Oh, my Mother, teach me this lesson too: if I could only learn it, how different my life would be! My life--every detail of it--is in GOD'S Hands. He is "ordering it sweetly," and I _complain_! How little is my faith! When my faith is great enough, I shall take all things, as sweetly as GOD orders them, even though they may upset my most cherished plans. _Point II._--ON THE WAY TO BETHLEHEM And so, in obedience to the command, Mary and Joseph leave the calm and quiet and solitude of their little home, and go to face poverty and difficulties and the unknown. But JESUS is with them, and this makes them independent of exterior circumstances--their calm and quiet are unbroken, and they can find solitude even in the busy thoroughfares. Mary is communing with her Child, and is peaceful with the peace He gives. Joy, too, fills her heart as she thinks how fast the time is approaching when she will see His face. Oh, how I should love to be allowed to go with them on this journey! At my request, Mary readily consents to take me as her servant, and I am so glad to be in that blessed company that I forego everything else--I know that the Family I have come to live with is _poor_, and I am determined not to ask them to get any special things for _me_. The table has the barest necessities--perhaps hardly these, for true poverty consists in the want of necessities; but it is the company that I care about, and nothing else matters. I can see that all sorts of inconveniences and privations and hardships will be mine, but I cannot be an exception in that Family; and somehow, now that I am so close to the Blessed Mother, I do not wish to be. My great desire is to be like her, and to share all with her and her Son. At Bethlehem Joseph begins his weary and anxious search for a lodging; but all in vain--no one wants the Holy Family. How Joseph suffers at each refusal--not for himself but for Mary! Mary is too much taken up with her joy to heed the suffering. And the servant--does she regret that she is not in one of the big hotels, as she might have been, or does she turn with joy to follow the Holy Family to the cave, saying: With JESUS and Mary I have all I want, and I love every hardship and every privation which comes to me, because I have made myself one with them? Oh, my Mother, I thank thee for allowing me to be thy servant; I thank thee for bringing me into such close contact with thy Son; I thank thee for every privation, every difficulty, every hardship, every inconvenience, every crossing of my own will which has come to me, because I chose to be in thy company and in that of thy Son. Help me to persevere bravely, thinking all worth while for the sake of the company. _Colloquy_ with Mary, asking her to get me grace to be always joyous, because I am living my life with her and her Blessed Son. _Resolution._ To show myself worthy of the company I am in, by the way I face the little difficulties of my everyday life.