On Mother's Prayers and Tears Getting Their Children to Heaven

Original drawing from the Honolulu Academy of Art

The following excerpt from The End of the Present World and the Mysteries of the Future Life will not only give much hope to parents whose children have fallen away from their faith, but will also greatly comfort their mothers.

"...Then the child will read all the treasures of grace, solicitude, and tenderness enclosed in the heart of his mother. He will know that, next to God, it was the tears, prayers, and sighs of that mother which brought about his salvation. 'O mother,' he will exclaim, 'I used to love you because you gave me an earthly life, and provided for my food and my childhood needs; now I love you a thousand times more tenderly, because of the eternal life I have received, and without which the first would have been a fatal gift, a source of calamities and torture for me.

O new and happy Monicas, how great your triumphs and joys will be, when you see yourselves surrounded by a whole circle of children whose glory you have secured after having brought them into existence! Then, Christian fathers, your sacrifices, courage, and heroic constancy in strengthening your sons by profitable examples, and in rearing them by noble, laborious training, will no longer be unknown...