22. This, my dear brothers, is the kind of heritage we have, such godly men as the first fathers of our Order, so outstanding even before they came together to begin the Order. The dignity and the nobility of our fathers! With what reverence we should all remember them! Their character and their merits were such that Our Lady deigned to use them to found her own Order, the Order of her Servants.

Admirable men, pointing out so well for us the path to perfect life that I earlier compared you to a spiritual Pleiades! It was for this that Our Lady brought you together, one in mind, to begin her Order. She wanted you in a spiritual sense to bring stability where the impious were wandering around in circles like Orion and to show the straight path that leads to heavenly glory!

Now, the Pleiades are made up of seven stars and are part of the constellation Taurus, whose house the sun enters in the month of April, on the fifteenth to be exact. This means they begin to appear on the horizon in the springtime, just when the sun is getting warmer, opening up the earth and making it arable, causing the trees to burgeon and blossom. That is what these godly men who began our Order were like, a spiritual Pleiades, seven stars in the heavens. It was a time when Christ, the Light of the World, was beginning to bring new light and warmth to the earth through the two contemporary luminaries I mentioned before, blessed Dominic and blessed Francis[47]. The cold winds of disbelief were dying down and the warmth of charity, almost extinct, was coming back, thanks to their preaching and humble example. It was a time when the earth which is the human heart was beginning to open to the warmth of the sun of justice and to accept cultivation by these two saints who tilled for God and furrowed human hearts.

The Orders of the blessed Dominic and Francis were, even in the lifetime of their founders, like two trees flowering in virtue and blossoming into men who were already ridding the Church of heresy.

It was in just such a spiritual springtime, as I say, when just such things were happening, that our seven fathers appeared on the world´s horizon. With the passing of time they were to rise in virtue (we indicated this earlier) and in merit in the sight of God. They had the precedents set by the two luminaries I have already mentioned and by the friars who belonged to the Orders they had founded and who were already beginning to preach boldly the Word of God. By the time blessed Philip was born in 1233 these seven laymen had reached such a level of perfection that they were themselves like spiritual stars, capable on their own of diffusing rays of God´s word and examples of humility, drawing others to a life of perfection by the way they lived.

The fact that Our Lady decided to begin the Order of her Servants with these men exactly in the state in which they were already living, is the surest indication possible of how perfect and pious they were. For if they had not reached a height of sanctity above that of others and were not already pleasing to her and her Son at the time she planned to begin her own Order, she would not have chosen them over others to lay the foundations of this great Order which was to be dedicated to her and to be named after her.

23. If it must be said that no one knows of any miracles performed by these men while they were still alive, or at the moment of death or even after death, this does not take away from what we have just said about their perfection and piety.

It is possible that some of them, or even all of them, did miraculous things at one time or another. But since this would have been a long time ago and the older members of our Order have died, it is not likely that any of these miracles would have come to my notice to pass on. Besides, the working of miracles is not the only sure sign of perfection and perfect piety. If that were the case, no one could be called perfect and truly pious unless God at one time or another worked miracles through him; and everyone knows that that is not true. The gift that all perfect and pious persons are given is that of loving God above all else, of preserving charity towards all and remaining sincerely humble.

Our Lord never said, "Learn from me..". to raise the dead or to give sight to the blind, but rather "...for I am gentle and humble of heart"[48]. Somewhere else he says, "I have given you an example...; such as my love has been for you, so must your love be for each other"[49].

It appears that many people are going to try to use miracles as a proof of perfection and piety at the Last Judgment and will say, "Lord, have we not cast out devils in your name? Have we not raised the dead?" [50] and this sort of thing. Yet, they will hear from Christ, in proof that the working of miracles is a false criterion of perfection and piety, "I tell you, I do not know you[51]. Out of my sight, you evildoers"[52]. Obviously they could not receive such a frightening reply if the working of miracles were any kind of proof of perfection and piety.

24. There is another reason, perhaps the most convincing of all, why we have never heard of these men working any miracles, perfect though they may have been.

I remember that I mentioned this earlier: that Our Lady did not want any of those holy and perfect men who openly work miracles to be the founder of her Order. She wanted it to be clear that she alone is the founders of the Order specially dedicated to her name.

This did not happen without reason or by chance. Rather, we maintain, it was arranged this way by God and Our Lady. All Orders are named after their founders and Our Lady´s Order is named after her. It was only right then, that this Order have no one who by intention founded it, other than herself. I can demonstrate the truth of what I am saying. If the foundation of Our Lady´s Order were to be attributed to anyone other than to herself, it would have to be to these seven men, precisely because of their perfection. Besides, they were the Order´s first members. Yet how many times did not Fra Alexis, one of the seven, say to the friars that it would be wrong to accredit the foundation to the group of the seven first friars or to any single one of them. I heard this myself from his own lips. These were his exact words: "Neither I nor my companions ever intended to found a new religious Order or for that matter to attract a lot of others to us when we came together originally. We were under the impression that our divinely inspired purpose in going to live together was simply to flee the world and fulfill the Lord´s will better and more easily. For that reason, only Our Lady can be given the credit for beginning the Order and the only name we should have should come from her: The Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary".

25. There seems to be a contradiction here, in that we are also referred to as the Order of the Friar Servants of the Virgin Mary. But, in actual fact, our Order has three different names. One comes in a generic way from the rule of life we follow; the other comes in a special way from the activity proper to the members of the Order; and the third in a unique way from its founders, Our Lady.

It is not unlike the case of the Order of Preachers: their generic name comes from the rule they follow, the Order of Saint Augustine. At the same time they have a special name, derived from what the friars do, the Order of Friar Preachers. And finally, they have that unique name which is taken from their founder and they are called the Order of Blessed Dominic. In parallel, our Order too has three names. The generic name is based on the Rule of Blessed Augustine[53] which has been observed by us since the very earliest times: it is the Order of Blessed Augustine.

At the same time it has a special name based on the particular activities of its members, the Order of the Friar Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Finally, there is the unique name assumed from its founders, Our Lady herself, and it is called the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary.