POVERTY
--
(Poverty at Notre Dame, 1842) "I am tempted to complain, dear friend (Moreau), that our Lord sends me no other suffering except to see my dear children suffer around me without, usually, the power to assist them. Lately, one of our good Brothers had his foot frozen, and another, one of his toes, and I had just 50 cents, sufficient, perhaps, to permit me to show that I was not altogether insensible to their sufferings. But, as each one understands his mission, all are happy and contented. See herein what grace can do!"
-- Letters by Father Sorin.
"We have at present but one bed, and they insist that I should take it. They themselves sleep on the floor, just as they did for three weeks at St. Peter's. Tomorrow I shall give up my room to Brother Marie, to be used for his shop. Assuredly, we are far from complaining of the poverty of our lodgings. God knows that we think little of it; and if we have desired -- as we do indeed desire --
to build a large and more convenient house, it is solely that we may be able to accomplish some of the immense good that we are called upon to do."
-- Letters by Father Sorin.
(Poverty, 1843) "In one letter sent to the Mother House, the Sister Superior said that all were in complete destitution, with straw mattresses for their only beds, and that the clothes of the Brothers were in such a state as no long to have material on which to sew patches. Once more the purse of the Mother House was emptied for the poor struggling colony; for though Father Moreau himself slept on a little pile of straw or in a chair, it broke his heart to have his children suffer through necessity what he suffered through choice."
-- On the King's Highway, p. 127.
-- (All in Common, 1848) "No distinction shall henceforth be made in the accounts of the three Societies, but all be put in common. The name of the Society to which anything is given being only mentioned so as to know, in case of division, what ought to be granted to each Society."
-- Minor Chapter, November 3,1848.
If your applications for extra expenditures, or even for articles of clothing, are not always promptly answered -- want of means often prevents it."
-- Sorin 1858.
-- PREFECTING
"It is not necessary that an overseer (prefect) should accompany the boys to the chapel in order to pay a visit to the Blessed Sacrament."
-- Council of Professors. 1847.