There is a love which is the soul of every virtue, and another love which is an incentive to every vice; the former we call charity, the latter concupiscence. Charity, since it comes from heaven, has for its aim three noble objects--God, ourselves, and our neighbours. Concupiscence, since it is altogether of the earth, has low aims, which are likewise threefold--the pomp of the world, self-interest, and pleasure. According as one or other of these is stronger in us we attain sanctification and happiness, or spiritual ruin and misery. To destroy the reign of perverse love and these three hostile passions there are no arms more reliable than those which attack their very foundations, and these arms are obedience, poverty, and chastity. These were the arms which Rita continued to wield until she received from her Divine Spouse the eternal crown prepared for her ripe and splendid virtues! The strongest weapon of the perfect is obedience, and when it is employed by charity it opens up the way to every good object, as, on the other hand, disobedience lays open the way to every evil, visible and invisible, of the world. To begin with the consideration of this great virtue, which Rita made a solemn vow to practise, we can affirm that she possessed it in a most eminent degree. All her actions were so many acts of obedience, or, rather, her whole conventual life was an uninterrupted act of the humblest, truest, and readiest obedience. Following the principles of her enlightened piety, she knew only too well the truth declared to Samuel, that the sacrifice of the will is more acceptable to God than the sacrifice of victims.[1] She always kept before her eyes the example of a God who, for our instruction, willed to live subject to His own creatures. She felt moved to imitate the heroic virtue of so many sainted monks and nuns, and she saw clearly the great advantage which obedience gave in directing our steps through this world of darkness and sin. She therefore subjected herself not only to all the laws of the Gospel, of the Church, of the Rule and Constitutions of her Order, and not only obeyed with respect and alacrity all the commands of the different superiors she had, and carried out the duties of the various offices she filled, but she eagerly desired to subject herself to her equals or juniors in the convent, and sought to anticipate the commands even of these, to follow their counsels and carry out their desires, esteeming herself only as the unworthy servant of all. Virtue so rare deserved to be put to the severest proof, since God often tries the virtue of the pious either Himself or through the means of others.