168.
[210] Vie des premieres Religieuses Dominicaines de la
Congregation de St. Dominique, a Nancy; Nancy, 1896, p. 129.
We have no time to multiply examples, so I will let the case of
Saint Louis of Gonzaga serve as a type of excess in purification.
I think you will agree that this youth carried the elimination of
the external and discordant to a point which we cannot
unreservedly admire. At the age of ten, his biographer says:--
"The inspiration came to him to consecrate to the Mother of God
his own virginity--that being to her the most agreeable of
possible presents. Without delay, then, and with all the fervor
there was in him, joyous of heart, and burning with love, he made
his vow of perpetual chastity. Mary accepted the offering of his
innocent heart, and obtained for him from God, as a recompense,
the extraordinary grace of never feeling during his entire life
the slightest touch of temptation against the virtue of purity.
This was an altogether exceptional favor, rarely accorded even to
Saints themselves, and all the more marvelous in that Louis dwelt
always in courts and among great folks, where danger and
opportunity are so unusually frequent.
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