To Sister Vincenzina

Superior in Monreale

Palermo, 21 October 1884

My sister and daughter in Jesus Christ,

may Jesus be loved by all hearts!

We have the light of the Lord in the rule, which the Great Mother of God gave us. What we need is to live by the spirit of our rule, and no longer live according to the naturalness of our heart. By doing this we will have the light to see, know and appreciate our great fortune, and we will form the taste to become more and more fortunate.

For the daily food, my daughter, your faith is more assured, as you write to me in this last letter, but for the dress your heart is afflicted and makes faith fail, well remember that the good Jesus, wanting to give the light to the blind, he used the mud formed with spit and earth; it is by following the same path that he wants to give us light by uniting our land to his spit, thanks to the observance of the holy rule. We must feed the Poor before we eat, and equally we must clothe the Poor, before dressing us. This is the same as saying: both to eat, to dress, and so for all the rest of the things necessary for life, it is not the Poor who must first experience poverty and suffering, but it must be us. So, let’s move on to observance, let’s put this prodigious mud in our eyes. Do for dressing what you did for eating; begin to spoil your sheets and make shirts and skirts for the poor orphans. Soon you will get up, even the shirts to give them to the orphans, and so we will see that, if the heart of the Monrealeses does not move, God’s heart will certainly move and will come to our aid […].

I bless you in the name of the Lord.