Saints' Advice on Souls, to St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi

St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi knew well her vocation, and the Carmelite vocation or any cloistered vocation of prayer and penance is akin to eremitic life. She said that others might work and sweat and preach; she, as a lowly Carmelite, was to pray and suffer and immolate herself in silence.

Saints would come to Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi with advice. One day St. Ignatius of Loyola asked, "Do you know who is capable of making a great catch of souls?"

Then he answered his own query: "One who has humility. But those who do not have this humility are not able to go outside themselves."

Mary Magdalene had the secret in these words. She spent entire nights in praying for souls, tormented herself with nettles, and snipped her flesh with small scissors, and fasted. What she could not reach with her actions, she sought through her desires for souls.

Another sister commented that Mary Magdalene's zeal for the salvation of souls was so strong that "if she had given her life it woulod have seemed to her that she had not done anything at all."

Bl. Hippolytus Galantini, founder of the Congregation of Christian Doctrine, visited Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, in spirit. He emphasized to her the need to teach children, asked the assistance of her prayers in this, and let her know how zeal effects consoling results.

St. Mary Magdalene then promised him both more prayer and penance. She also exclaimed to the novices about her, "Let us not be surpassed by the seculars!" She added, "From my earliest years God has given me this impulse to work for the salvation o fmy neighbors, and I have never done anything about it.....Yet this man [Bl. Hippolytus], who perhaps has not received the graces that I have received, does so much and labors so much for the salvation of souls!"

As for love of neighbor, St. Mary Magdalene herself leaves these thoughts, recorded during one of her many ecstasies:

Oh, tell me, Mary! How am I to love this my neighbor? Oh, you have gone too high in telling me to love my neighbor as my Bridegroom has loved her. And how did He love her? For each of them He left the bosom of the Eternal Father together with the power, the wisdom and, so to speak, the purity [of the Godhead], in order to dwell midst the impurity of creatures. And finally He gave Himself and His own Blood. So too must I leave myself...and be prepared to give my blood, were such the need for their salvation.