Lectures for Young Men - Volume 3 -

By the Very Rev. Francis Cuthbert Doyle, O.S.B. Anyone who has had to deal with boys will know how little hold on their attention the spiritual works seem to have on them. Father Doyle worked with boys his entire life to overcome this problem. He was convinced that "my labor would be thrown away, unless the grand principles of the Moral Law were brought straight home to their hearts." He did this effectively by "making the abstract - concrete, the theoretical - practical." The method he uses was to address to the boys every morning a short, homely exhortation or lecture proportioned to their intelligence, and adapted to the circumstances of their lives. "Their attention was arrested; their curiosity was aroused; and it was gratifying to observe the earnestness with which they strove during the day to practice the lesson which they had been taught in the morning... If they serve to direct heavenwards the thoughts and the aims of the young - if they encourage them to walk in the narrow way and help them, be it ever so little, to make their hearts the temple of the living God - I shall consider any labor that I may have expended upon their composition most amply repaid."