"My earliest recollection is of listening to my father and then deciding for myself what to do. I decided not to do what my father suggested and he was not offended. He was not the sort of man who imposed his will on others. I was three years of age at the time. We were in the process of building a new home and were up there one day while construction was going on. Dad had shot a rabbit and was holding it up by the hind legs. It seemed as large as myself. He asked me to take it down home. He said it was all right, that the rabbit was dead and would not harm me. I did not understand what 'dead' meant. I thought within myself: 'You know that it will not harm me but I do not know that, and so I cannot take it.' I refused, although of course I never spoke a word. The incident left a deep impression. Even to this day I cannot be sure whether this first conscious and deliberate decision was a sin emerging from a failure to abandon my independence in trust to my father, or a mature act of responsibility, having listened."

Sean Caulfield, O.C.S.O The Experience of Praying