Suppose that your child is sick, what is your first word in the morning? It is, How is the baby this morning? Then follows much more: I think it is a little better to-day; it seems easier; or it passed a bad night; I hope the day will be cool, for it suffers from heat. So, anxiety for your poor little child consecrates your first thoughts and words to its welfare. And do you not know that your poor soul is either sick or runs the risk of catching a deadly sickness every day you live? There are bad sights on the streets that tend to sicken it; there are snares of the devil, such as cursing and foul-talking companions, bad reading and saloons; there is a spiritual cancer within--I mean the temptation of the flesh--which can only be kept from destroying the soul's life by constant and severe treatment. Now, thoughts and words do your sick child little good; but they are the very best things for the soul, especially early in the morning. The man or woman who kneels down and says the morning prayer guards against temptation, heads off the noon-day demon, and provides that happiest of evenings, that is to say, the one which follows an innocent day. There's a saying against braggarts and promise-breakers that "fine words butter no parsnips." It is not true of words said in charity to our neighbor or in prayer to God. Sincere words addressed to God as the day begins sweeten every morsel of food the livelong day, lighten every burden and weaken every temptation. Why, then, are you so careless about morning prayers? It can only be because you do not appreciate your spiritual weakness or you do not care what becomes of your soul before bedtime. But somebody might say: Father, can't you tell us something to make the morning prayers easy? It is very hard to remember them, and then it is so pleasant to get even five minutes more sleep, especially in the winter time; and, again, I am always in a hurry to get off to work, etc. {362} Now you might as well ask me to tell you something to make you relish a good wash and a clean shirt. If a man does not hate dirt, it is preaching up the chimney to try to make him love to be clean. Prayer cleans the heart. Prayer clothes the soul with the grace of God. Prayer brings down God. Prayer drives away the devil. Or, I might rather say, that for a clean heart, and in order to get the grace of God, and in order to vanquish temptation, prayer is simply and indispensably necessary. Once a man came to me and said: Father, for years I was addicted to habitual vice of the worst kind (and here he named a fearful sin), but I began some time ago to say the Litany of the Blessed Virgin every morning and the Litany of Jesus every night, and this practice has entirely cured me of that dreadful habit. Some such story as that, my brethren, every man must tell before he can say that he is delivered from sin.