Little vanities can easily slip in, especially concerning one's appearance. Woman, even in religion, is never completely indifferent to the arrangement of pleats, to the hang of her habit, to the tucks in her bonnet or guimpe.
Perfection in dress is to be desired, but certainly no exaggerated care for insignificant details.
If in the world so many women and young girls make themselves ridiculous by constantly looking at themselves in the mirror, let me not as a religious fall into a fault of the same kind, profiting by every window or polished surface to examine myself on the sly.
It is related that the Blessed Villana of Florence loved to mirror herself. One day God permitted her to see in the glass, above her own face, the horns of a grinning demon; she understood and stopped contemplating herself.
St. Francis Borgia, who was permitted to see the queen of Spain in the corruption of the coffin, was so struck by the somber work of death upon the features of the sovereign that he renounced the world and entered the Society of Jesus, vowing himself henceforth to the pursuit of that which would never perish or lose its beauty.
Formerly monks kept a skull in their cells; no other mirror was permitted.
Father Lyonnard, co-founder of the Religious of the Agonizing Heart [1] and particularly known for his beautiful book on the Apostolate of suffering [2], sent to his religious, in answer to their request for his portrait, a square piece of paper on which he had written: Nothingness, Sin, Soon a Corpse.
[1] La vie de Mere Marie-Madeleine, la fondatrice (Apostolat de la Priere, Toulouse).
[2] La Pere Lyonnard, d'Apres son memorial (Apostolat de Ia Priere, Toulouse).
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)
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