To gain one single soul (Good Heavens! How many you could win, with God’s help, in just one of your schools!) is greater than creating an entire world!

Pierre Fourrier (1568-1640) called the “Good Father of Mattaincourt”
Canon regular of Saint-Augustin

“Teaching is a noble task. It mobilizes the most beautiful resources of man, the heart and the intelligence collaborating with the will, and the will bolstering their effort in turn. It enriches the child with useful knowledge, gives him healthy habits, high moral principles, and an ideal which lifts him above the mediocrity of his nature and his surroundings. It inspires in him a taste for the beautiful and the good, and a conviction that generosity and the gift of self are the true foundation of human happiness, while obtaining for him the knowledge of God which proves itself to be the unshakable support and final end for the soul… But although teaching is something to be passionate about, it can also be a source of a formidable exhaustion. Only those who have taught know the difficulties with which it is riddled, the irritations, the monotony, the long hours, the weariness – all of which are inseparable from it. And they know that in order to succeed both forbearance and firmness are necessary, goodness and rigor, transparency and depth, daring and prudence. In a task which requires so many diverse qualities, and which demands a considerable dose of strong nerves, one can measure neither the pain nor the fatigue: for a recompense you have to accept ingratitude in advance, and never claim the harvest of what you’ve sown. In the evening, you are more exhausted than the laborer who has plowed his furrows, or harvested his wheat and, each year, you begin anew.”

Mother Alix Le Clerc (1576-1622)
Founder of the Congregation of Canonesses of Saint Augustine of Notre-Dame