“Reflecting on our sad circumstances, and knowing by experience
your charitable heart, I have at last determined to ask you
for some charity, for the love of Jesus. We are twenty-five in
community, without a morsel of bread in our house, and deprived
absolutely of the means to obtain it; the Lord having permitted
that we should be abandoned by all, because we are all in great
distress and tribulation. Your Reverence by these words may
understand my internal affliction and the nature of the sword
that pierces my heart.”
Here is a letter from a holy Prioress of Augustinian nuns, driven out of
their convent and obliged to rent a house:—
“I reply, with deep gratitude, to your precious letter, and
thank you infinitely for the alms sent in it. I thank the Giver
of every good, and after Him all those who have concurred to
aid us, and you who are the head of the good work, so full of
charity, as is that of assisting us poor creatures reduced
to extreme necessity. For as this necessity is all the more
increased as we, most unfortunate, have been driven out of our
convent, and with sorrow and fright, have been obliged to rent
this poor house at a sum beyond the possibility of our being
able to pay. May Jesus, our Spouse, be blessed for all these
misfortunes. There remains to us one only consolation. It is
that daily we have the holy Mass in a little chapel, and we
can remain with Jesus in the Eucharist. Where Jesus is there
is nothing that we can desire. They have at length taken our
convent from us, but of Jesus no one can deprive us.”