The Jesuits - James Aitken Wylie

he acquits himself on the trial to the satisfaction of
his examiners, he receives the Sacrament, and is
advanced to the House of Second Probation.[10]
Here the discipline is of a yet severer kind. The
novitiate first devotes a certain period to confession
of sins and meditation. He next fulfils a course of
service in the hospitals, learning humility by
helping the poor and ministering at the beds of the
sick. To further his advance in this grace, he next
spends a certain term in begging his bread from
door to door. Thus; he learns to live on the coarsest
fare and to sleep on the hardest couch. To perfect
himself in the virtue of self-abnegation, he next
discharges for awhile the most humiliating and
repulsive offices in the house in which he lives.
And now, this course of service ended, he is invited
to show his powers of operating on others, by
communicating instruction to boys in Christian
doctrine, by hearing confessions, and by preaching
in public. This course is to last two years, unless
the superior should see fit to shorten it on the
ground of greater zeal, or superior talent.
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