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 From St Peter de Alcantara to St Teresa  of Jesus:

..... And if your zeal and fervor draw you to embrace the counsels of Jesus Christ, observe them with the greatest integrity and perfection that you possibly can, seeing they were equally given to both sexes. It cannot be, but the same merit and reward will be rendered unto you as to others that have truly observed them. And if there be seen any want or necessity in the monasteries of poor religious women, it is because they are poor against their wills, and not through fault of their vow of poverty or following of Evangelical counsels. For I account not much of their simple poverty ,but of their patient sufferance of the same for the love of God. But I more esteem that poverty which is desired ,procured , and embraced for the same love. And if I should think or determinately believe otherwise , I should not hold myself a good catholic. I believe in this, and in all other things taught by our Blessed Savior , and that His counsels are good and profitable , as proceeding from God, and though they oblige not to sin, they bind, nevertheless, that man to be more perfect that follows them than if he had not undertaken them at ail. I hold them poor in spirit who are poor in will, as our Savior has said, and myself proved; however, I believe more from God than of my own experience that those who, by the grace of God, are with all their hearts poor lead a life most happy, as confiding and hoping in him alone. His divine majesty give you light to understand this truth and to practice it . Believe not those that shall tell you the contrary , for want of light and understanding , or for not having tasted how sweet our Lord is to those that fear and love Him, renouncing for His sake all unnecessary things of this world, for they are enemies of the cross of Christ, not believing the glory which accompanies the same. ...... in the end reward to those who hope in Him and not in rents and goods of the Earth.

From Avila, this fourteenth day of April 1562