7 August | Feast

There are three general practices to which our profession obliges us: obedience, chastity, and the renunciation of ownership. These are common to the profession of all Orders. As far as these practices are concerned there is no difference between the Orders except in their dress; they are all essentially one, as it were, as long as they are equally strict, and all who observe the same practices with equal strictness are worthy of equal merit.

But in our Order, as in every other, these general practices are reinforced by others that are more particular, and by these the Orders are distinguished one from another, some being stricter than others. With regard to these practices any religious who has asked permission, even if it has not been granted, is allowed by common law to transfer from one Order to another to gain the benefit of a more perfect way of life.

“How great are your works! Your thoughts are very deep.” “The dull man cannot know these things indeed, nor the fool understand them.” “Who has known the mind of the Lord whose wisdom is beyond measure, or who has been his counsellor?” For the Lord, whose providence is unerring in its dispositions, designedly set some in the desert with Mary, when it was his purpose to array the garden of the Church Militant with a diversity of Orders, and others with Martha in the city. Those endowed with learning, industrious in the study of the Scriptures, and of adequate moral probity, he established in the city, so that they could exercise their zeal in nourishing the people with his word. Those of a simpler cast, however, those with whom he holds secret colloquy, he marked out to be sent into the desert with the Prophet who said: “Lo, I have journeyed afar in flight; I fixed my abode in the wilderness. I awaited him who saved me from faintheartedness, and from the tempest.”

He uses the word 'Lo' demonstratively, to draw attention to his words, as if to say: “See what I have done, and do likewise yourself. In my flight from the turmoil of the world I did not stay to dwell within the walls of the city, nor in its suburbs, nor amid its outlying gardens nor anywhere in the neighborhood, but I journeyed afar in flight, and ‘fixed my abode in the wilderness.’ And I ‘fixed my abode;’ there is truth: I did not return to the city after a few days, as they do now, but I fixed my abode in the wilderness, awaiting ‘him who saved me from faint-heartedness and from the tempest.’”

With such special care has the Lord provided for the guidance of all religious, whether in the desert or in the city, that in his infinite wisdom he has given them all, through those best qualified to draw up their Rules, their own distinct ways of life, the ways he knew to be best suited to each of the Orders in the circumstances its members would find themselves in.

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