A girl who knows how sacred her power is can be a veritable angel guardian to her boy. To begin with, she will take good care to preserve her Godgiven gift of love untarnished all her life, and she will impose upon herself, and willingly, to steer clear of anything like serious company keeping till there is a fair prospect of marriage within a reasonable period. If this be sometimes hard, and it is probable that it will be, she is very glad to have something to offer to Our Lord that really costs her to give. She is ever mindful that He and His Mother did many hard things for love of her, and she welcomes the opportunity of being able to do something for them that demands selfsacrifice.
Her nobility of character asserts itself, too, after she has found a partner with whom there seems to be a chance of marriage within a reasonable time. True love continues to find its perfect model in the love of Christ for our souls. Now that divine love proves itself by selfsacrifice, and human love approximates more and more to the divine according as it too feeds on sacrifice. All that is natural in that girl, and probably all the environment in which she lives, preaches that love is synonymous with selfindulgence. The Catholic girl knows better. The Catholic girl teaches her boy what she knows. If he is the type who would be worthy to marry her, he will be deeply grateful for his schooling, and, far from giving her up, his reverence for her will be all the deeper because his love will be all the purer.
No wonder Our Lord began this prayer by stressing the tremendous power for good that I, a Catholic girl, can wield. A good girl, very gently but very firmly, by a gesture or even an expression of her face, can make it perfectly clear that she has her principles and that she has no intention of forgetting them or allowing anybody else to forget. A good girl, angellike, will see that that boy will never take her off where danger would be practically certain to culminate in sin. If she really loves that boy, she is well aware that there is no evil comparable to sin; and to be the willing occasion of his sin is to do what she would be slow to do to her worst enemy.
A boy whose opinion is worth anything looks for something more beautiful in a girl than clothes or physical charm. He may not have formulated what it is, but what he seeks to find in the girl is the reflection of the purity and virtue that adorned the soul of the Immaculate Mother. Show him that and you will win him, if he is worth the winning. Show him that and he will trample it, or try to, like swine who tread on pearls, and you know where you are and just exactly what to do. To the boy who should be your ideal, every woman is an object of deep reverence because he is ever mindful that from women was chosen the Mother of God.
This is the tremendous power of the girl. She can trifle with it and qualify for a high position in the war of Satan against Christ. She can reverence it and make others reverence it, and become a veritable angel leading souls to God.
Our Holy Father canonized a little girl of twelve, St. Maria Goretti. The whole Catholic world knows her story. Child though she was, she understood the sacredness of God's gift to her and she died rather than betray the trust He placed in her. He raised her up precisely at a period when the majority of men either laugh at the idea of purity or persuade themselves, and try to persuade others, that perfect observance of this virtue is a foolish dream that cannot be realized.
Jesus, Mary, I well know the lying propaganda that surrounds me. Preserve me from ever being influenced by it. While I fear all things from my weakness, I hope all things from your strength.