“This is my most painful cross; the others are very small compared to this.
“Circumstances change, temptations diminish, positions improve, misfortune becomes endurable by habit, but persons who are disagreeable to us always irritate us more and more.
“How I Must Bear my Cross of To-day.—By not showing in any way either the weariness, the dislike, or the involuntary repulsion which her presence causes me. By obliging myself to render her some service, it matters little whether she knows it—it is a secret between God and me.
“To say nearly every day something good of her talents, of her virtues, her tact.... Something, certainly, I will find to praise.
“To pray seriously for her soul, and even to go so far as to ask God to love her and leave her with me.
“Dear companion, blessed messenger of God’s mercy, you have unconsciously the mission of sanctifying me, and I will not be ungrateful.
“Angel of a rude and appalling exterior, were it not for thee I would fall into humiliating faults. My nature disdains and repulses thee, but, oh! how my heart loves thee.”
There is an abundance of good advice which will touch directly upon a multitude of the commonest faults of good people—those apparently trivial sins and imperfections which cause so much unhappiness at home, which make family life so hard and bitter, and place so many obstacles in the path of perfection.
The book cannot fail to do good. It will be a favorite companion of the pious soul, an affectionate and never unwelcome monitor to the cold and careless.
Life of the Venerable Clement Mary Hofbauer, Priest of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. By a Member of the Order of Mercy, authoress of the Life of Catharine McAuley, Life of St. Alphonsus, Glimpses of Pleasant Homes, etc. New York: The Catholic Publication Society. 1877.