discution-visitandineEvery Congregation has a particular spirit and charism. The Order of the Visitation may be characterized by humility.

Chapter 2 of the Abridgement of the Interior Spirit of a Visitandine has this to say:

St. Francis se Sales proposes the humility of Jesus Christ to his daughters for their imitation.

This incomparable legislator wished that his daughters should have no knowledge except that of Jesus Christ crucified ; showing them in the midst of that adorable volume these divine characters, ” Learn of me who am humble of heart.It is this humility, my dear daughters, said this holy founder, which forms religious discipline, which is the foundation of the spiritual edifice, and the infallible mark of the children of Jesus Christ. Wherefore you should pay a special attention to it ; performing all your actions in the spirit of a profound, sincere, and frank humility. This virtue, well practiced, will advance you in the exercise of a humility generally unknown ; and will so plunge you in your unworthiness, that you will disappear in your own eyes, and in those of the world ; since it is so conformable to your spirit, to avoid eclat, and seek annihilation, that if you fail you will lose your treasure, and will no longer be Daughters of the Visitation. Know then that your congregation will never exalt its branches and fruits, but in proportion as its roots are planted deep in the love of baseness and abjection.