oviciate. In place of
poverty many of you will enter into palaces and rich abbeys, and
perhaps you will be commanded to share this luxury for a season. In
this apparent wealth you will observe your vow of poverty, if you, as
the Apostle says, enjoy as if you enjoyed it not; if you are, to use a
comparison made by our Father Ignatius, as a column, which suffers
itself to be clothed or unclothed, decked in rags or precious stones,
without remarking or knowing anything about it, without requiring, or
desiring anything. Then indeed in spite of overflowing tables, purple
and fine linen you will be observing your vow of poverty. Others on the
other hand will have in the woven huts of the Indians, or in the basket
houses of the Mongolians scarcely enough to cover their nakedness or
appease their hunger. There will be times when a stone will be their
pillow and a handful of moss their food. If however at those moments,
they direct their attention to trying to render their lot easier, or if
they, instead of being devoted by day and by night to their mission,
rather let their hearts yearn for the few things which they still have,
so will they break their vow of poverty, although they are poor. That
they should inwardly free themselves from any joy at possession, is
that, which their vow requires of them."

"Secondly our Founder wished his disciples to shine through the vow of
obedience. Therewith the outer is not alone meant, that you should
unconditionally perform that which is commanded you. In this manner the
dog obeys his master, there would be nothing excellent in that. But
that obedience should rank as a virtue, the inferior must make the will
of his superior his own, he must sacrifice his own insight, so that he
should not only will, but also think as does his superior, and he must
hold as right and true all that the latter orders and thinks. All your
courage depends on the simplicity of blind obedience. 'Incomplete
subjection,' says the holy Ignatius, 'has two eyes, but for its own
destruction; complete subjection is blind, but in that consists its
wisdom and completeness.' You should be filled with a blind impulse of
obedience, as Abraham was, when willing to slay his only son, because
to obey he considered as a delight. The obedience which made him
righteous was that he did what appeared wicked to him, because
commanded by God, for goodness is not in itself good, but only because
God has commanded it in his law. Abraham