God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength.” You take the four: heart, soul, mind and strength and devote every one of them to the Spirit of the Lord. Obeying and fulfilling this commandment, you concentrate wherever you are. You are at peace. You are poised. You are free. It matters not what comes to you. This is the power of devotion.

The Convent of Perpetual Adoration

Those who go to nunneries and monasteries have certain practices of devotion which continually recall them from distraction. We read in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables about the nuns of the Convent of the Perpetual Adoration, that they were reminded of the Holy Life every half hour by the ringing of a bell. Then it mattered not what they were doing, or how much they were engaged at that moment, every nun ceased and repeated over an Ave Maria or other prayer.

Oftentimes the ring came in the midst of a conversation which was causing a nun to be disturbed, distracted and resisting within herself, but they all dropped their eyes as the bell sounded and repeated over the words, that reminded them of the One of whom they were to think perpetually. You can imagine that sometimes, when a nun was losing her temper, she turned within to the quiet place and was immediately poised; that one, perhaps, was beginning to engage in some foolish occupation or conversation, then she was reminded and quickly came to herself. The description is very, beautiful of the Convent of