COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES
SHE told the novices: "At recreation more than elsewhere will you find occasions for the exercise of virtue. If you would reap great benefit, never go to it with any thought of your own recreation, but thinking of the recreation of others; practise therein total detachment from yourself. If, for instance, you are relating to one of the Sisters a story which seems to you interesting, and that she interrupts it to tell you something else, even though this may not at all interest you, listen to her as if it did, and do not try to return to your first subject. By so acting, you will go from the recreation room with great interior peace, and endued with fresh vigour in the practice of virtue, all because you have not sought to gratify yourself but to give pleasure to others. If one only knew what is gained by renouncing self in all things! . . ."
"You know it well; you have always acted thus?"
"Yes, I have forgotten self, I have tried not to seek myself in anything."
COUNSELS AND REMINISCENCES
[OBEDIENCE]
AS I had self-love as well as the love of what is right it was sufficient but once to tell me: "Such a thing should not be done," and I would have no desire to do it again.
HIST. D'UNE AME, CH. I
FROM what anxieties do we not free ourselves by making the vow of obedience! How happy are single-minded religious. Their sole guide being the will of Superiors, they are ever secure of going the right way without fear of error, should it even appear to them certain that the Superiors are mistaken. But when one ceases to consult the sure compass, the soul forthwith loses her way in arid paths where the waters of grace soon fail her.