Adapted from Conference 20 of St. Francis de Sales
Candidate: “ I thought that to be a good nun, it was enough to desire to pray well, to have visions and revelations, to see Angels in human form, to be ravished in ecstasies, to be fond of reading good books. I thought I was so virtuous, so mortified, so humble; everybody admired me. Was it not being very humble to speak so sweetly to my friends about matters of devotion, to repeat sermons at home, to be kind to those that lived with me, particularly when they did not contradict me?”
St. Francis de Sales: “Certainly, my dear daughter, that was very well 
in the world; but religious life requires us to do works worthy of our vocation; that is, to ignore ourselves in all things. Do you think those good religious of the desert, who arrived at so great a degree of union with God, attained to it by following their inclinations? Certainly not; they mortified themselves in the most holy things, and although they took great pleasure in singing divine canticles, in reading, praying, and other things, they did not do them at all to please themselves; on the contrary, they voluntarily deprived themselves of these pleasures, to give themselves up to laborious and painful works.
It is certainly true, that religious souls receive a thousand joys and sweetnesses amid the mortifications and exercises of holy religion; for it is chiefly to them that the Holy Spirit imparts His precious gifts; therefore, they must seek only God, and the mortification of their humors, passions, and inclinations in holy religious life; for if they seek anything else, they will never find in it the consolations they desire.
But we must have an invincible courage not to be wearied with ourselves, because we shall always have something to do to grow. The business of religious ought to be to cultivate their minds well, so as to root out all the weeds that our nature causes so to spring up every day. We seem to have always to do this over again. The religious ought not to be disturbed if she does not at once reap the fruits of perfection and of virtues, provided she is very faithful in cultivating well the soil of her heart, by cutting off all that she perceives to be contrary to the perfection which she is bound to aim at, for we shall never be perfectly cured, till we are in Paradise.
TO BE CONTINUED!