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156 The Spirituality of Cornelia Connelly
Cornelia’s Preface to the Book of Studies is one more expression of her
original inspiration for the Society, her recognition of the growth in
wisdom, age, and grace communicated to all who will contemplate the
Divine Child of Nazareth. Here she stresses especially the human col-
laborative role that God asks of the sisters of the Holy Child Jesus in order
to insure that the little ones of Christ will “grow as he grew.” This preface,
with its “step by step,” echoes Cornelia’s first constitutional expression of
her original inspiration. The whole composition echoes and reechoes her
own deep experience of motherhood. It was to a true spiritual motherhood
she wished to bring Holy Child educators. She wrote to a sister:
The children expect to find mothers in the Sisters, and we cannot ex-
pect them to be attached to the place unless they do find this motherly
154
care,
It was a sound kind of motherly care she inculcated in her Book of Studies:
We have here before us the “Book of Studies,” which is simply the
same sort of guide as a chart is to the traveler. We must use it in the same
way to assist us in the sweetly laborious duty of Education.
Though we so well know that great things are achieved only by untir-
ing labour and suffering, we sometimes forget that in training and
teaching children it is absolutely necessary to walk step by step, to teach
line by line, to practise virtue little by little in act after act, and only by
such acts of virtue as are suited to the age and stage of moral and intellec-
tual development of those we are guiding. Let us not want to “fly” by
ourselves, lest we leave our pupils behind to be lost in the mist. Line by
line and step by step in all learning and in all virtues form the whole
educational system. See the little birds how they carry insect after insect to
the nestlings, just so must we give moral and intellectual food to our dear
pupils, that from this labour of love may flow the desired result. Let us
remember the parable of the old man and his son in clearing the field of
brambles. We are led into sin by seeking pleasure and avoiding pains and
labours. Let us embrace the contrary and joyfully take pains and accept
labour, piece by piece, week by week, and day by day, and thus make sure
of our victory.!55
The same principle that was used to educate the Training College
students was applied in the Book of Studies to the young as well as to the
older children in the schools, that is, “the cultivation of the understanding
and the judgment.” Nothing was to be memorized before it was explained.
The “age and stage of moral and intellectual development” of each child
was carefully provided for. The young children were not to sit still for too
long but were to move about when they first begin to learn the alphabet
preparatory to reading.
They are now exercised in finding the letters among the cards. One
child can print on the Demonstration Board, another places it in the
letter-case, another points to it on the Reading Card. The object of this
exercise is to excite interest, and thus keep up their attention by the love
of activity, so natural to children,!56