The Rule of Life

29 in their churches; peace, recollection, love, uniformity, in their houses; holiness, in their members; and conservation of temporal goods. They may not give away these goods of the Congregation to outsiders, under ecclesiastical penalties. 5. If it will be necessary in any of your churches to preach the Word of God, this task is to be given by the Superior to such ones who have been instructed in the necessary doctrine and who have virtuous qualities, so that their preaching may bring salutary fruit to the listeners, enlightening by their teaching, stirring by their persuasion. Let them always attempt to speak those things which would bring forth more praise of God than of themselves; those things which would call forth in the peo- ple, with God’s help: edification, correction of behavior, love and fear of God, exercise of virtue and good works, contempt for the world, and fervent desire for and striving after eternal happiness, just as in their own churches they will not preach without the mandate of the Superior, so in other churches they will not preach without the blessing of the Ordinary. 31 6. Let the professors perform the duty of teaching imposed on them (if at some time it comes to instituting them) for the glory of God, carefully and diligently and with progress of the students. Let them use the textbooks of the most acknowledged authors, rather than fatigue themselves and their students with writing. Let them, however, not so immerse themselves, together with their students, in their subject matters that they forget prayer and mortification. 7. Masters of novices should be appointed who are exem- plary, prudent, industrious, endowed with discernment of spirits. They should teach their novices all of the [spiritual] exercises perfectly. Likewise, they will occupy and exercise them in denial of themselves and of what belongs to them, in the following of Christ the Lord, in contempt for passing goods and the desire for 31 In the 1687 edition of the Rule of Life Fr. Stanislaus had more exten- sive instruction included in this paragraph concerning preaching the Word of God (see: Positio , p. 477, note “p” and p. 478, note “g”). Ob- viously he was giving here the fruit of his own experience as a preacher. The Marians partially restored the missing text in their Statutes of 1778.