A Right to Be Merry Quotes

“True education always fosters humility, although mere accumulation of facts fosters pride. All these things are requisite in the cloister. Above all, authentic education fits a person for a life of solitude. A girl who has learned to cultivate the soil of her own intelligence is already conditioned for an interior life. Her education is thus supremely useful to her in the cloister.”
― Mary Francis, A Right To Be Merry

“Activity not rooted in prayer is mere bombast and flurry. It may raise a great deal of dust and deafen many an ear, but it will never make a dent on things eternal. Activity which takes its strength from prayer and which looks to contemplatives to fill up its measure, just as contemplatives look to God’s infantry to satisfy the burning missionary drive in their own hearts, will have God Himself for its eternal monument.”
― Mary Francis, A Right To Be Merry

“For mere authority as such never takes hold of our hearts, but virtue and holy lovableness do. We are directed in the ways of obedience by a lawful superior. We are led by a lovable one.”
― Mary Francis, A Right To Be Merry

“And I entreat her who shall be in office, that she strive to precede the other Sisters more by virtue and holy behavior, than by her office, so that, touched by her example, they obey her, not so much from a sense of duty, as from love.”
― Mary Francis, A Right To Be Merry

“Some pious books of the “old school” of spirituality (by which I mean warmed-over Jansenism, not ancient monasticism) seem to teach that the way to make a roaring success of your religious life is to become a real glutton for everything your nature abhors and to eschew anything joyous or agreeable like the plague. Superiors, of course, according to such authors, have a sacred duty to make life as unpleasant for their subjects as they possibly can. If they know that Sister Gandulpha is frightened half to death of heavy machinery, then she is the one to put in charge of the laundry. If postulant Marybelle loves music with all her heart and holds a Master’s degree in piano, then she must be kept half a mile from the organ. Novice Libera-nos, who likes nothing better than gardening and has the frame of the athlete she was in the world, should paint illuminations; while Sister Memento-mori, whose delicate fingers make magic with watercolor, should never be allowed to paint.”
― Mary Francis, A Right To Be Merry