I
had imagined that the care which I assumed of the schools and the
masters would amount only to a marginal involvement committing me to
no more than providing for the subsistence of the masters and
assuring that they acquitted themselves of their tasks with piety and
devotedness ... Indeed, if I had ever thought that the care I was
taking of the schoolmasters out of pure charity would ever have made
it my duty to live with them, I would have dropped the whole project.
... God, who guides all things with wisdom and serenity, whose way it
is not to force the inclinations of persons, willed to commit me
entirely to the development of the schools. He did this in an
imperceptible way and over a long period of time so that one
commitment led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the
beginning of death.
--
Saint John Baptist de La Salle
