The 1813 Rule of Life for the Youth Congregation was divided into four sections. The first section focused on Jesus Christ in their lives. The second section was on how to live this relationship:
The first condition that God requires of us to be truly his disciples and to be a part of his eternal Kingdom, is to follow faithfully the commandments he prescribed for us by his holy law. The members will make it their duty not only to believe, which is not enough to be justified, but to practice with exactness all that the law of our Lord Jesus Christ commands us to believe and to put into practice.
Règlements et Statuts de la Congrégation de la Jeunesse, 1813, p. 19 -20
The danger here could be that the law could be imposed from above to be blindly received and obeyed. In his dealings with the youth of Aix, I get the impression that the “law of Our Lord Jesus Christ” was more of a value learnt through their activities. We will see later in the Rule how it was through games, interaction, catechesis and prayer that this was done.
The 1809 letter to his mother on his catechetical methods at the seminary in Paris point in this direction:
Talking of this, I must ask Emile [ed. his cousin in Aix] to take on a big job for me; namely, to copy out from the Aix catechism the headings of the stories given at the end of each chapter; he is to write them out on a sheet of paper, writing very small, as follows, for example: Baptism: story of …. Pride: story of …. and so on for all the chapters, beginning with the first. He should let me have this a little at a time, as he progresses. If I see it is not going to be much of a help to me, I will call a halt; but I think the listing of these stories is going to be most useful for locating them easily and applying them, as I want to season my instructions with them to make them more interesting.
Young people have to be attracted in all sorts of ways.
Letter to his mother, 4 February 1809, O.W. XIV n.44
He taught them many things in parables, and in the course of his teaching he said to them, ‘Listen! Imagine a sower going out to sow…” (Mark 4:2-3)