Leander of Seville

To the same extent that God’s gift of a dowry is more generous, just so is his love more immense. For he deeply loves the one whom he espoused with his own blood. And for this, he preferred to have his body opened by wounds through the thrust of a sword, that he might buy your purity for himself and consecrate your chastity. He loved equally all humankind, so that, just as his death is our life and his humility is the curing of our pride, so our integrity was bought with his wounds, for he wished to be struck himself rather than to permit us to be struck by the “hammer of the whole earth.” “You have been bought with a price,” says the apostle; “do not become the slaves of people.” Why should you, a virgin, wish to give a man a body already redeemed by Christ? One has redeemed you, and you wish to marry another? Do you enjoy liberty at the cost of another’s freedom and condemn yourself to voluntary servitude? If the whole world is inscribed as a dowry, what is more precious than the blood of Christ by which the world was redeemed? Weigh the reward and the cost, that you may know that he who redeemed is worth more than that which he redeemed. THE TRAINING OF NUNS.