Charity and Mutual Relations

by Mother Catherine Aurelia Caouette

How beautiful is the teaching of Christ, uttering from His Heart these sublime words: "That they all may be one, as thou Father in Me and I in thee; that they also may be one in us." (John 17:21)

There can be no surer means of pleasing our God of love than by striving to unite all hearts into one by divine charity in such a way that it may be said of us, as of the first Christians, "See how they love one another!"

May fraternal charity be, then, the queen of our Monasteries and make us sweetly obilging, ingenious in finding an excuse for what displeases us in others, indefatigable in spending ourselves perpetually in serving our neighbor; prompt to pardon and forget all.

Let us make it our glory to radiate around us this amiable virtue and remember that in the cloister still more than in the world, watchfulness is necessary that its lustre be never darkened.

Entering into the new land of the religious state, it is but just that we contract its holy manners, entirely forgetting those that are purely secular, and little in keeping with the angelic life of the cloister.  Let the solitary virgin study to copy in herself, trait by trait, the divine image of Christ, regulating her exterior so well that everything in her manners may reveal the sweet amenity of the God living in her.