A convent is a hospital for the spiritually sick
1 min • Digitized on March 11, 2022
#Consecration #Doctrine #Obedience
From The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, page 219
By His friend, Jean Pierre Camus, Bishop of Belley
UPON THE STATE OF PERFECTION.
The degree of perfection to which our Blessed Father brought his Religious he makes manifest to us in one of his letters.
Do you know, (he says,) what the cloister is? It is the school of exact correction, in which each individual soul must learn the lesson of allowing itself to be so disciplined, planed, and polished that at length, being quite smooth and even, it may be fit to be joined, united, and absolutely assimilated with the Will of God.
To wish to be corrected is an evident sign of perfection, for the principal point of humility is realizing our need of it.
A convent is a hospital for the spiritually sick. The sick wish to be cured, and, therefore, they willingly submit to be lanced, probed, cut, cauterized, and subjected to any and every pain and discomfort which medicine or surgery may suggest.
In the early days of the Church, religious were called by a name which signifies healers. Oh! my daughter, be truly your own healer, and pay no heed to what self-love may whisper to the contrary. Say to yourself, since I do not wish to die spiritually, I will be healed, and in order to be healed I will submit to treatment and correction, and I will entreat the doctors to spare me nothing which may be required to effect my cure.