the care of his secular affairs, of providing him with meals, of taking care of his linen, and other similar things. " Oh!" says St. Teresa, " what obstacles does such worldly correspondence present to the spiritual progress of religious." Should there be an ancient custom in your convent of making presents to the confessor, it will be enough for you to send him two or three times a year some trifle as a mark of attention. Be always most watchful over your words so that nothing may ever escape you that would express the least affection or tenderness.
Do not pretend that there is no danger because that priest is a saint. " Nor," says St. Thomas, " are they to be less avoided because they are more holy: for the greater their sanctity the more they excite sentiments of affection." The Venerable Father Sertorio Caputo of the Society of Jesus says that the devil first makes us love a man's virtue, then his person, and at length draws us over the precipice. St. Thomas teaches that the devil at first kindles an attachment which only slightly wounds the soul: but what appeared to be pure angelic love soon degenerates into the human affection of beings clothed with flesh. Looks and words of tenderness follow; these are succeeded by a desire of each other's society: thus by degrees a holy attachment will be converted into a natural affection. Such is the doctrine of St. Thomas.
St. Bonaventure gives five marks by which we may ascertain whether a mutual attachment between two friends is pure or otherwise. 1. It is not pure when it leads to long and useless discourses; and when conversations are very long they are always useless. 2. When each delights in looking at each other and in praising
