically secured. It is organic, not mechanical.
Besides this, the Blessed Mother has been given this task more than any other educator. Each genuine educator will see to it that the people who are attached to him or her will be passed on to God. The same applies to the Blessed Mother, because she is officially the one who bears Christ. She has to form and mould people according to the image of Christ; she has to give birth to Christ once more in people. Consider how true transmission takes place through attachment to the Blessed Mother.
Allow me to present another thought. It was thought that people in the Middle Ages began witch hunting because they were so one-sidedly Marian. Today people in the psychological field are of the opinion that too strong a devotion to Mary will gradually become sexualised. Such opinions overlook the law of transmission. Of course, if I have given all my love to the Blessed Mother in a mechanical way, it is possible for witch hunting or sexualism to occur, but only a scientist working in a laboratory could say such a thing. However, whoever knows life will see that sound Catholics experience the law of transmission. It could perhaps be deeper, but we may not so easily identify ourselves with such gimmickry. It has to be an organic, not a mechanical transmission.
Look at what follows from this if such laws are overlooked among striving Catholics. I spoke about this for the first time in southern Germany. A religious Sister remarked: When I was a girl I belonged to the Sodality. When I joined this community I told myself: Now my devotion to Mary must stop; now I must start to love Christ. A graduate secondary school teacher admitted exactly the same thing: As a young man I was an enthusiastic devotee of Mary; now as a priest only our Lord matters to me.
This is an analysis of our present-day ailment: mechanical thinking and living. It really is an ailment. Its healing is: Organic transmission. I have loved the Blessed Mother for such a long time, now it’s our Lord’s turn! And who follows? Holy Spirit, now you are fetched down! Then comes the Heavenly Father, and all the others are shoved aside. Who is then left? Is it to be the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit?
Perhaps you will say, “That’s impossible! How am I to love the Blessed Mother and our Lord?” Whoever says that has not understood the organism [of love]. It is all a single love: Love for Mary and love for our Lord, love for Christ and the Blessed Trinity. It is also wrong to write in a very learned article: If Grignion de Montfort had lived in a completely different age, for example, the time when devotion to the Sacred Heart flourished, he would certainly have preferred this devotion. This overlooks the law of organic life; everything is seen mechanically. If you forget everything else, but see the law of organic life, you can be certain [that you are on the right path]. It is particularly important to leave our people their devotion to Mary, and not abuse the people we are educating. Life is always part of a sound organism, and we have to think within this law.
You will find a classic example of this in St Paul. When we now read the Scriptures, we can understand them better. The same principles apply. Paul was a saint and had the courage to say: I am the model for the flock.[75] That is the expression of psychological and personal attachment. Paul never said, “For heaven’s sake, why do you love me?” and quickly cut the bonds. “My God and my all!” Instead he saw what the original principles and original phenomena of education are, and was deeply shaken as he said: I am your model; you have to do things as I do them. The creative power of attachment has to operate between us. “You are attached to me and so you imitate me.” But whom did Paul follow? Christ![76]
We as educators have to be stamped uniquely with the features of God. Please don’t overlook that this is a more valuable educational means than if we were only to pass on ideas. It is all the more important at a time when the personality is drawn into the foreground. By the way, we may not overlook that the danger is great that overnight there will be a personality cult. If as educator I know that people are attached to me, I must treat them with utmost respect.[77] Unless I long to be attached to God, you will see how I become the tyrant of those around me and drag them all down into the dirt with me. Depending on whether we strive for holiness or not, we will have a different effect on those around us. We have constantly to reflect on this difference when we have to take a mature stand to the spiritual currents of our times.
I am thinking of Newman. He developed in a very strange way. Think of all the currents that opposed him. However a sound person has to have been part of the organism of divine life. Newman did not rise up to God from people; he went from God to people. This is because the law of transfer and transmission also applies to attachment to God’s Spirit. No one can follow this path in a completely one-sided way; it is psychologically impossible. However, there are people who first begin by loving God. If these people in their love for God knew nothing about the law of organic transfer and transmission, they would be really badly off. They have to come from God to people. The law of organic transmission from above downwards, and from below upwards.
We have to observe this particularly in the education of religious, and in educational institutions, so that we educate striving people and not structures that cannot cope with life. If I educate souls that are attached to God too one-sidedly, without observing the law of transmission, the danger is great that they will end up with the lowest sexualism. I consider this important at a time that is struggling so strongly for a renaissance of nature. If we neglect the instinctive level too strongly, the devil will come and turn everything upside down again.
May I take it that I have adequately explained what attachment to Mary is all about?
2. The importance of attachment or bonding
Secondly, let me say a few words about the importance of attachment or bonding. This is the key question for Marian education. It has to do with three statements.
2.1 To start with, the interplay of the psychology of nature and the psychology of grace.
I can look at attachment to Mary from the point-of-view of the psychology of nature. I must have the courage to apply meaningfully and in its totality what I have observed in natural bonding.
Organic and Marian bonding is the root of a motivating force, the root of an entire system of holiness. I tell you this with great joy. Modern research has confirmed the ancient opinion of the Marian Sodalities. What did they do? They looked at holiness as a tree of life, although not the Paradisal tree of life, but a tree of life. One could also depict it as the Paradisal tree of life. The root is devotion to Mary, the trunk is self-sanctification, the fruit is the apostolate. Although I have put it very logically, you have to see it in psychological terms. Is attachment to Mary really the root of a complete system of holiness? We have only to look at the law of transmission. I am attached to the Blessed Mother not just as an attitude, but also on the level of my instincts and drives; and her holiness is her attitude towards herself, God and life.
So you have to see to it that you strive seriously for holiness, especially if you have to educate young men. However, you must also set up attachment to Mary as a dam for your parish against the modern sickness of our times, in order to achieve a distinctive veneration of Mary. I would like to see someone achieve Marian education if he has not achieved such attachment to Mary.
2.2. Seen from the point-of-view of natural psychology, attachment to Mary gives us a unique and natural receptivity for values. This takes us out of the great helplessness today. We know so much about scales of values, we know how and according to which laws we can create an attitude, but we can’t create receptivity for values! However, attachment to Mary creates a unique receptivity for values, including the assimilation of the mystery of Christ. If my self-surrender to the Blessed Mother is sufficiently deep, and I see a picture of our Lord, the impression won’t remain just in the mind. In this way, bonding to the Blessed Mother becomes attachment to our Lord. “And the word became flesh.”[78] The Blessed Mother spoke her Fiat. That has always been the case in salvation history, in pedagogy and the pastorate, even if we were unable to see the law reflexively. So all the words I hear in the religious field immediately take on life if I have a strong attachment to Mary: truth, the abstract word, takes on life.
When you speak, you will notice how open your audience is for certain values. If you therefore start to educate in a Marian way, it means above all else remaining consistent, not doing this today and that tomorrow. If we do something in Germany and then hear that they do things differently in Holland, we naturally follow their lead; if something new is done in America, we naturally copy them. However, we may not do this if we acknowledge the ontological laws. The little that we do has to be carried through consistently. But I must also repeat: You may not look at Marian devotion in a mechanical way, but organically. What does that mean? Mary is only a motivating force that mediates Christ’s life and leads to Christ; the Blessed Mother is only an organic way.
2.3 Third point: the importance [of attachment to Mary] from the point-of-view of natural psychology. Attachment to Mary gives us a unique and profoundly Catholic instinctive security. We may not overlook this today. We have to create a Catholic instinctive security. The masses possess a far stronger security than if it is only intellectual. Shouldn’t we ask God to enlighten us to see the great context, and not constantly criticise ourselves, transferring our own morbid attitude to the people? When we educate, we have to be mature people, and not transfer our own developmental process constantly to the people.
2.4 The importance of attachment to Mary from the point-of-view of the psychology of grace. You know the law of the organic connection of nature and grace. My subject today is not grace – there is a special course on this subject for priests, which describes Church teaching and asceticism.[79] It would be worth our while to look at this law from the point-of-view of nature.
Whoever says Mary, says grace; encounters with Mary are always encounters with grace and encounters with God. If I am attached to the Blessed Mother, not only is nature at work, so is grace. The Blessed Mother allows grace upon grace to drip down on all whom God has assigned to her care. This is because “the way via the Blessed Mother is the easiest and surest to unite everyone with Christ and to attain perfect childhood [of God] through him.”[80] This way is an organic path. I think I have to use the word “organic” far more often, so that is consolidated, because our culture today only hears words mechanically, and then feelings of aversion arise. I have said that there are various ways in which I can see Christ. To see Christ with his Mother’s eyes is a way that is extremely effective.
3. I have now described to you the nature and importance of attachment to Mary. However, because we have to draw very important consequences from it, you must allow me to make a few, very brief applications to practical life.
You will say: Does it all add up? It seems to do so; I can’t say anything on this point at the moment. I shall do so tomorrow.
Let us suppose that it all adds up, what follows from it? Then holiness is a walkover! You are right! However, it is also difficult enough as it is, but not as difficult as we imagine.
3.1 Holiness is nothing else than a higher degree of childlikeness. But what about the whole history of the system of holiness? A system is not holiness. It can be a means for us as leaders of our people, so that we can see more clearly what we have to do in individual cases. Actually holiness is nothing more than perfect childlikeness towards God. In order that we can learn it, God has given us his Mother. But childlikeness has to be seen organically, not mechanically.
3.2 You will say: If that is all true, we know what we have to do. What must we give our children? An extremely simple and childlike devotion to Mary, love for Mary. You don’t know – or perhaps you do know – what could still happen. How are we to protect the children then? Do you want to give them learned explanations, citing reasons as much as you like, or can? We want to use everything. But the most beautiful and most important thing we can give our children is a truly childlike devotion to Mary. That is Ariadne’s thread[81] with which our young people can find their way through the labyrinth of our present era.
3.3 It is also good for the people I have to educate. I have also to give them Ariadne’s thread. Our life today is so chaotic and is becoming increasingly chaotic, so that we don’t know whether we are coming or going.
3.4 But what are we to do with liturgical education? We also want to make use of it. I have described it to you. If we give our people a simple and childlike devotion to Mary, we also give them a sense for the liturgy. But please note: Once again it is not mechanical! If you have to give an answer, you have only to say: Organic. There is no contradiction – we want the liturgical aspect, and so do our associations. The Marian element gives us the values of the liturgical element, while illustrating and popularising the liturgical approach.
3.5 Or you will say: I will give the young people a system – actually only we leaders need to have a system – or good habits. We want to do all this as well. However, how are we to secure these good habits? I give my people their Mother again, then I will have carried out my task.
3.6 You could also say: But for heaven’s sake, away with childlikeness! We have to be strong, autonomous! There we have it again: We have no clear concepts. Isn’t childlikeness perfect strength? Must I prove it to you again rationally? We have to reflect and analyse things again in order to gain clarity. Childlikeness is perfect attachment to the Blessed Mother. That is her attitude – she is not just the pure Virgin; she is also the Mother of Sorrows. She was strong! Childlike bonding is an expression of strong self-surrender.
3.7 If I attach myself to the Blessed Mother, and if I am sheltered in her, I can give all my strength for the task. In our context: Childlike attachment to Mary includes a very high degree of the spirit of faith. And that is important. I can’t be attached to the Blessed Mother unless I have the spirit of faith; and that includes the development of strength. An intensified spirit of faith includes bonding my “self” to the God-Man.
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[67] This is a direct reference to the growing cult of the Führer, Adolf Hitler, that was taking hold of Germany at that time.
[68] Cf. M. Müller, Frohe Gottesliebe – Joyful Love of God, The religious and moral ideal of St Francis de Sales, Freiburg 1933, p. 145.
[69] Blissful vision of God, the beatific vision.
[70] Fr Kentenich is not using the concept “scientific” in the sense of empirical scientific method, but in the sense of philosophical argument.
[71] To will and not will the same things.
[72] Soon after the Nazis took power all organizations were forbidden that did not follow the Nazi ideology.
[73] Cf. Hosea 11,4.
[74] This is a saying attributed to St Bernard.
[75] 1 Pet 5,3; Cf. Phil 3,17; Thess 3,9.
[76] 1 Cor 11,1; Cf. 1 Cor 4,16; 1 Thess 1,6.
[77] What is probably meant is that the educator has to distance himself in the correct way from them out of respect, and lead the mothers to independence and autonomy.
[78] Cf. Jn 1,14.
[79] Cf. The Christmas Conference of 1925 on “Nature and Grace”.
[80] “For can anyone fail to see that there is no surer and more direct road than by Mary, for uniting all mankind in Christ and obtaining through Him the perfect adoption of sons, that we may be holy and immaculate in the sight of God”, Pius X, Encyclical “Ad diem illum”, 2 February 1904, from: Papal Teachings – Our Lady, St Paul Editions, 1961, p.168.
[81] According to the Greek legend, Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos of Crete, saved Theseus, a young man she loved, from the Minotaur who lived in a labyrinth, by giving him a red fleece thread with which he could find his way out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur.
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