How now? Who more than she, in faith and practice, a living
member of the Communion of Saints? Did she not lately publicly
dispense in charity in a single day five hundred marks and more? Is
it not my continual labour to keep her from utter penury through her
extravagance in almsgiving? For whom does she take thought but for
the poor, on whom, day and night, she spends her strength? Does she
not tend them from the cradle, nurse them, kiss their sores, feed
them, bathe them, with her own hands, clothe them, living and dead,
with garments, the produce of her own labour? Did she not of late
take into her own house a paralytic boy, whose loathsomeness had
driven away every one else? And now that we have removed that
charge, has she not with her a leprous boy, to whose necessities she
ministers hourly, by day and night? What valley but blesses her for
some school, some chapel, some convent, built by her munificence?
Are not the hospices, which she has founded in divers towns, the
wonder of Germany?--wherein she daily feeds and houses a multitude
of the infirm poor of Christ? Is she not followed at every step by
the blessings of the poor? Are not her hourly intercessions for the
souls and bodies of all around incessant, world-famous, mighty to
save? While she lives only for the Church of Christ, will you
accuse her of selfish isolation?
C.
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