FOR GREATER THINGS
The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka

by William T. Kane, S.J.
with a preface by James J. Daly, S.J.


PREFACE

Among Christian evidences the heroic virtue and holiness of Catholic
youth must not be overlooked. Juvenile and adolescent victories of a
conspicuous kind, over the flesh, the world, and the devil, can be
found in no land and in no age, except a Christian land and age, and
in no Church except the Catholic Church. It is of all excellences
the very rarest and most difficult, this triumphant mastery over
human weakness and human pride. It has defied the life-long
strivings of men whom the world recognizes as beings of superior
wisdom and power of will. The philosophers who have described it
most beautifully and encouraged its pursuit in the most glowing and
impressive terms remain themselves sad examples of human futility in
the struggle to disengage the spirit from the claws of dragging and
unclean influences. For the forces of evil are infinite in their
variety, insidious beyond the ability of natural sharpness to detect
and guard against, and unsleeping in the pressure of their siege
upon the heart of man. Who will explain how it comes to pass that
youth, whose callowness and inexperience are the mockery of the
world, has laid prostrate in single combat this giant of evil and
won fields where the reputations of the world's wisest and noblest
and most tried lie buried?