When I was five years old, I ended up running full-steam into and through a glass storm door, sustaining a cut up the length of my little arm. I had been outside playing when my older brother (who would have been 10) began telling me to repeat certain words after him. Words like “shit” and “damn”–or at least “bad words” that I had no idea what they meant. After I had said them at his direction, he then said he was going to tell on me to our mother who, he asserted, would wash my mouth out with Tide detergent (“When Tide’s in, dirt’s out!”). She was, in fact, in the basement doing laundry at that very time, no doubt using Tide detergent!

So I ran as fast as my legs could carry me to get to the house before my brother could tell on me, and CRASH–I went through the glass storm door. My fear was then elevated exponentially–not only had I said bad words, but I had also broken the glass door! I began to run away as fast as I could. Meanwhile, my mother–hearing the crash of glass–rushed up from the basement and then came outside looking for me. She saw me bleeding profusely and running. She came after me, which made me run all the faster, until she finally caught and almost had to tackle me! I thought she somehow “knew everything” and was planning to punish me (not to deal with her bleeding child). She scooped me up and took me immediately two doors over to my grandmother’s house, and the two of them tended to my injury (which did not even require stitches–just pressure and ice to stop the bleeding).

A “helpful” neighbor came by my grandmother’s, because–to her eyes–all she knew was that a bloody child was running away from his mother, screaming. My mother and grandmother assured the neighbor that everything was under control.

My brother? He had conveniently disappeared on his bicycle.

This is a story that has been part of our family lore for over half a century now. And it’s a funny, strange, and all-too-human story…right down to the neighbor’s nosiness and my brother’s fortuitous escape.

Well, today’s saint, Aloysius, had a similar experience as a child…sort of. Here is how Butler recounts it:

His father designing to train him up in the army, in order to give him an inclination to that state, furnished him with little guns and other weapons, took him to Casal to show him a muster of three thousand Italian foot [infantry], and was much delighted to see him carrying a little pike and walk before the ranks. The child stayed there some months, during which time he learned from the officers certain unbecoming words, the meaning of which he did not understand, not being then seven years old. [emphasis added]

However, the denouement of this story was far more scarring for Aloysius than mine was for me. Butler continues:

But his [Aloysius’] tutor hearing him use bad words, chid him for it, and from that time he [Aloysius] could never bear the company of any persons who in his hearing ever profaned the holy name of God. This offense, though excusable by his want of age and knowledge, was to him during his whole life a subject of perpetual humiliation, and he never ceased to bewail and accuse himself of it and accuse himself of it with extreme confusion and compunction. [emphasis again added]

From that point on, the chidden and humiliated child dedicated the rest of his entire life to ensuring that he never again come anywhere close to saying or doing the wrong thing, even inadvertently. What a burden! What a horrific, tragic, sad springboard for a life of righteousness: based in shame, filled with fear, and replete with life-long self-flagellation for repeating cuss words said by soldiers when he was but six years old! Heck, I don’t even have any lasting marks on my arm from my own encounter with a shattered storm door.

Shame gets in early and casts log shadows. Why in the world didn’t Aloysius’ tutor, barely suppressing a giggle, simply advise the young boy that to first learn what words mean before he used them… or why didn’t the tutor just proceed with a spelling lesson and ignore the boy’s prattle until the child’s mind was filled with other matters!? Would Aloysius have ended up any less loving or caring or saintly without this baseless shaming haunting him all his days?!