THINGS: The story of
Saint Stanislaus Kostka
by William T. Kane, S.J.
PREFACE
Among Christian evidences the heroic virtue and holiness of Catholic
youth must not be overlooked. Juvenile and adolescent victories of a
conspicuous kind, over the flesh, the world, and the devil, can be found in
no land and in no age, except a Christian land and age, and in no Church
except the Catholic Church. It is of all excellences the very rarest and most
difficult, this triumphant mastery over human weakness and human pride.
It has defied the life-long strivings of men whom the world recognizes as
beings of superior wisdom and power of will. The philosophers who have
described it most beautifully and encouraged its pursuit in the most
glowing and impressive terms remain themselves sad examples of human
futility in the struggle to disengage the spirit from the claws of dragging
and unclean influences. For the forces of evil are infinite in their variety,
insidious beyond the ability of natural sharpness to detect and guard
against, and unsleeping in the pressure of their siege upon the heart of man.
Who will explain how it comes to pass that youth, whose callowness and
inexperience are the mockery of the world, has laid prostrate in single
combat this giant of evil and won fields where the reputations of the
world\'s wisest and noblest and most tried lie buried?