"As regards the vocation of this young lady, I consider it good, mingled though it be in her mind with imperfections and desirable though it would have been that she should have come to God simply and solely for the sake of the happiness of being wholly His. Remember that those whom God calls to Himself are not all drawn by Him with the same kind, or degree, of motives.
"There are but few who give themselves absolutely to His service from the one only desire to be His, and to serve Him alone.
"Among the women whose conversion the Gospel has made famous, Magdalen alone came through love, and with love.
"The adulteress came through public shame, the woman of Samaria from private and individual self-reproach, the woman of Canaan in order to be healed of bodily infirmity. Again, among the saints, St. Paul, the first hermit, at the age of fifteen, took refuge in his cave to escape persecution. St. Ignatius Loyola came through distress and suffering, and so on with hundreds of others. We must not expect all to begin by being perfect. It matters little how we commence, provided only that we are firmly resolved to go on well, and to end well. Certainly Leah intruded with scant courtesy into Rachel's promised place, as the wife of Jacob, yet she afterwards conducted herself so irreproachably, and behaved with such modesty and sweetness, that to her rather than to Rachel was vouchsafed the blessing of being an ancestress of our Lord.
"Those who were compelled to come into the marriage feast in the Gospel, ate, and drank of the best, nor, had they been the guests for whom the banquet was prepared, could they have fared better. If, then, we would have a pledge of their good living and perseverance, we must lock at the good dispositions of those who enter Religion rather than at the motives which impel them: for there are many souls who would not have entered the convent at all if the world had smiled upon them, and whom we nevertheless may find to be resolute in trampling under their feet the vanities of that same world."
[Footnote 1: 1 Cor. vii.]
UPON PRUDENCE AND SIMPLICITY.
"I know not," said our Blessed Father, on one occasion, "what this poor virtue of prudence has done to me that I find it so difficult to love it: if I do so at all, it is only because I have no choice in the matter, seeing that it is the very salt of life, and a light to show us the way out of its difficulties.
"On the other hand, the beauty of simplicity charms me. I would rather possess the harmlessness of one dove than the wisdom of a hundred serpents. I know that a combination of wisdom and simplicity is useful, and that the Gospel recommends it to us;[1] but I am of opinion that in this matter it should be as it is with certain medicines, in which a minute dose of poison is mixed with many wholesome drugs. If the doses, of serpent and dove were equal, I would not trust the medicine; the serpent can kill the dove, the dove cannot kill the serpent. Besides, there is a sort of prudence that is human and worldly which Scripture calls carnal wisdom,[2] as it is only used for wrong-doing, and is so dangerous and so subtle that those who possess it are unconscious of their own danger. They deceive others, yet are the first to be themselves deceived.
"I am told that in an age so crafty as our own prudence is necessary, if only to prevent our being wronged. I say nothing against this dictum, but I do believe that more in harmony with the mind of the Gospel is that which teaches us that it is great wisdom in the sight of God to suffer men to devour us, and to take away our goods,[3] bearing the loss of them joyfully, knowing that a better and a more secure substance awaits us. In a word, a good Christian should always choose rather to be the anvil than the hammer, the robbed than the robber, the victim than the murderer, the martyr than the tyrant. Let the world rage, let the prudence of so-called philosophy stand aghast, let the flesh despair; it is better to be good and simple than clever and wicked."