Words of Pope Paul VI to Religious Women

Blessed, because you have chosen the better part.

Blessed, because who or what – as St. Paul says – shall separate you from the love of Christ!

Blessed, because you have given your lives to the one and only genuine love.

Blessed, because you are the best loved Daughters of the Church, and you partake of Her joys and sorrows, Her trials and Her hopes.

Blessed, because your works, your prayers, your sufferings are not in vain; nothing is hidden to the Father who sees all in secret; nothing is unrewarded by Him.

Blessed, because you, like the Mother of Jesus, have heard and put your trust in the word of God, and have been faithful to it.

. . . . You belong, and with the bonds of a particular adherence, to the Mystical Body of Christ, and in the ecclesiastical Community you have a special place; you are the joy of the Church; you are Its honor, Its beauty, Its consolation, Its example!  We wish also to add:  You are its strength!

Your choice is the best.  It is, at the same time, the most difficult and the easiest; it is closest to that of the Blessed  Virgin Mary, because like hers, it is wholly governed by a simple and total abandonment to the Divine Will:  May it be done unto me according to Thy word!

Listening to the call of Our Lord, you have generously left your homes and your families to follow Him, to serve Him in schools, with children, the sick, the aged and the infirm, to dedicate lives of prayer to Him and to His church.

The church needs your sanctity no less than your activity!