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| St. Joseph the Carpenter |
In discerning whether a young woman had a true vocation to religious life, Mother Margaret above all looked for a practical sense of self-sacrifice. Rather than self-mortification through pious practices, young women were needed to do the work of building the kingdom by caring for the sick, educating the young and spreading the faith in a hostile land. She wrote, “It is no use persons coming to us who are not willing to suffer everything for the salvation of souls. They must have a heroic spirit, and be ready to bear heat, cold, fatigue, and every other inconvenience. It is easier to say that we delight in mean and abject employments, than it is to do them. We have had experience of this, and all would prefer to wear a hair shirt or a chain, than to clean the kitchen, wash, iron, or cook; though God has commanded all to earn their bread in the sweat of their brow. This is quite lost sight of, and is almost looked upon as a disgrace. Yet it is certain that Our Lord in working as a carpenter must have fulfilled the command, and Our Blessed Lady had no servants to wait on her. The more I see of human nature, the more I feel certain that humble and laborious employments are the best mortification, the shortest way to obtain true humility, and to make us have a proper feeling of charity towards the laborious and the poor. We can ill give lessons to others of things we have not ourselves experienced.”
Drane, Augusta Theodosia (Mother Francis Raphael), Life of Mother Margaret Mary Hallahan: Foundress of the English Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena of the Third Order of St. Dominic, Longmans, Green and Co., New York, New York, 1929, p.178
