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It is because their labors are undertaken in obedience to Divine inspiration that Religious Communities are able to render humanity a kind of service that is incomprehensible to unaided human reason. To fit themselves for such service men and women deliberately relinquish even the most legitimate pleasures of the human heart. They leave father and mother and kindred, they sacrifice the opportunity to make for themselves the home of their choice, that they may give their affection, their energy, their ability, their all, to God, in the person of His little ones, His sick, and His poor. They bind themselves by the three holy vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience — and the world looks on and does not understand, for to the world the ascetic life is folly, even though it was by the practice of these virtues that Christ redeemed the world.
— GEORGE ALBERT GUERTIN