It is chiefly in prayer that God will give you strength.

Prayer… is the daily manna which comes down from heaven .. . Like a gentle dew every morning moistens your soul by the grace which it draws down from God.

Prayer is a great book for a preacher: from it you will draw the divine truths of the Eternal Word, who is their source, and you in turn will pour them forth on the people. It is hoped that all Missionaries may have a great love for this virtue, for without its help they will do little or nothing useful, but with its help it is certain that they will touch hearts. I ask God to give us the spirit of prayer.

The first evangelical maxim teaches the lesson of poverty, and that is how Our Lord begins when He teaches the way of perfection to all who wish to follow Him; and, by the mercy of God, my daughters, that is how you begin. Because when you come here, you possess nothing; if you have anything, you give it up, according to the evangelical precept. In the Motherhouse, you have poverty in all things: you are clad in the poorest materials, no headdress is as simple as yours, the frugality, which I have just said, is a mark of God‘s guidance of your work, is evident in what you eat and drink and everything else is, by His grace, characterized by the greatest poverty.

Meekness makes us not only excuse the affronts and injustices we receive, but even inclines us to treat with gentleness those from whom we receive them, by means of kind words,… it makes us endure all for God.

It is not enough for me to love God if my neighbor does not love Him.

Let us love God… let us love God, but let it be with the strength of our arms and with the sweat of our brows. So very often many acts of love of God, of complacency, of benevolence, and such interior affection and practices, although very good and very desirable, are nevertheless to be suspected if they do not reach the practice of effective love.

Love is creative even to infinity.

What then is the spirit of the Daughters of Charity… it is the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Is it not natural for children to love their father? And that you may understand what exactly this love is, you should know that it is exercised in two different ways, one affective, the other effective.

As in the morning you speak to God in prayer, so God speaks to you when you read. If you wish your prayer to be heard by God, listen to God when you read. There is no less happiness and profit in listening to God than there is in speaking to him. I strongly recommend you not to fail to do so… and to spend a little time in prayer afterwards.

Allow yourself to be led by the Lord. He will direct all things through you. Trust him and following his example, always act humbly , gently and in good faith.

The hour for mental prayer comes round; if you hear the poor calling for you, mortify yourselves and leave God for God, although you should do all in your power not to omit prayer because it is prayer that will keep you united to God, and as long as you are united to God you have noting to fear.

The service of the poor should be preferred to everything else…

To prefer the service of the sick poor to all other corporal or spiritual exercises and to have no scruple about leaving all other things for that, provided it is urgent necessity, and not laziness, that inclines us to do so.

No spouse has ever regarded his spouse with a more loving eye tant Our Lord regards a Daughter of Charity who faithfully observes her rules. For instance, if it is the good pleasure of God that you should go on a Sunday to help a sick person instead of going to Mass, although that is a matter of obligation, Oh! you should go to the sick. That is called leaving God for God.

To leave God only for God, that is to say, to leave one work of God to perform another, either of greater obligation or greater merit, is not to leave God.

[When there is an apparent conflict between the rule to pray at specified times and the obligation of serving the sick poor,] What is to be done in such a case? Here are two rules from God… In this case holy obedience reconciles all and directs you to leave prayer to go and serve the poor.

When you leave prayer and Holy Mass to serve the poor, you are losing nothing, because serving the poor is going to God and you should see God in them.

In the case of necessity, you should prefer the service of the poor to making your prayer, but , if you take care, you will find plenty of time for both.

If you must leave prayer to attend the sick, leave it, and as you leave God in prayer , you will find God with the sick.

Loving someone is wanting all that is good for that person. Loving the Lord then is wanting that this name be known and manifested other whole world, that his kingdom come, and his will be done on earth as it is it in heaven.

We live in Jesus Christ through the death of Jesus Christ, and we must die in Jesus Christ through the life of Jesus Christ, and our life must be hidden in Jesus Christ and filled with Jesus Christ, and in order to die as Jesus Christ, we must live as Jesus Christ.

In order to do this you should form your intention at the beginning of each exercise, and in particular when you apply yourselves to the service of the poor. What a happiness, my daughters, to serve the person of Our Lord in His poor members! He has told you He will regard these services as done to Himself.

Human actions become actions of God when they are performed in Him and through Him.

This person, who seems to you to be so difficult to get on with… she is the image of God.

Service we owe our neighbor, who is the image of God.

God demands first the heart… then the work.

O, Savior of our souls, Light of the World, enlighten… our understanding that we may grasp the truth of what we have just heard, You have formed… a Company of poor girls who serve You in the manner You has taught them. Make them your instruments, O my God, and give them… the grace to carry out all [their] actions through charity, humility and simplicity for the assistance of our neighbor… We trust that if we are faithful in the observances of these virtues, we shall have the reward You promised to those who serve You in the person of the poor.

God never calls anyone to do some task unless He sees in her the appropriate qualities to carry it out, or which He plans to give her. Therefore, it is He, by His grace, who has called and united you.

I wish you a young heart and a love in its first bloom for Him who loves us unceasingly and as tenderly as if He were just beginning to love us. For all God’s pleasures are ever new and full of variety, although He never changes.