The Sisters retire at an appointed hour and arise at the first sound of the bell. They work faithfully and industriously all day long, all year long, all their lives.
Their wages are neither gold nor silver. They are the eternal merits which they know awaits them in a better life. The false and artificial customs of the world are strangers here. This short and sorrowful life is looked upon as a pilgrimage in a land of exile, or as the passage of a train from which the traveler joyfully observes the fleeting objects along the route, well knowing that every disappearing mile-post reduces the distance between him and his dearly beloved home.
The Sisterhood is as a garden of many flowers, where the pure white lily never loses its beauty, where the red rose of love has made place for the pure white blossom of Christian Charity; and the fragrant little violet of humility diffuses incense to the angels who ascend and descend about the Throne of God.
People often condole the Religious closed up within the prison walls of the Convent and forever deprived of the joys and pleasures of the world. Little they know that within these same walls the heart is as free as the flight of the bird, while the soul in solitude is in constant communion with God, whose Divine Presence is felt in the life that surrounds her.
She hears His voice in the gentle sigh of the breeze, in the hum of the bee, in the song of the bird and in the soft murmur of the little brooklet breaking over the mountainside. His wonderful attributes become visible to a certain degree in every object around her. She admires His Divine Providence in the fatherly care which He takes of His creatures. Even the tiniest insect and the smallest blade of grass show forth the love, wisdom and the goodness of God.
The soul in solitude, hidden within the Convent walls, admires the grandeur and glory of God as manifested in the majestic rising and setting of the sun, and its influence over all nature. God’s beauty is seen in the color of the clouds and in the ever-varying tints of the sky. The fragrance of the flowers reminds her of the odor of sanctity which a Christian should leave in his wake; and if, as sometimes occurs, one observes anything which mars the beautiful face of Nature or disturbs the peaceful course of events, it brings to mind the revolting sight of a soul in sin and the remorse and confusion it must suffer.