Note A — XVI. To Mother M. J. Favre.

Elsewhere St. Jane Frances thus sums up for her daughters the views expressed to her on religious life by their Founder, St. Francis de Sales. "In truth, there are few monasteries which do not possess some one who gives a great example of virtue, but the majority are weak and neither great nor elevated in character. This evil is brought about by persons becoming religious who are not yet really good Christians. Such know indeed their Founder and their constitutions, but they have little knowledge of Jesus Christ and His gospels. They aspire to become perfect in a day, while yet they are unaware of their own miseries and need of justification. They expect to be cured without thoroughly knowing their disease or the physician. They begin with the roof instead of with the foundations, and are eager to offer to the divine Master what He has only recommended as a counsel, without taking the trouble to give Him what He exacts as a debt. From hence come so many dissensions, murmurings, and complaints about trivial things, so much imprudence, so many indiscretions, suspicions, rash judgements, attachments to one's own inclinations and way of thinking, and to trifles; such impatience of contempt, so little fervour in prayer, so little reverence for the holy mysteries, so little fruit from confession and frequent communion, such a poor conception and idea of the life to come, so little gratitude to Jesus Christ, so little solidity and dignity in the practices of devotion. The remedy for all these evils is to employ the time of noviceship in learning truly to know the adorable Master; His precepts, maxims and counsels, by a thorough explanation of His gospel; truly to understand the nobility of man, whom God only can render happy; his fall and his misery, which the Incarnation and the death of a God could alone remedy: the corruption of his heart, of which self-love is master; the inability in himself to do any good without the grace of Jesus Christ: the never-ending danger from that concupiscence which, though conquered, is always within him; the necessity of continual prayer, of solitude, of penance, in order to keep the senses subject to the spirit; truly to understand how terrible God is in His judgements, how heinous are the sins committed after baptism, how differently we shall look upon things after death, and what a heavy responsibility for us will be the life and death of the Redeemer: truly to learn the folly of despising these truths and the sanctity which the grace of the law of this Jesus exacts from us, He who is our Saviour and our Model."