Heaven should be our most important goal!

Dear Mothers and Families,

As you probably remember from reading, “See you in Heaven,” Rosie and I started the first home school organization in Louisiana with three other Catholic families in the early 1980’s. For the most part, we handled the organizational part of the school. At one time we had over four hundred children registered in our little school named, St. Francis Academy. It was exciting! Our oldest child was seven when we actually started our school but Rosie was way ahead, she had actually taught him how to read at four years old before she ever heard of home schooling. As the years crept by and more and more children filled our home, Rosie became too busy to be concerned about teaching our children to read at four years old. As motherly wisdom and maturity began forming in Rosie, her priorities of what was really important in home schooling began to change. Such as, we are a family first before we are a school, and common sense is actually more important in life than book sense. Developing our hands in skills is as important as developing our minds. And the most difficult one to impart is, Heaven is our most important goal and to achieve it is our greatest success.

Rosie started praying more, reading more, especially lives of the saints, and writing down her thoughts. She would sometime share with other mothers that, we are a family first and not the school system. Rosie started composing a Catholic phonics book for her children to learn how to read, with stories for them to read about themselves and their family with real events in their Catholic life. Not all, but most of her writings were done before the Blessed Sacrament in holy hours with her children and also late at night when everyone was asleep. Probably about this same time she was writing letters to her daughters and future daughters-in-law for when they become adults. I think about twenty-eight letters of motherly advice was written, although I don’t believe I was aware of them until after her death.

My daughter, Maria, and I are in the process of gathering and compiling most, if not all, of Rosie’s letters and articles that she wrote in her motherly and spiritual journey in life. We believe it will be a welcomed companion with her “See You in Heaven” book and be more in depth of who she was and is. It would also be a need if and when the Church would look further into her life. But as of now the Church has much more serious problems to be concerned about, at least they think they do. But for my part, if the Church would have supported and promoted the vocation of traditional motherhood instead of college careers for women in these last fifty to sixty years, I don’t believe we would have these serious scandals. The root problem here is the destruction of the traditional family, where the mother leaves the home, and the important and key word is traditional, not modern.

Hopefully before the end of this year, we will have this book published and available. It is our hope and prayers that Rosie might have something else to say in this very mixed up and secular world that can bring a little more light of sanity. It’s worth a try! At least, we think so. God bless, - Robert Gil