THE VENERABLE DON BOSCO
behind her carrying on the supernatural work she had initiated in Mornese valley more than two hundred and fifty nuns imbued with the apostolic spirit of the founder and of his glorious patron, St. Francis of Sales.
The holy Bishop of Geneva has bequeathed to numbers of religious orders who serve holily the Church of God, his name and his spirit. His own creation, which he trained from the cradle of infancy, the Order of the Visitation, he so impregnated with his spirit, through his holy life, his oral instructions during many years, and his incomparable spiritual writings, especially the Constitutions and Directory he devised for his nuns, that the spirit of the Visitation is essentially one with his own, so much so that it has ever been deemed the distinctive mark of the Order. And the spirit of love and gentleness is the keystone of the Salesian Order; it is its strength, its raison d'etre, I might say; the golden-winged angel who, from its wide-scattered missions, bears thousands of souls to the shining land.
Unkindness is the chief assistant to Satan in peopling the prisons of hell. Who knows what a terrible train of consequences may follow that act of unkindness? Anger lays hold of the victim, temptation, the unholy spirit of revenge, take possession of him. Unkindness hinders prayer, creates distrust of God, and in cruelly flagellating the heart, steels it against its fellow-creatures. It may cast one into a slough of despond from which
92
