Letters to Persons in the World

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BOOK VI Various Letters (61 Letters)

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B-VI/1. To Madame de Chantal: On the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity.

May the great and little infant of Bethlehem be for ever the darling and the love of our hearts, my dearest mother, my child! Ah! how lovely he is, this dear baby. I seem to see Solomon on his grand throne of ivory, gilded and worked, which had no equal in the kingdoms, as the Scripture says; and this King had no equal in glory and in magnificence. But I love a hundred times better to see this dear little babeling (enfançon) in the crib, than to see all kings on their thrones.

But if I see him on the knees of his sacred mother, or in her arms, having his tiny mouth (bouchette) like a little rosebud, attached to the lilies of her holy breasts,—O God! I find him more magnificent on this throne, not only than Solomon on his of ivory, but more even than ever this eternal Son of the Father was in heaven, for if indeed heaven is more glorious in visible being, the holy Virgin has more of invisible virtues and perfections; and a drop of milk which flows virginally from her sacred breasts is worth more than all the affluences of the heavens. May the great St. Joseph impart to us of his consolation, the sovereign Mother of her love, and the Child deign to pour his merits into our hearts for ever.

I pray you, repose as quietly as you can near this little child: he will not cease loving your well-beloved heart, as it is, without tenderness and without feeling. See you not that he accepts the breath of this great ox, and of this ass, which have no sentiment nor any movement of love whatever; how will he not receive the inspirations of our poor heart, which, though not tenderly at present, still solidly and firmly, sacrifices itself at his feet, to be for ever the faithful servant of his heart, and of that of his holy Mother, and of the great governor of the little King.

My dearest mother, this is the truth, I have quite a special light which makes me see that the unity of our hearts is a work of this grand uniter, and hence I desire for the future not only to love, but to cherish and honour this unity as sacred.

May the joy and consolation of the Son and the Mother, be for ever the gladness of our soul! I come from preaching all clothed by the hand of my loving and amiable mother, and I have been very delighted. Ah! my dearest mother has covered me all over with Jesus, Maria.[1] May this sweet Jesus and this sacred Mary long preserve her to me, and all the nuptial vestment of our heart! Amen. Your, &c.

B-VI/2. To the Same: On Temptations and Drynesses.—Means to repel them, and guard ourselves against them.

21st November, 1604.

Madam, my dearest Sister,—May our glorious and holiest mistress and queen, the Virgin Mary, the feast of whose Presentation we celebrate to-day, present our hearts to her Son, and give us his. Your messenger reached me at the most troublesome and hardest place I can come across during the navigation which I make on the tempestuous sea of this diocese. It is incredible what consolation your letters brought me. I am only in pain as to whether I shall be able to draw from the press of my affairs the leisure required to answer you as soon as I desire, and as well as you expect. I will say in haste what I can, and if anything remains after that, I will write it in a very short time by an acquaintance, who goes to Dijon and returns.

I thank you for the trouble you have taken to detail me the history of your gate of St. Claude, and I pray this blessed saint, witness of the sincerity and integrity of heart with which I cherish you in our Lord and common Master, to impetrate from his goodness the assistance of the Holy Spirit which is necessary to enter properly into the repose of the tabernacle of the Church. It is sufficiently said once for all: yes, God has given me to you, I say singularly, entirely, irrevocably.

I come to your cross, and know not whether God has quite opened my eyes to see all its four ends.

I extremely desire and beg of him, that I may be able to say to you something thoroughly appropriate. It is a certain powerlessness, you tell me, of the faculties or parts of your understanding, which hinders it from taking contentment in the consideration of what is good: and what grieves you the most is, when you wish to form a resolution, you feel not the accustomed solidity, but encounter a certain barrier, which brings you up short, and thence come the torments of temptations against the faith. It is properly described, my dear daughter; you express yourself well; I am not sure whether I understand you properly.

You add that yet the will by the grace of God intends nothing but simplicity and stability in the Church, and that you would willingly die for the faith thereof. Oh, God be blessed, my dear child! This sickness is not unto death, but that God may be glorified in it.[2]

You have two peoples in the womb of your spirit, as was said to Rebecca: the one fights against the other, but at last the younger will supplant the elder.[3] Self-love never dies till we die; it has a thousand ways of entrenching itself in our soul, we cannot dislodge it; it is the eldest-born of our soul, for it is natural, or, at least, co-natural: it has a legion of carabineers with it, of movements, actions, passions; it is adroit, and knows a thousand subtle turns. On the other side, you have the love of God, which is conceived afterwards, and is second-born; it also has its movements, inclinations, passions, actions. These two children in one womb fight together like Esau and Jacob; whence Rebecca cried out: Was it not better to die than to conceive with such pains? From these convulsions follows a certain disgust, which causes you to relish not the best meats. But what imports it whether you relish or relish not, since you cease not to eat well?

If I had to lose one of my senses, I would choose that it should be the taste, as less necessary even than smell, it seems to me. Believe me, it is only taste which fails you, not sight: you see, but without satisfaction: you chew bread, but as if it were tow, without taste or relish. It seems to you that your resolutions are without force, because they are not gay nor joyous; but you mistake, for the Apostle St. Paul very often had only that kind.

You do not feel yourself firm, constant, or very resolute. There is something in me, thus say you, which has never been satisfied; but I cannot say what it is. I should very much like to know it, my dear child, to tell it you; but I hope that some day, hearing you at leisure, I shall learn it. Meanwhile, might it not be a multitude of desires, which obstructs your spirit,—I have been ill with that complaint. The bird fastened to the perch only knows itself to be fastened, and feels the shocks of its detention and restraint, when it wants to fly; and in the same way, before it has its wings, it knows its powerlessness only by the trial of flight.

For a remedy, then, my dear child, since you have not yet your wings for flight, and your own powerlessness puts a bar to your efforts, do not flutter, do not make eager attempts to fly: have patience till you get your wings, like the doves. I greatly fear that you have a little too much ardour for the quarry, that you are over-eager, and multiply desires a little too thickly. You see the beauty of illuminations, the sweetness of resolutions, you seem almost to grasp them, and the vicinity of good excites your appetite for it, and this appetite agitates you, and makes you dart forth, but for nothing; for the master keeps you fastened on the perch, or perhaps you have not your wings as yet; and meanwhile you grow thin by this constant movement of the heart, and continually lessen your strength. You must make trials, but moderate ones, and without agitating yourself, and without putting yourself into heat.

Examine well your practice in this matter; perhaps you will see that you let your spirit cling too much to the desire of this sovereign sweetness which the sense of firmness, constancy, and resolution brings to the soul. You have firmness, for what else is firmness but to will rather to die than sin, or quit the faith? But you have not the sense of it; for if you had you would have a thousand joys from it. So, then, check yourself, do not excite yourself; you will be all the better, and your wings will thus strengthen themselves more easily.

This eagerness then is a fault in you, and there is a something, I do not know what, which is not satisfied; for it is a fault against resignation. You resign yourself well, but it is with a but; for you would much like to have this or that, and you agitate yourself to get it. A simple desire is not contrary to resignation, but a panting of heart, a fluttering of wings, an agitation of will, a multiplying of dartings out,—this, undoubtedly, is a fault against resignation. Courage, my dear sister, since our will is God’s, doubtless we ourselves are his. You have all that is needed, but have no sense of it; there is no great loss in that.

Do you know what you must do? You must be pleased not to fly, since you have not yet your wings. You make me think of Moses. That holy man, having arrived on Mount Pisgah, saw all the land of promise before his eyes, the land which for forty years he had aspired after and hoped for, amid the murmurs and seditions of his people, and amid the rigours of the deserts; he saw it and entered it not, but died while looking at it. He had your glass of water at his lips, and could not drink. O God, what sighs this soul must have fetched! He died there more happy than many did in the land of promise, since God did him the honour of burying him himself. And so, if you had to die without drinking of the water of the Samaritan woman, what would it matter, so that your soul was received to drink eternally in the source and fountain of life? Do not excite yourself to vain desires, and do not even excite yourself about not exciting yourself; go quietly on your way, for it is good.

Know, my dear sister, that I write these things to you with much distraction, and that if you find them confused it is no wonder, for I am so myself; but, thank God, without disquiet. Do you want to know whether I speak the truth, when I say that there is in you a defect of entire resignation? You are quite willing to have a cross, but you want to have the choice; you would have it common, corporal, and of such or such sort. How is this, my well-beloved daughter? Ah! no, I desire that your cross and mine be entirely crosses of Jesus Christ; and as to the imposition of them, and the choice, the good God knows what he does, and why he does it: for our good, no doubt. Our Lord gave to David the choice of the rod with which he would be scourged, and, blessed be God; but I think I would not have chosen: I would have let his Divine Majesty do all. The more a cross is from God the more we should love it.

Well now, my sister, my daughter, my soul (and this is not too much you well know), tell me, is not God better than man? is not man a true nothing in comparison with God? And yet here is a man, or rather the merest nothing of all nothings, the flower of all misery, who loves no less the confidence you have in him, though you may have lost the sense and taste of it, than if you had all the sentiments in the world; and will not God hold your good will agreeable, though without any feeling? I am, said David, like a bottle in the frost,[4] which is of no use. As many drynesses, as much barrenness as you like, provided we love God.

But, after all, you are not yet in the land in which there is no light, for you have the light sometimes, and God visits you. Is he not good, think you? It seems to me this vicissitude makes you very agreeable to God. Still, I approve your showing to our sweet Saviour, but lovingly and without excitement, your affliction; and, as you say, he at least lets your soul find him; for he is pleased that we should tell him the pain he gives us, and lament to him, provided it be amorously and humbly, and to himself, as little children do, when their mother has whipped them. Meanwhile, there must be a little suffering, with sweetness. I do not think there is any harm in saying to our Lord: Come into our souls. This Lord knows whether I have ever been to communion without you since my departure from your town.

No, that has no appearance of evil; God wishes that I should serve him in suffering dryness, anguish, temptations, like Job, like St. Paul, and not in preaching.

Serve God as he wishes, you will see that one day he will do all you wish, and more than you know how to wish.

The books which you read for half an hour are Granada, Gerson, the Life of Christ, turned into French from the Latin of Ludolph the Carthusian, Mother (St.) Teresa; the Treatise on Affliction¹³⁷⁸ which I have mentioned in a former letter.

Ah! shall we not one day be all together in heaven to bless God eternally? I hope so and rejoice in it.

The promise which you made to our Lord never to refuse anything which might be asked you in his name, could not oblige you except to love him properly; I mean, that you might get to understand it in such a fashion that the practice of it would be vicious, as you might give more than you ought and indiscreetly. This then is understood with the condition of observing true discretion; and in this case, it is no more than to say that you will love God entirely, and will accommodate yourself to live, speak, act and give according to his pleasure.

I keep the books of psalms, and thank you for the music, of which I know nothing at all, though I love it extremely when applied to the praise of our Lord.

Truly, when you want me to hurry, and to find leisure without leisure to write to you, send me this good man N——, for, to tell the truth, he has urged me so extremely that more could not be, and has not been willing to give me time, not even a day; and I tell you fairly I should not like to be judge in a cause in which he was counsel.

I cannot drop the word Madam: for I do not wish to think myself more affectionate than St. John the Evangelist, who still, in the sacred epistle which he wrote to the lady Electa, called her madam, nor wiser than St. Jerome, who calls his devout Eustochium, madam. I desire, however, to forbid you to call me Monseigneur, for though it is the custom on this side to call Bishops so, it is not the custom on your side, and I love simplicity.

The Mass of our Lady you may vow for every week, as you desire; but I want it to be only for a year, at the end of which you will vow again, if so be; and begin on the Conception of our Lady, the day of my consecration, on which I made the great and terrific vow to care for souls, and to die for them if needed. I ought to tremble in remembering it. I say the same of the Chaplet, and the Ave, maris stella.

I have observed neither order nor measure in answering you; but this bearer has taken away my chance.

I await, with quiet foot, a great tempest (as I wrote to you at the beginning) about my personal revenue. I await it joyously and looking at the Providence of God; I hope it will be for his greater glory and my repose, and many other good ends. I am not sure it will come, I am only threatened with it. But why do I tell you this? Eh! because I cannot help it: my heart must dilate itself with yours in this way; and since in this expectation I have consolation and hope of happiness, why should I not tell it you? But only for yourself, I beg you.

I pray earnestly for our Celse-Bénigne, and all the little troop of girls. I also recommend myself to their prayers. Remember to pray for my Geneva, that God may convert it.

Also remember to behave with a great respect and honour in all that regards the good spiritual father you know of; and again, treating with his disciples and spiritual children, let them acknowledge only true sweetness and humility in you. If you receive some reproaches, keep yourself gentle, humble, patient, and with no word save of true humility: for this is necessary. May God be for ever your heart, your spirit, your repose; and I am, Madam, your very devoted servant in our Lord, &c. To God be honour and glory!—I add, this morning, St. Cecily’s Day, that the proverb drawn from our St. Bernard, hell is full of good intentions, must not trouble you at all. There are two sorts of good wills. The one says: I would do well, but it gives me trouble, and I will not do it. The other: I wish to do well, but I have not as much power as will; it is this which holds me back. The first fills hell, the second, Paradise. The first only begins to will and desire, but it does not finish willing: its desires have not enough courage, they are only abortions of will: that is why it fills hell. But the second produces entire and well-formed desires; it is for this that Daniel was called man of desires. May our Lord deign to give us the perpetual assistance of his Holy Spirit, my well-beloved daughter and sister!

B-VI/3. To the Same. (Madame de Chantal): Patience in interior troubles.—Looking at God.—Not to be precipitate in the choice of a state.—Advice on Confession.

18th February, 1605.

I praise God for the constancy with which you support your tribulations. I still see in it, however, some little disquiet and eagerness, which hinders the final effect of your patience. In your patience, said the Son of God, you shall possess your souls.[5] To fully possess our souls is then the effect of patience; and in proportion as patience is perfect, the possession of the soul becomes more entire and excellent. Now, patience is more perfect as it is less mixed with disquiet and eagerness. May God then deign to deliver you from these two troubles, and soon afterwards you will be free altogether.

Good courage, I beseech you, my dear sister; you have only suffered the fatigue of the road three years, and you crave repose; but remember two things: the one, that the children of Israel were forty years in the desert before arriving in the country of rest which was promised them, and yet six weeks might easily have sufficed for all this journey; and it was not lawful for them to inquire why God made them take so many turns, and led them by ways so rough, and all those who murmured died before their arrival. The other thing is, that Moses, the greatest friend of God in all that multitude, died on the borders of the land of repose, seeing it with his eyes, and not able to have the enjoyment of it.

O might it please God that we should little regard the course of the way we tread, and have our eyes fixed on him who conducts us, and on the blessed country to which it leads! What should it matter to us whether it is by the deserts or by the meadows we go, if God is with us and we go into Paradise? Trust me, I pray you, cheat your trouble all you can; and if you feel it, at least regard it not, for the sight will give you more fear of it, than the feeling will give you pain. Thus are covered the eyes of those who are going to suffer some painful application of the iron. I think you dwell a little too much on the consideration of your trouble.

And as for what you say, that it is a great burden to will and to be unable, I will not say to you that we must will what we can do, but I do say it is a great power before God to be able to will. Go further, I beg you, and think of that great dereliction, which our Master suffered in the Garden of Olives; and see how this dear Son, having asked consolation from his good Father, and knowing that he willed not to give it him, thinks of it no more, strives after it no more, seeks it no more; but, as if he had never thought of it, executes valiantly and courageously the work of our redemption.

After you have prayed the Father to console you, if it does not please him to do it, think of it no more, and stiffen your courage to do the work of your salvation on the Cross, as if you were never to descend from it, and as if you would never more see the sky of your life clear and serene. What would you? You must see and speak to God amid the thunders and the whirlwinds; you must see him in the bush, and amid the thorns; and to do this, the truth is that we must take off our shoes, and make a great abnegation of our wills and affections. But the Divine goodness has not called you to the state in which you are, without strengthening you for all this. It is for him to perfect his work. True, it is a little long, because the matter requires it; but patience.

In short, for the honour of God, acquiesce entirely in his will, and by no means believe that you can serve him otherwise; for he is never well served save when he is served as he wills.

Well, he wants you to serve him without relish, without sentiment, with repugnances and convulsions of spirit. This service gives you no satisfaction, but it contents him: it is not to your pleasure, but it is his pleasure.

Suppose you were never to be delivered from your troubles, what would you do? You would say to God: I am yours; if my miseries are agreeable to you, increase their number and duration. I have confidence in God that you would say this, and think no more of them; at least you would no longer excite yourself. Do the same about them now, and grow familiar with your burden, as if you and it were always to live together: you will find that when you are no longer thinking of deliverance, God will think of it; and when you are no longer disquieted, God will be there.

Enough for this point, till God gives me the opportunity of declaring it to you at leisure; when upon it we will establish the assurance of our joy; this will be when God lets us see one another again in person.

This good soul, whom you and I cherish so much, gets you to ask me if she may wait for the presence of her spiritual father to accuse herself of some point which she did not remember in her general confession, and as far as 1 see she would strongly desire it. But tell her, I beg you, that this can in no way be: I should betray her soul if I allowed her this abuse. She must at the very first confession she makes, quite at the beginning, accuse herself of this forgotten sin (I say the same if there are many), purely and simply, though she need not repeat any other thing of her general confession; this was quite good, and therefore, in spite of things forgotten, this soul must not trouble-herself at all.

And take from her the hurtful fear which may distress her in this matter; for the truth is, that the first and principal point of Christian simplicity lies in this frankness in accusing ourselves of our

sins, when necessary, purely and nakedly, without dread of our confessor’s ear which is held ready only to hear sins, not virtues, and sins of all kinds. Let her then bravely and courageously fulfil this duty, with great humility and contempt of self, not fearing to show her misery to him by whose agency God wills to cure her.

But if her ordinary confessor causes her too much shame or fear, she may indeed go elsewhere; but I would wish in this all simplicity, and I think all she has to say is in fact a very little matter, and it is fear makes it seem great.

But tell her all this with a great charity, and assure her that if in this matter I could condescend to her inclination, I would do it very willingly, according to the service I have vowed for her to most holy Christian liberty.

But if, after this, in the first meeting she may have with her spiritual father, she expects to get some consolation and profit by manifesting to him the same fault, she may do it, though it is not necessary. Indeed, from what I have learnt by her last letter, she desires, and I hope even it will be useful to her, to make a general confession again, with a great preparation; this, however, she should not begin till a little before her departure, for fear of hampering herself.

Tell her also, I beg you, that I have seen the desire she begins to have of finding herself one day in the place where she can serve God with body and voice. Check her at this beginning; let her know that this desire is of so great consequence, that she ought not either to continue it or allow it to grow, except after she has fully communicated with her spiritual father, and they have listened together to what God will say about it. I fear lest she should commit herself further, and afterwards it might be hard to bring her back to the indifference with which the counsels of God are to be heard. I am willing for her to keep it alive, but not for it to grow; for, trust me, it will always be better to hear our Lord with indifference, and in a spirit of liberty, which cannot be if this desire grows strong; it will subject all the interior faculties, and will tyrannize over the reason in its choice.

I give you a great deal of trouble, making you the messenger of these answers; but since you have kindly taken the trouble to propose to me the questions on her part, your charity will still take it to let her know my opinion.

Courage, I beseech you; let nothing move you. It is still night, but the day approaches; yes, it will not delay. But, meantime, let us put in practice the saying of David: Lift up your hands to the holy places in the night, and bless the Lord.[6] Let us bless him with all our heart, and pray him to be our guide, our bark, and our port.

I do not mean to answer your last letter in detail, save in certain points which seem to me more pressing.

You cannot believe, my dearest child, that temptations against faith and the Church come from God: but whoever told you that God was the author of them? Much darkness, much powerlessness, much tying to the perch, much dereliction and depriving of vigour, much disorder of the spiritual stomach, much bitterness in the interior mouth, which makes bitter the sweetest wine in the world—but suggestions of blasphemy, infidelity, disbelief—Ah! no, they cannot come from our good God: his bosom is too pure to conceive such objects.

Do you know how God acts in this? He allows the evil maker (forgeron) of such wares to come and offer them for sale, in order that by our contempt of them we may testify our affection for Divine things. And for this, my dear sister, my dearest child, are we to become disquieted, are we to change our attitude? O God, no, no (nenni)! It is the devil who goes all round our soul, raging and fuming, to see if he can find some gate open. He did so with Job, with St. Anthony, with St. Catherine of Sienna, and with an infinity of good souls that I know, and with mine, which is good for nothing, and which I know not. And what! for all this, my good daughter, must we get troubled? Let him rage; keep all the entrances closely shut: he will tire at last, or if he does not tire, God will make him raise the siege.

Remember what I told you, I think, once before. It is a good sign when he makes so much noise and tempest round about the will; it is a sign that he is not within. And courage, my dear soul; I say this word with great feeling and in Jesus Christ; my dear soul, courage, I say. So long as we can say with resolution, though without feeling, Vive Jésus! we must not fear.

And do not tell me that you say it with cowardice, without force or courage, but as if by a violence which you do yourself. O God! there it is then, the holy violence which bears heaven away. Look, my child, it is a sign that all is taken, that the enemy has gained everything in our fortress, except the keep, which is impregnable, unseizable, and which cannot be ruined except by itself. It is, in fine, that free will, which, quite naked before God, resides in the supreme and most spiritual part of the soul, depends on no other than its God and itself; and when all the other faculties of the soul are lost and subject to the enemy, it alone remains mistress of itself so as not to consent.

Now do you see souls afflicted because the enemy, occupying all the other faculties, makes in them his clamour and extremest hubbub? Scarcely can one hear what is said and done in this spiritual will. It has indeed a voice more clear and telling than the inferior will; but this latter has a voice so harsh and so noisy that it drowns the clearness of the other.

In fine, note this; while the temptation displeases you there is nothing to fear: for why does it displease you, save because you do not will it? In a word, these importunate temptations come from the malice of the devil; but the pain and suffering which we feel come from the mercy of God, who against the will of the enemy, draw from his malice holy tribulation, by which he refines the gold which he would put into his treasures. I sum up thus: your temptations are from the devil and from hell, but your pains and afflictions are from God and Paradise: the mothers are from Babylon, but the daughters from Jerusalem. Despise the temptations, embrace the tribulations.

I will tell you, one day, when I have plenty of leisure, what evil it is that causes these obstructions of spirit: it cannot be written in a few words.

Have no fear, I beg you, of giving me trouble; for I protest that it is an extreme consolation to be pressed to do you any service. Write to me then, and often, and without order, and in the most simple way you can; I shall always have an extreme contentment in it.

I am going in an hour to the little hamlet where I am to preach, God willing to employ me. Both in suffering and in preaching, be his name for ever blessed!

Nothing of the tempest I spoke of has yet happened, but the clouds are still full, dark, and charged, above my head.

You cannot have too much confidence in me, who am perfectly and irrevocably yours in Jesus Christ, whose dearest graces and benedictions I wish you a thousand and a thousand times a day. Let us live in him and for him. Amen. Your, &c.

B-VI/4. To the Same: Great crosses are more meritorious, and require more strength.

La Roche, 19th February, 1605.

Madam,—I have so much sweetness in my desire for your spiritual good, that nothing I do under this influence can hurt me.

You tell me you still bear your great cross, but that it weighs less heavily because you have more strength. O Saviour of the world! here is one who goes well! We must carry our cross; he who carries the heaviest will do best. May God, then, give us greater crosses, but may it please him to give us greater strength to bear them! So, then, courage: If thou wilt believe, thou shalt see the glory of God.[7]

I do not answer you now, for I cannot; I am only passing rapidly over your letters. I will not send you anything at present about the reception of the most Holy Sacrament; if I can, it will be at the first convenience.

I saw one day a pious picture; it was a heart, on which the little Jesus was seated. O God, said I, thus may you sit on the heart of this daughter whom you have given me, and to whom you have given me. It pleased me in this picture that Jesus was seated and resting, for that represented to me a certain stability; and it pleased me that he was a child, for that is the age of perfect simplicity and sweetness: and communicating on the day on which I knew you were doing the same, I entertained by this desire that blessed guest, in this place (the heart) both in your house and in mine. God be in all and everywhere blessed, and deign to possess our hearts for ever and ever! Amen. Your, &c.

B-VI/5. To the Same: Never to forget the day on which we returned to God.

10th July, 1605.

I have forgotten to say to you, my dear child, that if the prayers of St. John, and St. Francis, and the others you say, have more relish for you in French (than in Latin), I am very pleased that you should recite them so. Remain in peace, my child, with your Spouse clasped tightly in your arms.

Oh! how satisfied is my soul with the exercise of penance we have made these days past, happy days, and acceptable and memorable! Job desires that the day of his birth perish,[8] and that there never be a remembrance of it; but, as for me, my child, I wish, on the contrary, that these days, in which God has made you all his own, should live for ever in your soul, and that the remembrance of them should be perpetual. Yes, indeed, my child, they are days whose memory will, without doubt, be eternally agreeable and sweet, provided that our resolutions, taken with so much strength and courage, remain well closed and safe, under the precious seal I have put with my hand.

I wish, my child, that we should celebrate every year their anniversary days, by the addition of some particular exercises to our ordinary ones. I wish that we should call them days of our dedication, since in them you have so entirely dedicated your spirit to God. Let nothing trouble you henceforth, my child; say with St. Paul: From henceforth, let no one be troublesome to me, for I bear the marks of Jesus Christ in my body;[9] that is, I am his vowed, consecrated, sacrificed servant.

Keep the enclosure of your monastery, let not your intentions go forth hither and thither; for this is only a distraction of heart. Keep the rule well, and believe, but believe firmly, that the Son of Madam your Abbess (the Blessed Virgin) will be all yours.

Keep up, as far as ever you can, a close union amongst yourself, Madame du Puits d’Orbe, and Madame Brulart; for I think this will be profitable to them.

You will conclude, since I write to you on every occasion, that I see you often in spirit: it is true. No, it will never be possible for anything to separate me from your soul: the tie is too strong. Death itself will have no power to dissolve it, since it is of a stuff which lasts for ever.

I am much consoled, my dear child, to see you filled with the desire of obedience: it is a desire of incomparable value, and one which will support you in all your trials. Ah! no, my very beloved child, regard not whom but for whom you obey. Your vow is addressed to God, though it regards a man. My God! do not fear that the providence of God may fail you; no, if necessary, he would rather send an angel to conduct you than leave you without guide, since with so much courage and resolution you wish to obey. Repose, then, my dear child, in this paternal Providence, resign yourself entirely to it. Meanwhile, as much as I can, I will spare myself, in order to keep my promise to you, and by help of celestial grace, to be able long to serve you; but may this Divine will be always done! Amen.

Yesterday I went on the lake in a little boat, to visit M. the Archbishop of Vienne; and I was very glad to have nothing (save a two-inch plank) to trust to, except holy Providence; and I was still more glad to be there under the obedience of the boatman. He made us sit and keep still, without moving, as seemed good to him, and indeed I did not move. But, my child, do not take these words for things of high value. No, they are only little fancies of virtue, which my heart makes to cheer itself, for when it is in good sooth, I am not so brave.

I cannot help writing to you with a great nudity and simplicity of spirit. A-Dieu (to God), my dearest child, this same God whom I adore, and who has made me so uniquely and intimately yours, that his name, and that of his holy Mother, may be blessed for ever.

Yesterday, also, I called to mind St. Martha, exposed in a little boat with Magdalen: God was their pilot to land them in our France. A-Dieu, again, my dear child: live all-joyous, all-constant in our dear Jesus. Amen.

B-VI/6. To the Same: Not to reason with temptations, nor to fear them, nor even reflect on them.

St. Augustine’s Day, 30th August, 1605.

You will have now to hand, I am sure, my child, the three letters which I have written to you, and which you had not yet received when you wrote to me on the 10th August. It remains for me to answer yours of that date, since by the preceding I have answered all the others.

Your temptations against faith have come back; and though you do not answer them a single word, they press you. You do not answer them: that is good, my child; but you think too much of them, you fear them too much, you dread them too much: they would do you no harm without that. You are too sensitive to temptations. You love the faith, and would not have a single thought come to you, contrary to it; and as soon as ever a single one touches you, you grieve about it and distress yourself. You are too jealous of this purity of faith; everything seems to spoil it. No, no, my child, let the wind blow, and think not that the rustling (frifilis) of the leaves is the clashing (cliquetis) of arms.

Lately I was near the bee-hives, and some of the bees flew on to my face: I wanted to raise my hand, and brush them off. No, said a peasant to me, do not be afraid, and do not touch them: they will not sting you at all; if you touch them they will bite you. I trusted him; not one bit me. Trust me; do not fear these temptations, do not touch them, they will not hurt you; pass on, and do not occupy yourself with them.

I return from that extremity of my diocese which is on the Swiss border, where I have achieved the establishment of thirty-three parishes, in which, eleven years ago, there were only ministers; and I was there three years quite alone preaching the Catholic faith: and God has made this voyage an entire consolation to me; for in place of my not finding a hundred Catholics, I have not left there now a hundred Huguenots. I have indeed had trouble in this journey and a terrible embarrassment; and as it was about temporal things and the provision of churches, I have been very much opposed. But God has put a good end to it by his grace, and also there has been some little spiritual fruit in it. I say this because my heart can conceal nothing from yours, and considers itself not to be a different or other heart, but one with yours.

To-day is St. Augustine’s; and you may guess whether I have besought for you the mother of the servant (St. Monica). May God be our heart, my child; and I am in him and by his will, all yours. Live joyful, and be generous. God, whom we love, and to whom we are vowed, wishes us to be such. It is he who has given me to you: may he be for ever blessed and praised!

P.S. I was closing this letter, badly done as it is, and here are brought to me two others, one of the 16th, the other of the 20th August, enclosed in a single packet. I see nothing in them save what I have said; you fear temptations too much. There is no harm but that. Be quite convinced that all the temptations of hell cannot stain a soul which does not love them: let them then have their course. The Apostle St. Paul suffers terrible ones, and God does not will to take them from him, and all in love. Come, come, my child, courage; let the heart be ever with its Jesus; and let this vile beast (mâtin) bark at the gate as much as he likes. Live, my dear child, with the sweet Jesus, and your holy abbess, amid the darkness, the nails, the thorns, the spears, the derelictions; and with your mistress (St. Monica), live long in tears without gaining anything: at last, God will raise you up, and will rejoice you, and will make you see the desire of your heart.[10]

I hope so; and if he does not, still we will not cease serving him; and he will not, on that account, cease to be our God; for the affection we owe him is of an immortal and imperishable nature.

B-VI/7. To Madame de Chantal: He exhorts her to prepare her heart that the Blessed Virgin may be born therein, and to unite herself closely to Jesus.—“The little virtues.”

13th September, 1605.

My God! dear child, when will the time come that our Lady will be born in our hearts? For my part, I see that I am totally unworthy of it; you will think just the same of yourself. But her Son was born in the stable; so courage then, let us get a place prepared for this holy babeling. She loves only places made low by humility, common by simplicity, but large by charity; she is willingly near the crib, and at the foot of the cross; she does not mind if she goes into Egypt, far from all comfort, provided she has her dear Son with her.

No, our Lord may wrestle with us and throw us to left or to right; he may, as with other Jacobs, press us, may give us a hundred twists; may engage us, first on one side, then on the other; in short, may do us a thousand hurts: all the same, we will not leave him till he give us his eternal benediction. And, my child, never does our good God leave us save to hold us better; never does he let go of us save to keep us better, never does he wrestle with us except to give himself up to us and to bless us.

Let us advance, meanwhile, let us advance; let us make our way through these low valleys of the humble and little virtues; we shall see in them the roses amid the thorns, charity which shows its beauty among interior and exterior afflictions; the lilies of purity, the violets of mortification: what shall we see not? Above all, I love these three little virtues, sweetness of heart, poverty of spirit, and simplicity of life; and these substantial (grossiers) exercises, visiting the sick, serving the poor, comforting the afflicted, and the like: but the whole without eagerness, with a true liberty. No, our arms are not yet long enough to reach the cedars of Lebanon; let us content ourselves with the hyssop of the valleys.

B-VI/8. To Madame de Chantal: We are to carry Jesus Christ in our soul.

16th November, 1605.

My dear Child,—I find a particular consolation in speaking to you in this dumb language (of letters), after speaking all day to so many others in the language of the tongue. So, then, I needs must tell you what I am doing, for I know almost nothing besides; and I hardly know properly what I am doing.

I come from prayer, in which asking myself for what cause we are in this world, I have learnt that we are in it only to receive and carry the sweet Jesus, on our tongue by announcing him, in our arms by doing good works, on our shoulders by bearing his yoke, his drynesses and sterilities, and thus in our interior and exterior senses. O how blessed are they that carry him sweetly and constantly!

I have in truth carried him all these days on my tongue, and I have carried him into Egypt, it seems to me, since in the Sacrament of Confession I have heard a great number of penitents, who have, with an extreme confidence, addressed themselves to me, to receive him into their sinful souls. God grant that he may stay there!

I have also in prayer learnt a practice of the presence of God, which, for the moment, I have locked up in a corner of my memory, to communicate it to you as soon as I have read the treatise which Father Arias has made upon it.

Have a large heart, my dear child, and ever larger under the will of our God. Do you know what I said when spreading your corporal? Thus, said I, may the heart of her who sent it me be spread out, under the sacred influences of our Saviour’s will! Courage, my daughter, keep yourself close to your holy Abbess (the Blessed Virgin), and beg her without ceasing that we may live, die, and live again in the love of her dear child. Vive Jésus, who has made me all yours, and more so than I can express! May the peace of the sweet Jesus reign in your heart!

B-VI/9. To a Young Lady: What the courage of Christians is.

January, 1606.

This letter is to my daughter, who is kind, and whose heart I feel to be unchangeable in the holy friendship which she bears me. I have given myself time enough to answer I know, but my leisure has been taken up with embarrassments which our jubilee has brought me. Truly, my dearest daughter, the resolutions which you communicate to me were all as I could have wished you them, and therefore good ones. Keep closely to holy humility and the love of your own abjection. Know that the heart which loves God must be attached only to the love of God: if this same God wills to give it another love, he may; if he does not will to give it another, he does as he pleases. I am sure, however, that this good daughter will not keep her heart back. I should be greatly grieved, for I love her, and she would commit a great fault.

Ah! my dear daughter, how falsely do we call courage, what is haughtiness and vanity! Christians call these cowardice and faintheartedness: as, on the contrary, they call courage, patience, gentleness, mildness, humility, the acceptance and love of contempt and abjection. For such has been the courage of our Captain, of his Mother, of his Apostles, and of the most valiant soldiers of this heavenly army; a courage with which they have overcome tyrants, conquered kings, and gained over the whole world to the obedience of the crucified. Be equalminded, my dearest daughter, towards all these good young persons: salute them, honour them; do not avoid them, yet neither seek them, except in so far as they seem to wish it. Do not speak about all this unless with an extreme charity. Try to bring that soul which you are going to visit to some sort of excellent resolution. I say excellent, because little resolutions not to do wrong are not sufficient; we must also do all the good we can, and cut off not only what is wrong, but all that is not of God and for God.

Well, now we shall see one another, please God, before Easter. Live entirely for him who died for us, and be crucified with him. May he be blessed eternally by you, my dearest daughter, and by me, who am, without end, your, &c.

B-VI/10. To Madame de Chantal: Means of passing Lent well.

Chambéry, 21st February, 1606.

This can only be a short letter, for I am just going into the pulpit, my dearest child. You are now at Dijon, and I wrote thither a few days ago; there you abound, by the grace of God, in many consolations, which I share in spirit. Lent is the autumn of the spiritual life, in which we should gather the fruits, and store them for the whole year. Enrich yourself, I beg you, with those precious treasures which nothing can deprive you of or spoil. Remember what I am accustomed to say: we shall never spend one good Lent, as long as we expect to make two. Let us then make this as the last, and we shall make it well. I know that at Dijon there will be some excellent preacher; holy words are pearls, and pearls of the true Eastern ocean, the abyss of mercy; get together many round your neck, hang plenty from your ears, encircle your arms with them; these ornaments are not forbidden to widows: for they do not make them vain, but humble.

As for me, I am here, where, as yet, I see no more than a slight movement of souls towards true devotion. God will increase it, if he please, for his holy glory. I am going now to tell my audience that their souls are the vineyard of God: the cistern is faith, the tower is hope, and the press holy charity; the hedge is the law of God which separates from other people who are infidels. To you, my dear child, I say that your good will is your vineyard; the cistern is the holy inspirations of perfection which God rains down from heaven; the tower is holy chastity, which, as is said of David’s should be of ivory; the press is obedience, which produces great merit in the actions it squeezes out; the hedge is your vows. Oh! may God preserve this vineyard which he has planted with his hand! May God make more and more abound the salutary waters of grace in his cistern! May God be for ever the protector of his tower! May God will to give all the turns to the press which are necessary for squeezing out good wine, and keep always thick and close that beautiful hedge with which he has environed this vineyard, and may he make the angels its immortal husbandmen.

Adieu, my dear child, the bell urges me; I am going to the wine-press of the Church, to the holy altar, where distils perpetually the sacred wine of the blood of those delicious and unique grapes which our holy Abbess, as a heavenly vine, has happily brought forth for us. There, and you know I cannot do otherwise, I will present and represent you to the Father, in the union of his Son, in whom, for whom, and by whom I am solely and entirely your, &c.

B-VI/11. To Madame de Chantal: On troubles of spirit.

7th March, 1608.

At last I write to you, by Monsieur Fabre, my dear child, and still without full leisure, for I have had to write many letters, and though you are the last to whom I write, I have no fear of forgetting. I was sorry, the other day, to have written you so many things on this trouble of mind which you had. For since it was nothing in real truth, and since when you had communicated it to Father Gentil, it all vanished, I had only to say Deo Gratias. But, you see, my soul is liable to outpourings with you, and with all those whom I love. O God! my child, what good your hurts do me! For then I pray with more attention, I put myself before our Lord with more purity of intention, I place myself more wholly in indifference. But, believe me, either I am the most deluded man in the world, or our resolutions are from God and unto his greater glory. No, my child, look not either to left or right; and I do not mean look not at all, but look not so as to occupy yourself, to examine anxiously, to hamper and entangle your spirit in considerations from which you can find no outlet. For if, after so much time, after so many petitions to God, we cannot resolve without difficulty, how can we expect by considerations, some coming without any reflection, others from simple feelings and taste, how can we expect, I say, to decide well? So then, let us leave that alone, let us speak of it no more. Let us speak of a general rule that I want to give you: it is, that in all I say to you, you must not be too particular: all is meant in a large sense (grosso modo), for I would not have you constrain your spirit to anything, save to serve God well, and not to abandon, but to love our resolutions. As for me, I so love mine, that whatever I see seems to me insufficient to take away an ounce of the esteem I have of them, even though I see and consider others more excellent and more exalted.

Ah! my dear child, that also is an entanglement which you write to me about by Monsieur de Sauzea. This dreadful din . . . which makes you afraid of. . . . O God, my child, can you not prostrate yourself before God when it happens to you, and say to him quite simply: Yes, Lord, if you will it, I will it, and if you wish it not, I wish it not: and then pass on to some little exercise or act which may serve as a distraction.

But, my child, what you do is this: when this trifling matter presents itself, your mind is grieved, and does not want to look at it: it fears that this may check it; this fear draws away the strength of your mind, and leaves the poor thing faint, sad, and trembling; this fear displeases it, and brings forth another fear lest this first fear, and the fright which it gives, be the cause of the evil; and so you entangle yourself. You fear the fear; then you fear the fear of the fear; you are vexed at the vexation, and then you are vexed for being vexed at the vexation. So I have seen many, who, having got angry, are afterwards angry for getting angry: and all this is like to the rings which are made in water, when a stone is thrown in: a little circle is formed, and this forms a greater, and this last another.

What remedy is there, my dear child? After the grace of God, the remedy is not to be so delicate. Look you (here is another pouring-out of my spirit, but there is no help for it), those who cannot suffer the itching of a ciron,[11] and expect to get rid of it by dint of scratching, flay their hands. Laugh at the greater part of these troubles; do not stop to think about throwing them off; laugh at them; turn away to some action; try to sleep well. Imagine, I mean think, that you are a little St. John, who is going to sleep and rest on the bosom of our Lord, in the arms of his providence.

And courage, my child, we have no intention except for the glory of God; no, no, at least certainly not any known intention; for if we knew it, we would instantly tear it from our heart. And so, what do we torment ourselves about? Vive Jésus! I think sometimes, my child, that we are full of Jesus: at least we have no deliberate contrary will. It is not in a spirit of arrogance I say this, my child; it is in a spirit of trust and to encourage ourselves. I find it is nine o’clock of the night; I must make my collation, and I must say Office so as to be able to preach at eight to-morrow, but I seem to be unable to tear myself from this paper. And now I must tell you, in addition, this little folly, it is that I preach finely to my liking in this place; I say something, I scarce know what it is, which these good people understand so well that they would willingly almost answer me. Adieu, my child, my dearest child. I am, how truly, your, &c.

B-VI/12. To Madame de Chantal: We must work with courage at our salvation and perfection, whether in consolations or in tribulations.—What abjection is; its difference from humility.—Action which parents should take with regard to the vocation of their children.—Advice on temptations.—God wishes to be loved rather than feared.

6th August, 1606.

May God assist me, my dearest daughter, to answer properly your letter of the 9th July. I greatly desire to do so; but I foresee clearly I shall not have leisure enough to arrange my thoughts; it will be much if I can express them.

You are right, my child, speak with me frankly, as with me, that is with a soul which God, of his sovereign authority, has made all yours.

You begin to put your hand to the work a little, you tell me. Ah! my God, what a great consolation for me! Do this always; always put hand to work a little; spin every day some little, either in the day, by the light of interior influences and brightness, or in the night, by the light of the lamp, in helplessness and sterility.

The Wise Man praises the valiant woman because: Her fingers have taken hold of the spindle.[12] I willingly say to you something on this word. Your distaff is the heap of your desires; spin each day a little, draw out your plans into execution and you will certainly do well. But beware of eager haste; for you would twist your thread into knots, and stop your spindle. Let us always be moving; how slowly soever we advance, we shall make plenty of way.

Your helplessnesses hurt you much, for, say you, they keep you from entering into yourself and approaching God. This is wrong, without doubt; God leaves them in us for his glory and our great benefit. He wants our misery to be the throne of his mercy, and our powerlessness the seat of his all-power. Where did God place the Divine strength which he gave to Samson but in his hair, the weakest place in him? Let me no more hear these words from a daughter who would serve her God according to his Divine pleasure, and not according to sensible taste and attraction. Although he should kill me, says Job, yet will I trust in him.[13] No, my child, these helplessnesses do not hinder you from entering into yourself, though they do hinder you from taking complacency in yourself.

We are always wanting this and that; and, though we may have our sweet Jesus on our breast, we are not content; yet this is all we can desire. One thing is necessary for us, which is to be with him.

Tell me, my dear child, you know well that at the birth of our Lord the shepherds heard the angelic and divine hymns of those heavenly spirits,— the Scripture says so; yet it is not said that our Lady and St. Joseph, who were the closest to the child, heard the voice of the angels, or saw that miraculous light; on the contrary, instead of hearing these angels sing they heard the child weep, and saw, by a little light borrowed from some wretched lamp, the eyes of this Divine child all filled with tears, and faint under the rigour of the cold. Well, I ask you, in good sooth, would you not have chosen to be in the stable, dark and filled with the cries of the little baby, rather than to be with the shepherds, thrilling with joy and delight in the sweetness of this heavenly music, and the beauty of this admirable light?

Lord, said St. Peter, it is good for us to be here,[14] to see the Transfiguration; and this is the day on which it is celebrated in the Church, the 6th August; but your Abbess (the Blessed Virgin) is not there, but only on Mount Calvary, where she sees nought but the dead, but nails, thorns, helplessness, darkness, abandonment, and dereliction.

I have said enough, my child, and more than I wished, on a subject already so much discussed between us: no more, I beg you. Love God crucified amid darkness; stay near him; say: It is good for me to be here: let us make here three tabernacles, one to our Lord, another to our Lady, the other to St. John. Three crosses, and no more; take your stand by that of the Son, or that of the Mother, your Abbess, or that of the disciple; everywhere you will be well received with the other daughters of your order, who are there all round about.

Love your abjection. But, you will say, what does this mean, love your abjection? for my understanding is dark, and powerless for any good. Well, my child, that is just the thing, if you remain humble, tranquil, gentle, confiding amid this darkness and powerlessness; if you do not grow impatient, do not excite yourself, do not distress yourself, on this account; but with good heart, I do not say gaily, but I do say sincerely and firmly, embrace this cross, and stay in this darkness, then you love your own abjection.

My child, in Latin, abjection is called humility and humility abjection, so that when our Lady says: Because he hath had regard to the humility of his handmaid,[15] she means, because he hath had regard to my abjection and vileness. Still there is some difference between humility and abjection, in that humility is the acknowledgment of one’s abjection. Now the highest point of humility is not only to know one’s abjection, but to love it; and it is this to which I have exhorted you.

In order that I may make myself better understood, know that amongst the evils that we suffer, there are evils abject, and evils honourable; many accept the honourable ones, few the abject.

Example: look at that Capuchin, in rags, and starved with cold; everybody honours his torn habit, and has compassion on his suffering; look at a poor artisan, a poor scholar, a poor widow, who is in the same state; they are laughed at, and their poverty is abject.

A religious suffers patiently a rebuke from his superior, everybody calls this mortification and obedience: a gentleman will suffer such for the love of God, it will be called cowardice; here is an abject virtue, suffering despised. One man has a cancer on his arm, another on his face: the one hides it, and only has the evil; the other cannot hide it, and with the evil he has the contempt and abjection. Now, I am saying that we must love not only the evil, but also the abjection.

Further, there are abject virtues and honourable virtues. Ordinarily patience, gentleness, mortification, simplicity, are, among seculars, abject virtues: to give alms, to be courteous, to be prudent, are honourable virtues.

Of the actions of one same virtue some may be abject, others honourable. To give alms and to pardon injuries, are actions of charity; the first is honourable, and the other is abject in the eyes of the world.

I am ill among people who make it a burden to them: here is an abjection joined with the evil. Young married ladies of the world, seeing me in the fashion of a true widow, say that I act the dévote, and seeing me laugh, though modestly, they say that I still wish to be sought after; they cannot believe but that I want more honour and rank than I have, that I do not love my vocation without regret: all these are points of abjection. Here are some of another kind.

We go, my sisters and I, to visit the sick; my sisters send me off to visit the more miserable; this is an abjection, according to the world; they send me to visit the less miserable, this is an abjection, according to God; for the latter is the less worthy before God, and the other before the world. Now, I will love the one and the other as the occasion comes. Going to the more miserable, I will say it is quite true that I am worthless. Going to the less miserable: it is very right, for I do not desire to make the holier visit.

I commit some folly, it makes me abject, good; I slip down, and get into a violent passion; I am grieved at the offence to God, and very glad that this should show me vile, abject and wretched.

At the same time, my child, take good heed of what I am going to say to you. Although we may love the abjection which follows from the evil, still we must not neglect to remedy the evil. I will do what I can not to have the cancer in the face; but if I have it, I will love the abjection of it. And in matter of sin again, we must keep to this rule. I have committed some fault; I am grieved at it, though I embrace with good heart the abjection which follows therefrom; and if one could be separated from the other, I would dearly cherish the abjection, and would take away the evil and sin.

Again, we must have regard to charity, which requires sometimes that we remove the abjection for the edification of our neighbour; but in that case, we must take it away from the eyes of our neighbour, who would take scandal at it, but not from our own heart, which is edified by it. I have chosen, says the prophet, to be abject in the house of God, rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners.[16]

In fine, my child, you want to know which are the best abjections. I will tell you that they are those which we have not chosen, and which are less agreeable to us; or, to say better, those to which we have not much inclination; or, to speak out, those of our vocation and profession.

How, for example, would this married woman choose every sort of abjections rather than those of the married state; this religious obey anybody but her superior; and I—how I would suffer rather to be domineered over by a superior in religion, than by a father-in-law at home.[17]

I say that to each one his own abjection is the best, and our choosing takes from us a great part of our virtues. Who will grant me the grace greatly to love our abjection, my dear child? Only he, who so loved his that he willed to die to preserve it. I have said enough.

Finding yourself absorbed in the hope and idea of entering religion, you are afraid of having gone against obedience; yet no, I had not told you to have no hope and no thought of it, but simply not to occupy yourself with it; for it is a certain thing that there is nothing which so much hinders us from perfecting ourselves in our profession as to aspire to another; for instead of working in the field where we are, we send our oxen with the plough into our neighbour’s field, where, however, we shall not be able to make harvest this year. All this is a loss of time: and it is impossible that keeping our thoughts and our hopes in another place, we should properly strengthen our heart to acquire the virtues required in the place where we are. No, my child, never did Jacob love Lia properly so long as he wanted Rachel. Cherish this maxim, for it is very true.

But, look, I do not say that we may not think and hope; but I say that we must not occupy ourselves with it, or employ much of our thoughts therein. We are allowed to look towards the place we want to get to, but on condition we always look straight in front of us. Trust me, the Israelites could never sing in Babylon, because they were thinking of their country; and for my part, I wish that we should sing everywhere.

But you ask me to tell you whether I do not think that one day you may quit, entirely and for ever, everything of this world for our God; and you ask me not to hide from you, but to leave you this dear hope. O sweet Jesus! what shall I say to you, my dear child? His all-goodness knows that I have very often thought on this subject, and that I have implored his grace in the holy sacrifice and elsewhere, and not only that, but I have employed in it the devotion and the prayers of better people than I am. And what have I learnt up to this? That one day, my daughter, you are to quit all, that is, (for I want you to understand just what I mean) I have learnt that I am one day to counsel you to quit all. I say all: but whether this shall be to enter religion, is a great matter; I have not yet arrived at a conclusion on this, I am still in doubt, and see nothing before my eyes which persuades me to desire it. Understand properly, for the love of God: I do not say no, but I say that my spirit has not yet been able to find ground for saying yes. I will beseech our Lord more and more, that he may give me more light on this subject, that I may be able clearly to see the yes, if it is more for his glory, or the no, if it is more to his good pleasure.

And let me tell you that in this inquiry I have in such way placed myself in the indifference of my own will to seek the will of God, that never have I done it so perfectly; and still the yes has never been able to stay in my heart, so that up to now I could not say it or pronounce it: and the no, on the contrary, has always been there with a great deal of steadfastness.

But because this point is of great importance, and there is nothing which urges us, give me yet some leisure and time to pray more, and get prayers for this intention, and further, I must, before forming my resolution, talk to you at leisure; this will be next year, God aiding; and after all this, I would still not wish you, in this point, to take a full resolution on my opinion, unless you have a great tranquillity and interior correspondence in it. I will detail it to you at full length, when the time comes; and if it does not give you interior repose, we will take the advice of some one else, to whom God will perhaps more clearly communicate his good pleasure.

I do not see that it is necessary to hurry, and meantime you can yourself think about it, without making it an occupation, or losing time about it. Although, as I said, up to now the idea (avis) of seeing you in religion has not been able to take its place in my mind, yet I am not entirely resolved about it, and if I were quite resolved, still I should not like to oppose or prefer my opinion, either to your inclinations, if they were strong in this particular subject (for everywhere else I will keep my word to you to conduct you according to my judgment and not according to your desire,) or to the counsel of some spiritual person which we might take.

Remain, my child, quite resigned in the hands of our Lord: give him the rest of your years, and beseech him to employ them in the kind of life that will be most agreeable to him. Do not preoccupy your mind with vain promises of tranquillity, of self-satisfaction, of merit; but present your heart to your spouse, quite empty of all affections except his chaste love; and beg him to fill it purely and simply with the movements, desires and wills which are in his, that your heart, like a mother-pearl, may conceive nothing save the dew of heaven, and not waters of this world; and you will see that God will aid you and that we shall do well both in the choice and in the execution.

As to our little ones, I approve that you should prepare a place for them in monasteries, provided that God prepares in their heart a place for a monastery: that is, I approve that you should have them brought up in monasteries, with the intention of leaving them there, on two conditions; the one, that the monasteries be good and reformed, and make profession of the interior life: the other, that when the time of their profession arrives, which is not before sixteen years, it be faithfully ascertained if they are willing to make it with devotion and good-will; for if they have not an affection for it, it would be a great sacrilege to enclose them in it.

We see how hard young persons received against their will find it to accommodate themselves and devote themselves to the religious life. They ought to be placed there with gentle and sweet inspirations. If they stay there so, they will be very happy; and their mother also, for having planted them in the gardens of the spouse, who will water them with a hundred thousand heavenly graces. Make then this arrangement for them; I am quite of this opinion.

But as to our Aimée,[18] inasmuch as she wishes to stay in the whirlwind and tempest of the world, you must, without doubt, with a care a hundred times greater, make her safe in true virtue and piety; you must furnish her barque much more completely with all the gear required against the wind and the storm; you must plant deeply in her mind the true fear of God, and bring her up in the holiest practices of devotion.

And as for our C. B.,[19] I am sure that Monseigneur his uncle, will have more care in the education of his little soul than in that of his exterior. If it were another uncle, I would tell you to keep the care of him yourself, that the treasure of innocence may not be lost. And do not fail to instil into his spirit gracious and sweet odours of devotion, and often to recommend to his uncle the feeding of his soul. God will do with him as he pleases, and to this men must accommodate themselves.

I can say no more to you concerning the apprehension you have of your trouble, nor the fear you have of impatiences in suffering it. Did I not say to you, the first time I spoke to you of your soul, that you applied your consideration too much to any trouble or temptation that may arise; that you must look at it only in a large way; that women, and men also, sometimes, make too much reflection on their troubles; and that this entangles thoughts and fears, and desires, in one another, till the soul finds itself so much embarrassed that it cannot get free from them?

Do you remember M. N., how his soul was entangled and mazed with vain fears at the end of the Lent, and how hurtful it was to him? I beseech you for the honour of God, my child, be not afraid of God, for he does not wish to do you any harm: love him strongly, for he wishes to do you much good. Walk quite simply in the shelter of our resolutions, and reject as cruel temptations the reflections which you make on your troubles.

What can I say to stop this flow of thoughts in your heart? Do not give way to anxiety about healing it, for this anxiety makes it worse. Do not force yourself to conquer your temptations, for these efforts will strengthen them; despise them, do not occupy yourself with them. Represent to your imagination Jesus Christ crucified, in your arms and on your breast, and say a hundred times, kissing his side; here is my hope, here is the living fountain of my happiness, this is the heart of my soul, the soul of my heart: never shall anything separate me from his love; I hold him, and will not let him go, till he has put me in a state of safety. Say to him often: What have I upon earth, and what do I desire in heaven, but you, O my Jesus? You are the God of my heart and my portion for ever.[20] Why do you fear, my child? Hear our Lord, who cries to Abraham, and to you also: Fear not, I am thy helper.[21] What do you seek upon earth, save God? and you have him. Remain firm in your resolution. Keep yourself in the barque where I have placed you, and the storm may come; as Jesus lives you shall not perish: he will sleep, but in time and place he will awake to restore calm to you. Our St. Peter, says the Scripture, seeing the storm, which was very fierce, was afraid; and as soon as ever he became afraid, he began to sink and drown, at which he cried: O Lord, save me.[22] And our Lord took him by the hand, and said to him: Man of little faith, why didst thou doubt? Regard this holy Apostle, he walks dry foot on the waters; the waves and the wind could not make him sink, but the fear of the wind and the waves makes him perish if his master rescue him not.

Fear is a greater evil than the evil itself. O daughter of little faith, what do you fear? No, fear not; you walk on the sea, amid the winds and the waves, but it is with Jesus. What is there to fear? But if fear seizes you, cry loudly: O Lord, save me. He will give you his hand: clasp it tight, and go joyously on. In short, do not philosophize about your trouble, do not turn in upon yourself, go straight on. No, God could not lose you, so long as you live in your resolution not to lose him. Let the world turn upside down, let everything be in darkness, in smoke, in uproar,—God is with us; and if God dwelleth in darkness, and on the Mount of Sinai, all smoking, and covered with the thunders, with lightnings and noises, shall we not be well near him?

I must tell you a word about myself, for you love me as yourself. We have had these fifteen days a very great jubilee, which will be throughout the world, on the commencement of the Pope’s[23] administration, and the war of Hungary. This has kept me occupied, though consoled by receiving many general confessions and changes of conscience; then there is the sea of my ordinary occupations, amid which, (I say it to you) I live in full repose of heart, resolved to employ myself henceforth faithfully and earnestly for the glory of my God, first in myself, and then in all that is under my charge. My people begin to love me tenderly, and this consoles me.

All your friends in this part are well, and honour you with quite a special love.

Live, live, my dear child, live all in God, and fear not death, the good Jesus is all ours; let us be entirely his. Our most honoured Lady, our Abbess, has given him to us; let us keep him well; courage, my child. I am entirely yours, and more than yours.

B-VI/13. To the Same: Advantage of interior trials for perfection.—God communicates-himself in afflictions rather than in consolations.

Exaltation of the Cross, September 14th, 1606.

Do not distress yourself about me in all these matters you write of; for, you see, it is with me as it was once with Abraham. A deep sleep fell upon him in a dark mist, in some fearful place, and a great and darksome horror seized upon him;[24] but it was only for a short time, for suddenly he saw a lamp of fire, and heard the voice of God promising his benedictions. My spirit certainly lives amid your darknesses and temptations, for it closely accompanies yours; the account of your troubles touches me with compassion; but I clearly see that the end of them will be happy, since our good God is advancing us in his school, in which you are more on the alert than at another time. Only write to me with open heart about your ills and your goods; and put yourself in no anxiety, for my heart is equal to all.

Courage, my dear child, let us keep on, keep on, all through these low valleys; let us live with the cross in our arms, with humility and patience.

What does it matter whether God speaks to us amid thorns or amid flowers. Indeed, I do not remember that he has ever spoken amid flowers, though several times in deserts and thorny bushes. Go on then, my dear child, and make progress during this bad weather and this night. Above all, write very sincerely to me: this is the great command—to speak to me with open heart, for on this depends all the rest. Shut your eyes to any feeling you might have about my peace, which, believe me, I shall never lose through you, as long as I see your heart firm in its desire to serve God, and never, never, please God, shall I see you otherwise; so give yourself no trouble about that.

Be brave, my dear child, we shall get on, with God’s help, and believe me this weather is better for a journey than if the sun were melting us with its burning heats. I saw the bees, the other day, staying quietly in their hives, because the air was foggy: they went out now and then to see how the weather was getting on, but they did not hasten out, occupying themselves with feeding on their honey. O God! courage: light is not under our control, nor any consolation save what depends on our own will. But so long as this is under the shelter of the holy resolutions we have made, and the grand seal of the heavenly Chancery is on your heart, there is nothing to fear.

I will tell you two words about myself. For some days I was half-ill. A day’s rest has cured me; I have a good heart, thank God, and hope to make it still better, as you wish.

My God! with what consolation do I read the words in which you say that you wish my soul perfection almost more than your own. That is a true spiritual daughter! But let your imagination fly as far as it likes, it will never get as far as my will carries me in wishing you the love of God.

The bearer starts at once; and I must go to make an exhortation to our Penitents-of-the-crucifix. I can say no more except a blessing; I give it you then in the name of Jesus Christ crucified. May his cross be our glory and our consolation, my dear child! May it be lifted up among us, and planted on our head, as it was on that of the first Adam! May it fill our heart and our soul, as it filled the soul of St. Paul, who knew nothing else. Courage, my child, God is for us, Amen. I am all yours, immortally; and God knows it, who has willed it so, and has effected it; with his own sovereign and personal hand.

B-VI/14. To the Same: On the Love of God.

Annecy, February 11th, 1607.

I have been ten entire weeks without having a particle of news of you, my dear, my very dear, child, and your last letters were at the beginning of November; but the chief thing is that my fine patience almost disappeared from my heart, and I think would have disappeared altogether, if I had not remembered that I must keep it, in order to preach it to others. But at last, my dearest child, yesterday comes a packet, like a fleet from the Indies, rich in letters and spiritual songs. Oh! how welcome it was, and how I cherished it! There was one of the 22nd November, another of 30th December, and the third of the 1st January of this year; but if all the letters I have written you during this time were in one packet, they would be in far greater number, for as far as possible I have always written, both by Lyons and by Dijon: be this said to discharge my conscience, which would hold itself for ever guilty, did it not respond to the heart of a daughter so uniquely loved. I am going to tell you many things in a desultory fashion, according to the subject of your letters. My God! how rightly you act by depositing your desire to leave the world in the hands of divine Providence, that it may not uselessly engage your soul, as it indubitably would do if you let it act and move at its fancy. I will think very much about it, and will offer many masses to obtain the light of the Holy Spirit to decide about it properly, for, look you, my dear child, this is a principal affair, and must be tested by the weights of the sanctuary. Let us pray God, let us beg his will to make itself known, let us dispose ours to wish nothing but by his and for his, and let us remain at rest without eagerness or agitation of heart.

At our first meeting, God will, if he please, be merciful to us; but why then, my dear child, I beg you, should I put off your Saint-Claude journey? If there are no other inconveniences than those which now appear, I think there is no cause to put it off.

As to the journey I want to make yonder, what trouble to prepare it, and what risk to make it! But God who sees my intention will arrange it by his goodness, and we will talk of it before the time arrives. And about my little sister also; she went to Dijon with the good M. de Crespy, who would not too soon confide her to Madam Brulart, for fear she would make her a Carmelite.

I write now that she may be taken to you immediately after Easter; but write to me whether I shall send to meet you at Montelon or at Dijon, and if you will take this little one to Dijon; or if I shall have her taken to Dijon, and you take her to Montelon, or how? Come then for the Thursday before Pentecost, and go to Besançon, by all means, to see the holy Winding Sheet; all that is quite to my taste; you will see there Cordelier nuns of the 3rd Order, who are much praised.

And perhaps an abbess of another order, who is four leagues from there, namely, at Baume, . . . who is very virtuous, of one of the first families of my diocese, and who loves me singularly. Meantime our little Frances will accompany you, or you will leave her, according to your desire and the counsel of the good Father de Villars. This little Frances I love, because she is your little one and your Frances.

Well now, believe me, my child, I have been thinking for more than three months that I would write and tell you to give up your hoop this Lent. Do so, then, as God inspires it; you will not cease to look gay enough without it in the eyes of your spouse and your abbess.

We must, after the example of our St. Bernard, be quite clean and neat; but not particular or dainty. True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God. I see that all the seasons of the year meet in your soul, that sometimes you feel the winter, on the morrow drynesses, distractions, disgust, troubles, and wearinesses, sometimes the dews of May, with the perfume of holy flowrets, sometimes the ardours of desire to please our good God. There remains only autumn, of whose fruit, as you say, you do not see much; still it often happens that in threshing the corn, and pressing the grapes, there is found more than the harvest or vintage promised. You would like all to be spring and summer, but no, my dear child, there must be change in the interior, as in the exterior. It is in heaven that all will be spring as to beauty, autumn as to enjoyment, and summer as to love. There will be no winter, but here winter is wanted for abnegation and a thousand little virtues which are exercised in time of sterility. Let us always walk our little step; if we have a good and resolute affection we can never go otherwise than well. No, my dearest child, it is not needed for exercise of virtues that we should ever keep actually attentive to all. That would certainly too much entangle and hamper your thoughts and affections. Humility and charity are the mainstays, all the other ropes are attached to them. It needs only to keep ourselves well in these virtues; one the lowest, the other the highest, as the preservation of the whole edifice depends on the foundation and the roof. Keeping the heart closely to the exercise of these, there is no great difficulty in getting the others. These are the mothers of the virtues, which follow them as little chickens their mother hens.

Oh! indeed I greatly approve your being schoolmistress. God will be pleased, for he loves little children, and as I said at catechism the other day to induce our ladies to take care of the girls, the angels of little children love with a special love those who bring up children in the fear of God, and who instil into their tender hearts true devotion, as on the contrary our Lord threatens those who scandalize them with the vengeance of their angels.

See, then, how well we are getting on. If you are not at Dijon for Lent, no matter. You will not cease to be near our good God, to hear him and serve him, in the very service of your father, to whom I owe so much honour and respect for the favour he does me in loving me. I praise God that you were willing to have your lawsuit arranged since my return. I have been so pressed and urged to make appointments that my room has been quite full of clients, who, by the grace of God, mostly returned in peace and repose. I confess that this dissipated my time, but there is no help for it; we must yield to the necessity of our neighbour.

How consoled am I with the cure of this good person hitherto attached to profane love or false friendship. These are maladies which are like light fevers; they leave after them excellent health. I am now going to speak to our Lord of our affairs at the altar, then I will write the rest. No, you will not go against obedience in not lifting your heart so often to God, and not practising perfectly the counsel I have given you. It is good and fit counsel, but no command. In a command, words are used which make themselves well understood; do you know what counsels require? They require us not to despise them, and to love them. That is quite enough, but they do not lay under any obligation. Courage, my sister, my child, make your heart very fervent this holy Lent. I have charged the bearer, who is M. Favre, my vicar general, to send you this as soon as he arrives, that you may have leisure to send him back your answer, as he will be at Dijon eight whole days.

I have not yet been able to revise the life of our good villager to complete it; but that you may know all I know, I may tell you that when I can get a quarter of an hour of spare time, I am writing an admirable life of a saint[25] of whom you have not yet heard tell, and I pray you also not to say a word of it; but it is an affair of time, and one I should not have dared to undertake if some of my most confidential friends had not urged me to it; you shall see a good piece of it when you come. I shall be able to join that of our good villager to it, in some little corner, for it will be at least twice as large as the great life of Mother (St.) Teresa; but as I say, I want nothing to be known of it until it is quite done, and I am only beginning it. It is to recreate myself, and to twirl, like you, my distaff.

I have received your hymns, which I like much, for though they are not of such good rhyme as many others, they are of good sentiments. And if I am not prevented I will have them sung at my catechism. And in exchange I send you this book, in which you will see many beautiful things, which were in part made from my first sermons by M. the President of this town, a man of rare virtue and a true Christian.

What more shall I tell you? I have just come from giving catechism where we have had a bit of merriment (débauche) with our children, making the congregation laugh a little by mocking at balls and masks, for I was in my best humour, and a great audience encouraged me with its applause to play the child with the children. They tell me it suits me well, and I believe it. May God make me a true child in innocence and simplicity; but am I not also a true simple (one) to say that to you? I can’t help it, I make you see my heart as it is, and in the variety of its movements, that, as the Apostles say, you may think no more of me than is in me. Live joyful and courageous, my dear child. You must have no doubt that Jesus Christ is ours; yes, said once to me a little girl, he is more mine than I am his, and more than I am my own.

I am going to take him for a little while into my arms, this sweet Jesus, to carry him in the procession of the confraternity of the Cord, and I will say to him, the Nunc Dimittis, with Simeon; for of a truth, if he is with me, I care not whither I go. I will speak to him of your heart, and believe me, with all my power, I will beg him to make you his dear, his well-beloved servant. Ah! my God! how am I indebted to this Saviour, who so loves us, and how would I, once for all, press and glue him on my breast.

I mean also on yours, as he has willed that we should be so inseparably all in him. Adieu, my most cherished, and truly most dear sister and daughter.

May Jesus ever be in our hearts, may he live and reign there eternally; may his holy name, and that of his glorious Mother, be ever blessed! Amen.

I am ever the servant of Monsieur, your father-in-law.

B-VI/15. To a Lady: Sign of good prayer. Advice on this exercise and on the choice of books of piety; on Paschal Confession and Communion.

November, 1607.

Madam, my very dear Sister,—I am surprised you receive so few of my letters. I think I leave none of yours without some answer. However, God be praised.

Do not torment yourself about your prayer, which you say is without words; for it is good, if it leaves good effects in your heart. Do not force yourself to speak in this divine love; he speaks enough who looks and is seen. Follow, then, the path into which the Holy Ghost draws you, though I do not wish you to give up preparing yourself for meditation, as you used to do at the beginning. This you owe on your side, and you should of yourself take no other way; but when you intend to put yourself in it, if God draws you into another, go with him into it; we must on our side make a preparation according to our measure, and when God carries us higher, to him alone be the glory of it.

You can profitably read the books of Mother (St.) Teresa, and St. Catherine of Sienna, the Method of serving God, the Abridgment of Christian Perfection, the Gospel Pearl, but do not be eager in the practice of all you see there that is beautiful; go quite gently, aspiring after these beautiful teachings, and admiring them very highly, and remember that there is no call for one to eat a feast prepared for many. Thou hast found honey, says the wise Man, eat what is sufficient for thee.[26] The Method, Perfection, Pearl, are books which are very obscure, and go by the mountain tops; we must hardly occupy ourselves with them. Read and read again the Spiritual Combat, this should be your dear book, it is clear and entirely practical.

No, my dear child, since you confess to good confessors, have no fear; for if they had not the power to hear you, they would send you away. And so, it is not at all necessary to make in your own parish those general confessions about which you write; it is enough to make your Easter duty there, by confessing, or at least communicating. If you are in the country, the priest whom you find in the parishes can also confess you. Let yourself not be oppressed by scruples, nor by too many desires: go on calmly and courageously. May God ever be your heart, my dear sister, and I am in him your, &c.

B-VI/16. To a Lady: We must always keep our soul in repose before God.

My dearest Mother,—As you have told me that my letters always consoled you much, I wish to lose no occasion of letting you have them to testify in some way the desire I have to be useful to your soul,—to your soul, I say, which I cherish extremely.

Keep it always seated and at rest before God during exterior works, and standing up and moving about during interior; as the bees, who do not fly about in their hives or while doing their housework, but only when they go out. While we are at our affairs, we must aim at quiet of heart, and at keeping our soul tranquil; at prayer if it wants to fly, let it fly, if to bestir itself, let it do so, though then also tranquillity and simple repose of the soul in seeing God, in willing God, and in relishing God, is very excellent.

When I begin to write to you I do not think what I shall write, but having begun I write what comes to me, provided that it be something of God; for I know that all is agreeable to you; having much strengthened during the last journey the entire confidence which my heart had in yours. I saw clearly, methinks, that you had complete trust in me.

I am writing to that good D. N., who writes to ask me to advise her about her future life; which I find hard, having scarcely seen her spirit, and mine being too common and trivial to consider a singular life like hers: all the same I tell her simply what I think. May God keep you in his holy protection, and load you with his graces.

B-VI/17. To a Lady: We must bear our own infirmities with patience. God acts in different ways towards his servants. Advice on drynesses in prayer. The will of God.

Madam,—Your letter of the 20th January has given me an extreme satisfaction, because in the midst of your miseries which you describe to me, I remark (I think) some progress and profit which you have made in the spiritual life. I shall be briefer in answering you than I could wish, because I have less leisure, and more hindrance than I expected. I will however say quite enough for this time, awaiting another chance of writing to you at full length.

You say then that you are afflicted because you do not discover yourself to me perfectly enough, as you think; and I say to you that though I do not know what you do in my absence, for I am no prophet, I think all the same, that for the little time I have seen and heard you, it is not possible to know your inclinations and their sources better than I do, and I fancy you have few folds into which I do not penetrate quite easily: and however little you open to me the door of your spirit, I seem to see in quite openly: it is a great advantage for you, since you wish to use me for your salvation.

You complain that many imperfections and defects occur in your life, in opposition to the desire you have of the perfection and purity of love for our God. I answer you that we cannot quit ourselves altogether while we are here below; we must always bear ourselves until God bears us to heaven; and as long as we bear ourselves we shall bear nothing of any worth. So we must have patience, and not expect to be able to cure ourselves in a day of so many bad habits, which we have contracted, by the little care we have had of our spiritual health.

God has cured some suddenly, without leaving any trace of their former maladies, as he did in the case of Magdalen, who in an instant, from a sink of the water of corruption was changed into a spring of the water of perfections, and was never muddied from that moment. But also has this same God left in some of his dear disciples many marks of their bad inclinations, for some time after their conversion, and all for their greater profit; witness the blessed St. Peter, who after his first calling stumbled several times into imperfections, and once fell down altogether, and very miserably, by his denial.

Solomon says that the handmaid who suddenly becomes mistress is a very insolent animal.[27] There would be great danger that the soul which had long served its own passions might become proud and vain, if in a moment she became entirely mistress of them. It needs that little by little, and foot by foot, we obtain this dominion, which has cost the saints many decades of years. It needs if you please, to have patience with all the world, but first with yourself.

You do nothing, you say, in prayer. But what would you do, except what you do, which is to present and represent to God your nothingness and your misery?

It is the best harangue beggars make us when they expose to our sight their ulcers and needs.

But sometimes again you do nothing of all this, as you tell me, but remain there like a phantom or a statue. Well, and that is not a little thing. In the palaces of princes and kings, statues are put which are only of use to gratify the prince’s eyes; be satisfied then with serving for that purpose, in the presence of God; he will give life to this statue when he likes.

The trees only fructify through the presence of the sun, some sooner, others later, some every year, and others every three years, and not always equally. We are very happy to be able to stay in the presence of God, and let us be satisfied that he will make us bear our fruit, sooner or later, always, or sometimes, according to his good pleasure, to which we must entirely resign ourselves.

The word which you said to me contains wonders: let God put me in what sauce he likes provided that I serve him. But take care to masticate it again and again in your spirit; make it melt in your mouth and do not swallow it in a lump. Mother (St.) Teresa, whom you so love (for which I am glad), says somewhere that very often we say such words by habit, and with a slight attention. We think we say them from the bottom of our soul, but it is not so at all, as we discover afterwards in practice.

Well! you say that in whatever sauce God puts you it is all one. Now you know well in what sauce he has put you, in what state and condition; and tell me is it all one? You know also that he wants you to satisfy this daily obligation of which you write to me, and yet it is not all one to you. My God! how subtly self-love insinuates itself into our affections, however devout they seem and appear.

This is the grand truth; we must look at what God wants, and when we know it we must try to do it gaily, or at least courageously; and not only that, but we must love this will of God, and the obligation which comes from it, were it to keep pigs all our life, and to do the most abject things in the world; for in what sauce God puts us it should be all one: it is the bull’seye of perfection at which we must all aim; and he who gets nearest gets the prize.

But courage, I beseech you; accustom your will little by little to follow that of God, whithersoever it leads you. Make your will very sensitive to the voice of conscience saying: God wills it; and little by little these repugnances which you feel so strongly will grow weaker, and soon will cease altogether. But particularly you ought to struggle to hinder the exterior manifestations of the interior repugnance you have, or at least to make them gentler. Among those who are angry or discontented some show their displeasure only by saying: My God, what is this? And others say words which show more irritation and not only a simple discontent, but a certain pride and spleen; what I mean to say is that we must little by little amend these demonstrations, making them less every day.

As to the desire you have to see your friends very far advanced in the service of God and the desire of Christian perfection, I praise it infinitely, and as you wish I will add my weak prayers to the supplications you make about it to God. But, madame, I must tell you the truth; I ever fear in these desires which are not of the essence of our salvation and perfection, that there may mingle some suspicion of self-love and our own will. For instance, I fear that we may so much occupy ourselves in these desires which are not necessary to us, as not to leave room enough in our soul for desires which are more necessary and useful, as of our own humility, resignation, sweetness of heart, and the like: or again that we may have so much ardour in these desires as to make them bring us disquiet and eagerness, or in fine, I fear that we may not submit them so perfectly to the will of God as is expedient.

Such things do I fear in such desires; whence I pray you to take good care of yourself that you fall not into them, as also to pursue this desire quietly and sweetly, that is, without importuning those whom you want to persuade to this perfection, and even without showing your desire; for, believe me, this would throw back the affair instead of advancing it. You must then by example and words sow amongst them quite quietly things which may induce them to your design; and, without making appearance of wishing to instruct or gain them, you must throw little by little holy inspirations and thoughts into their minds. Thus will you gain much more than in any other way, above all if you add prayer.

B-VI/18. To a Lady: Piety must be solid. We must be faithful to it everywhere and in everything without failing.

Madam,—I praise God with all my heart, seeing in your letter the great courage you have to conquer your difficulties in order to be truly and holily devout in your vocation. Do so, and expect from God great blessings; more, without doubt, in one hour of such a devotion, well and justly regulated, than in a hundred days of a devotion, odd, eccentric, melancholy, and springing from your own brain. Keep firm in this course, and let nothing shake you in this resolution.

You have, you tell me, a little relaxed from your exercise in the country. Well! we must stretch the bow again, and recommence with proportionately more care: but another time the country must not cause you this loss; no, for God is there as well as in the town.

You have now my little writing about meditation, practise it in peace and repose. Pardon me, my dear lady, if I cut my letter a little shorter than you would wish; for this good man Rose holds me so by the collar to make me despatch him, that he does not give me leisure to be able to write.

I pray our Lord to give you a singular assistance in his Holy Spirit, that you may serve him with heart and mind according to his good pleasure. Pray to him for me, for I need it, and never do I forget you in my weak prayers.

If your husband does not hold me for his servant he is very wrong; for I am such very assuredly, and of all who belong to you. God be ever with you and in your heart. Amen.

B-VI/19. To a Lady: We must labour to perfect ourselves in our state. Advice on Confession and Communion.

Madam my dear Sister,—The confidence you have in me gives me continual consolation, and still I am grieved not to be able to correspond so well by letter as I would wish: but our Lord, who loves you, makes up by the great helps you have there.

I approve that in prayer you keep yourself still a little to method, preparing your mind by studying and disposing points, though without further use of the imagination than is necessary to concentrate the mind.

I know well, indeed, that when by good hap we find God, it is good to occupy ourselves in looking at him, and to rest in him; but, my dear daughter, to expect always to find him thus unsought and without preparation, I do not think that this is yet good for us, who are still novices, and who have need rather to consider the virtues of the Crucifix one after the other and in detail than to admire them wholesale and summarily.

But if, after having applied our spirit to this humble preparation, God still gives us no sweetnesses and savours, then we must keep patiently eating our bread dry, and pay our duty without present reward.

I am consoled to know the chance you have of confessing to the good father Gentil. I know him well by reputation, and know what a good and careful servant he is of our Lord; you will then do well to continue your confessions to him, and to take the good counsels he will give you according to your needs.

I would not wish you, madam, to train your daughter to so frequent communion, unless she is able properly to understand what this frequent communion is. To discern communion from other participations is different from discerning between frequent communion and rare communion. If this little soul fully discerns that to frequent holy communion she must have great purity and fervour, and if she aspires after these and is careful to cultivate them, in that case I consider that she may be let approach often, that is, every fortnight. But if she has ardour only for communion, and not for the mortification of the little imperfections of youth, I think it would suffice to let her confess every week, and communicate once a month. My dear child, I think communion is the great means for attaining perfection, but it must be received with the desire and the care to take away from the heart all that displeases him whom we wish to lodge there.

Persevere in thoroughly conquering yourself in these small daily contradictions you receive; make the bulk of your desires about this; know that God wishes nothing from you at present but that. Busy not yourself then in doing anything else: do not sow your desires in another’s garden, but cultivate well your own. Do not desire not to be what you are, but desire to be very well what you are; occupy your thoughts in making that perfect, and in bearing the crosses, little or great, which you will meet. And, believe me, this is the great truth, and the least understood in spiritual conduct.

Every one loves according to his taste; few love according to their duty and the taste of our Lord. What is the use of building castles in Spain, when we have to live in France? It is my old lesson, and you know it well; tell me, my dear child, if you practise it well.

I pray you, regulate your exercises, and have in them a great regard for the inclinations of your head. Laugh at those frivolous attacks whereby your enemy represents to you the world as if you were to return to it; laugh at them, I say, as nonsense; there must be no answer to them, but that of our Saviour: Get thee behind me, Satan! Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.[28] My dear child, we are in the way of the saints, let us walk courageously, in spite of the difficulties which are therein.

I think I have satisfied all you want to know from me, who have no stronger desire than to serve you faithfully in this point.

I should much desire to see you; but it was not convenient that I should will it. God will perhaps dispose some means more proper for this: yes, I pray him so to do, if it is for his glory, for which I will to will all.

May he ever live and reign in our souls! I am, madam, my dearest daughter and sister, your, &c.

B-VI/20. To one of his Relatives: He wishes her the Love of God.

Madam my dear Cousin,—I cannot, and would not, refrain from writing to you, having so safe a bearer. But it is only to tell you that I ask continually in Holy Mass many graces for your soul, but chiefly and as everything, divine love; for, indeed, it is our all; it is our honey, my dear cousin, within which and by which all the affections and actions of our hearts must be preserved and sweetened.

My God, how happy is the interior kingdom, when this holy love reigns therein! How blest are the powers of our soul which obey a king so holy and so wise! No, my dear cousin, under his obedience and in this state, he allows not great sins to dwell, nor even any affection for the very least. It is true that he lets the frontiers be approached, in order to practise the interior virtues in war, and to make them valiant; and he allows spies, which are venial sins and imperfections, to run here and there in his kingdom; but it is only to make known that without him we should be a prey to all our enemies.

Let us greatly humble ourselves, my dear cousin, my daughter; let us confess that unless God be cuirass and buckler to us, we shall be instantly pierced and transpierced with all sorts of sins. Therefore let us keep ourselves close to God, by the continuance of our exercises; let this be the main point of our carefulness, and the rest accessories.

Meantime, we must ever have courage, and if some weakness or enfeeblement of spirit occurs, let us run to the foot of the cross, and place ourselves amid those holy odours, those heavenly perfumes, and without doubt we shall be comforted and invigorated by them. I present every day your heart to the eternal Father with that of his Son, our Saviour, in the

Holy Mass. He cannot refuse it, on account of that union in virtue of which I make the offer; but I take for granted that you do as much on your side. May we ever, with soul, with heart, and with body, be to him a sacrifice and holocaust of praise. Live joyous and brave, with Jesus on your breast. Madame, my dearest cousin, I am one whom he has made your, &c.

B-VI/21. To the Same: The Saint exhorts her to be faithful to God.

Madam my very dear Cousin,—Rightly do you find God good, and relish his paternal solicitude in your regard, in that, as you are now in a place where you cannot get time to exercise yourself in meditation, he gives himself more frequently to your heart, to strengthen it with his sacred presence. Be faithful to this divine spouse of your soul; and more and more you will see that by a thousand means he will make clear to you his dear love towards you.

I am not then amazed, my dear cousin, if God, giving you the taste of his presence little by little, disgusts you with the world. There is no doubt, my daughter, that nothing makes one think colocynth so bitter as eating honey. When we come to relish divine things, it will be impossible for the earthly again to give us appetite. And could we, after having considered the goodness, the stability, the eternity of God, love this miserable vanity of the world? We must indeed support and tolerate this vanity of the world; but we must love and affect only the truth of our good God, and may he be ever blessed for leading us to this holy contempt of earthly follies.

Alas! It is true, madame my dear cousin, the poor Madame de Moiron is dead: we should not have expected it last Lent. And truly we all shall die some future day, we know not which. My God! dear daughter, shall we not be blessed if we die with our gentle Saviour in the midst of our heart? So then, we must always hold fast to this, continuing our exercises, our desires, our resolutions, our protestations. It is a thousand times better to die with our Lord than to live without him.

Let us live gaily in him and for him, and let us not frighten ourselves about death; I do not say let us not fear it at all, but I say let us not disturb ourselves. If the death of our Lord is gracious (propice) to us, ours will be good for us. Wherefore let us often think on his: let us greatly cherish his cross and his passion.

You say right, my well beloved daughter,—when we see our friends die, let us mourn them a little, let us regret them a little, with compassion and tenderness, but with tranquillity and patience; and let us profit of their translation to prepare ourselves quickly and joyously for ours.

I have praised God for that this poor deceased had given herself, I think, a little more to devotion this last year; for it is a great sign of the mercy of God on her. It is just a year since she entered into our confraternity, which has well done its duty to her.

B-VI/22. To one of his Sisters: To avoid eagerness in devotion, and to practise mortifications which come of themselves.

20th July, 1607.

Madam my dearest Sister,—It is impossible for me to restrain myself from writing to you at all opportunities which present themselves. Do not worry yourself; no, believe me, practise serving our Lord with a gentleness full of strength and zeal: that is the true method of this service. Wish not to do all, but only something, and without doubt you will do much. Practise the mortifications which oftenest present themselves to you; for this is the thing we must do first; after that we will do others. Often kiss in spirit the crosses which our Lord has himself placed on your shoulders. Do not look whether they are of a precious or fragrant wood; they are truer crosses, when they are of vile, abject, worthless wood. It is remarkable that this always comes back to my mind, and that I know only this song. Without doubt, my dear sister, it is the canticle of the Lamb: it is a little sad, but it is harmonious and beautiful. My father, be it not as I will but as thou wilt.[29]

Magdalen seeks our Lord while she has him: she demands him from himself. Wherefore she is not content to see him thus, and seeks him to find him otherwise: she wanted to see him in his glorious dress, and not in a gardener’s vile dress; but still at last she knew it was he, when he said: Mary.

Look now, my dear sister, my child, it is our Lord in gardener’s dress that you meet here and there every day in the occasions of ordinary mortifications, which present themselves to you. You would like him to offer you other and finer mortifications. O God, the finest are not the best.

Do you not think he says Mary, Mary? No: before you see him in his glory, he wishes to plant in your garden many flowers, little and lowly, but to his liking: that is why he is dressed so. May our hearts be ever united to his and our wills to his good pleasure. I am, without end and without measure, my dear sister, your, &c.

Have good courage, be not afraid, only let us be God’s, for God is ours. Amen.

B-VI/23. To Madame de Chantal: It is a great happiness to keep ourselves humble at the foot of the cross.

Rumilly, 20th March, 1608.

My dear Child,—Let us keep ourselves, I beseech you, quite at the very bottom of the cross; too happy if some drop of this balm which distils on all sides, fall into our heart, and if we can gather some of these tiny blades of grass which grow round about. Oh! I should like, my dearest daughter, to entertain you a little with the grandeur of this blessed saint (St. Joseph), whom our soul loves, because he has fostered the love of our heart and the heart of our love,—taking these words: Lord, do good to the good and upright of heart.[30] O true God, I say, how good and right of heart must this saint have been, since our Lord did him so much good, giving him the Mother and the Son? For, having these two pledges, he might cause envy in the angels, and challenge all heaven together to have more good than he; for what is there among the angels to compare with the queen of angels, and in God beyond God?

Good night, my all dear child, I beg this great saint, who has so often fondled our Lord, and so often cradled him, to give you the interior caresses which are required for the advancement of your love towards this Redeemer, and abundance of interior peace, giving you a thousand blessings. Vive Jésus, Vive Marie, and also this great St. Joseph who has so cherished our life.

Adieu, my child; the widow of Naim calls me to the funeral of her dear son.[31] It is not on such a subject that I fail to think on what you write me about your son. God’s let us be without end, without reserve, without measure! Jesus be our crown! Mary be our honey! I am, in the name of the Son and of the Mother, your, &c.

B-VI/24. To The Same: On the repose of our hearts in the Will of God.

The Eve of the glorious St. Nicholas, 5th December, 1608.

My dearest Child,—Since my return from the visitation, I have had some symptoms of feverish catarrh. Our doctor would not prescribe me any remedy but rest, and I have obeyed him. You know, my daughter, that this is also the remedy I willingly prescribe—tranquillity, and that I always forbid eagerness. Wherefore, in this corporal rest, I have been thinking of the spiritual rest which our souls should have in the will of God, or which this will brings us; but it is impossible to develop the considerations which this requires without a little quite real and honest leisure.

Let us live, my dear daughter, let us live as long as God pleases in this vale of tears, with a complete submission to his sovereign will. Ah! how indebted are we to his goodness, which has made us desire with such resolution to live and die in his love! Without doubt, we desire it, my child, we are resolved upon it: let us hope further that this great Saviour, who gives us the will, will give us also the grace to perfect it.[32]

I was thinking the other day of what some authors say about the halcyons —little birds which build on the sea-shore. They make nests quite round, and so compact that the water cannot penetrate them at all; and only at the top is a little hole by which they can get air and breathe. Within, they place their little ones, so that if the sea surprise them, they may float in safety on the waves without filling or sinking; and the air which enters by the little hole serves as counterpoise, and so balances these little balls and little boats, that they are never overturned.

O my child! how I wish our hearts to be thus, well compressed, well felted in on all sides; that if the tempests and storms of the world fall on them these may not penetrate them; and they must have an opening only on the side of heaven, to breathe to our Lord! And this nest, for

whom should it be made, my dear child? For the little brood of him who makes it for God’s love, for divine and heavenly affections.

But whilst the halcyons build their nests, and their little ones are still too tender to support properly the shocks of the waves, ah! God has care of them, and is pitiful to them, hindering the sea from carrying them off and seizing them. O God, my daughter, and so this sovereign mercy will secure the nest of our hearts for his holy love, against all the assaults of the world, or he will save us from being attacked. Ah! how I love these birds which are surrounded by waters and live only on air, who hide themselves in the sea and see only the sky! They swim as fish and sing as birds; and what pleases me more is that the anchor is cast above and not below, to steady them against the waves. O my sister, my daughter! may the sweet Jesus deign to make us such that, surrounded by the world and the flesh, we may live by the spirit; that amid the vanities of the world we may always live in heaven; that living with men we may praise him with the angels, and that the assurance of our hopes may be always above, and in Paradise!

O my child, my heart was obliged to cast this thought on this paper, throwing its wishes at the feet of the crucifix, that in all and everywhere the holy divine love may be our great love. Alas! but when will it consume us? And when will it consume our life, to make us die to ourselves, and to make us live again to our Saviour? To him alone be for ever honour, glory, and benediction. My God, dear child, what am I writing to you? O my child, since our invariable purpose and resolution tends unceasingly to the love of God, never are the words of the love of God inopportune for us. Adieu, my child; yes, I say my true child in him whose holy love makes me bound, yea consecrated to be, to live, to die, and to rise again for ever yours, and all yours: Vive Jésus! Vive Jésus, et Notre-Dame! Amen.

B-VI/25. To a Lady: We must hate our faults with tranquillity, and not uselessly desire what we cannot have.

20th January, 1609.

Madam,—No doubt you would explain yourself much better and more freely by word of mouth than by writing; but, while waiting for God to will it, we must use the means which offer themselves. You see, the lethargies, languors, and numbness of the senses cannot be without some sort of sensible sadness, but so long as your will and the substance of your spirit is quite resolved to be all to God, there is nothing to fear: for they are natural imperfections, and rather maladies than sins or spiritual faults. Still you must stir yourself up and excite yourself to courage and spiritual activity as far as possible.

Oh! this death is terrible, my dear daughter, ’tis very true, but the life which is beyond, and which the mercy of God will give us, is also very desirable indeed; and so we must by no means fall into distrust. Though we are miserable, we are not nearly so much so as God is merciful to those who want to love him, and who have placed their hopes in him. When the blessed Cardinal Borromeo was on the point of death, he had the image of our dead Saviour brought, in order to sweeten his death by that of his Saviour. It is the best of all remedies against the fear of our death, this thought of him who is our life, and never to think of the one without adding the thought of the other.

My God! dear daughter, do not examine whether what you do is little or much, good or ill, provided it is not sin, and that in good faith you will to do it for God. As much as you can, do perfectly what you do, but when it is done, think of it no more; rather think of what is to be done quite simply in the way of God, and do not torment your spirit. We must hate our faults, but with a tranquil and quiet hate, not with an angry and restless hate; and so we must have patience when we see them, and draw from them a profit of a holy abasement of ourselves. Without this, my child, your imperfections which you see subtly, trouble you by getting still more subtle, and by this means sustain themselves, as there is nothing which more preserves our weeds than disquietude and eagerness in removing them.

To be dissatisfied and fret about the world, when we must of necessity be in it, is a great temptation. The Providence of God is wiser than we. We fancy that by changing our ships, we shall get on better; yes, if we change ourselves. My God, I am sworn enemy of these useless, dangerous, and bad desires: for though what we desire is good, the desire is bad, because God does not will us this sort of good, but another, in which he wants us to exercise ourselves. God wishes to speak to us in the thorns and the bush, as he did to Moses; and we want him to speak in the small wind, gentle and fresh, as he did to Elias. May his goodness preserve you, my daughter; but be constant, courageous, and rejoice that he gives you the will to be all his. I am, in this goodness, very completely your, &c.

B-VI/26. To Madame de Chantal: The difference between putting and keeping ourselves in the presence of God.

16th January, 1610.

My dearest Child,—Your manner of prayer is good: only be very careful to remain near God in this gentle and quiet attention of heart, and in this sweet slumber in the arms of his holy will; for all this is agreeable to him.

Avoid violent application of the understanding, because it hurts you, not only in other matters, but even in prayer, and work round about your dear object with your affections quite simply, and as gently as ever you can. It cannot be but that the understanding will make some dartings (élancements) to bring itself in; and you must not busy yourself to keep on your guard against it, for that would form a distraction; but when you perceive it, be satisfied with returning to the simple act of the will.

To keep ourselves in the presence of God, and to place ourselves in the presence of God, are, in my opinion, two things: for, to place ourselves there it is necessary to recall our minds from every other object, and to make it attentive to this presence actually, as I say in the book;[33] but after placing ourselves, we keep ourselves there so long as we make, either by understanding or by will, acts towards God, whether by looking at him, or looking at some other thing for love of him; or looking at nothing, but speaking to him; or, neither looking nor speaking, but simply staying where he has put us, like a statue in its niche. And when there is added to this simple staying some feeling that we belong all to God, and that he is our all, we must indeed give thanks to his goodness. If a statue which had been placed in a niche in some room could speak, and was asked:—why are you there? it would say:—because the statuary, my master, has put me here. Why don’t you move? Because he wants me to remain immovable. What use are you there, what do you gain by being so? It is not for my profit that I am here, it is to serve and obey my master. But you do not see him. No, but he sees me, and takes pleasure in seeing me where he has put me. But would you not like to have movement, to go nearer to him? Certainly not, except when he might command me.

Don’t you want anything, then? No; for I am where my master has placed me, and his goodpleasure is the unique contentment of my being.

My God! daughter, what a good prayer it is, and good way to keep in the presence of God, to keep ourselves in his will and in his good pleasure! I think that Magdalen was a statue in her niche, when without speaking a word, without moving, and perhaps without looking at him, she listened to what our Lord said, seated at his feet; when he spoke she heard; when he paused from speaking, she ceased to listen, and still stayed ever there.

A little child which is on the bosom of its sleeping mother is truly in its good and desirable place, though it says no word to her nor she to it.

My God! how glad I am, my child, to speak a little of these things with you! How happy we are when we will to love our Lord! Let us, then, love him well, let us not set ourselves to consider too exactly what we do for his love, provided we know that we will to do nothing but for his love. For my part, I think we keep ourselves in the presence of God even while sleeping: for we go to sleep in his sight, by his will, and at his pleasure; and he puts us there like statues in a niche; and when we wake we find that he is there near us, he has not moved any more than we: we have then kept in his presence, but with our eyes shut and closed.

Now I am wanted: good night, my dear sister, my child, you will have news of me as often as possible.

Be sure the first word I wrote you was very true, that God had given me to you: the assurance of it becomes every day stronger in my soul. May this great God be for ever our all. I salute my dear little daughter, my sister, and all the household. Keep firm, dear child; doubt not; God holds you with his hand, and will never leave you. Glory be to him for ever and ever! Amen.

Vive Jésus, and his most holy mother! Amen! and praised be the good father, St. Joseph! God bless you with a thousand benedictions!

B-VI/27. To the Wife of President de Herce: He consoles her under the motions of the passions which she felt, and which alarmed her.—Nature is not indifferent to sufferings in this life: our Lord in his Passion an example of this.—Remedy for the outbursts of self-love.

Annecy, 7th July, 1620.

Madame,—God, our Saviour, knows well that among the affections he has placed in my soul, that of cherishing you extremely and honouring you most perfectly, is one of the strongest, and entirely invariable, exempt from change and from forgetfulness. Well, now, this protestation being made very religiously, I will say this little word of liberty and candour, and will begin again to call you by the cordial name of my dearest daughter, since in truth I feel that I am cordially your father by affection.

My dearest daughter, then, I have not written to you; but tell me, I pray, have you written to me since my return into this country? All the same, you have not forgotten me; Oh! certainly, neither have I you; for I say to you with all fidelity and certainty, that what God wants me to be to you that I am, and I quite feel that I shall be such for ever, most constantly and most thoroughly, and I have in this a very singular satisfaction, accompanied with much consolation and profit for my soul.

I was waiting for you to write, not from thinking you should, but not doubting that you would, and then I could write more at large. But if you had waited longer, believe me, my very dear daughter, I could have waited no longer; any more than I can ever leave out your very dear self and all your dear family in the offering which I make daily to God the Father on the altar, where you hold, in the commemoration which I make of the living, a quite special rank; and indeed you are quite specially dear to me.

Oh! I see, my dearest child, in your letter, a great reason to bless God for a soul which keeps holy indifference in fact, though not in feelings. My dearest child, all this you tell me of your little faults is nothing. These little surprises of the passions are inevitable in this mortal life. On this account does the holy apostle cry to heaven: Alas! miserable man that I am! I perceive two men in me, the old and the new; two laws, the law of the flesh, and the law of the spirit; two operations, nature and grace. Ah! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?[34]

My daughter, self-love dies only with our body, we must always feel its open attacks or its secret attempts while we are in this exile. It is enough that we do not consent with a willed, deliberate, fixed, and entertained consent; and this virtue of indifference is so excellent, that our old man, in the sensible part, and human nature according to its natural faculties, were not capable of it. Even our Lord, who as a child of Adam (though exempt from all sin and all the appearances thereof,) was, in his sensible part, and his human faculties, by no means indifferent, but desired not to die on the cross; the indifference was all reserved, with its exercise, to the spirit, to the superior portion, to the faculties inflamed by grace, and in general to himself as being the new man.

So then, remain in peace. When we happen to break the laws of indifference in indifferent things, or by the sudden sallies of self-love and our passions, let us prostrate at once, as soon as we can, our heart before God, and say, in a spirit of confidence and humility, Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.[35] Let us arise in peace and tranquillity, and knot again the thread of our indifference, and then continue our work. We must not break the strings nor throw up the lute when we find a discord; we must bend our ear to find whence the disorder comes, and gently tighten or relax the string as the evil requires.

Be in peace, my dearest child, and write to me in confidence when you think it will be for your consolation. I will answer faithfully and with a particular pleasure, your soul being dear to me, like my own.

We have had these past eight days our good Monseigneur de Belley, who has favoured us with his visit and has given us some most excellent sermons. Guess if we have often spoken of you and yours! But what joy when M. Jantet told me that my dearest little godson was so nice, so gentle, so handsome, and even already in some sense so devout. I assure you, in truth, my dearest daughter, that I feel this with an incomparable love, and I recollect the grace and sweet little look with which he received, as with infantine respect, the sonship of our Lord from my hands. If I am heard, he will be a saint, this dear little Francis; he will be the consolation of his father and mother, and will have so many sacred favours from God, that he will obtain me pardon of my sins, if I live till he can love me actually. In fine, my dearest daughter, I am very perfectly, and without any condition or exception, your, &c.

P.S.—If you fear the loss of your letters on the way, although letters are scarcely ever lost, you may as well not sign your name, for I shall always recognize your hand.

Shall I dare to beg you to give my very humble affections and my service to Madam the Marchioness de Ménélay? She is humble enough to be satisfied with this, and the little Francis good enough to persuade her to it, and Madame de Chenoyse. Also, I must salute Madame de la Haye.

B-VI/28. To a Lady: Human respect is blameworthy in matters of religion. Advice on interior drynesses.

5th August, 1611.

I have no sooner seen your dear husband than I have learnt his departure from this town. This has been the cause, my dearest daughter, that I have not been able to give him this letter, by which I intend to answer, though in haste as usual, the last letter I have had from you.

Without doubt, my dearest daughter, we must not, another time, alter anything of the general practices by which we profess our holy religion on account of the presence of these troublesome Huguenots, and our good faith must not be ashamed to appear before their affectedness. We must in this walk simply and confidently.

Still your fault is not so great that you need afflict yourself about it after repentance: for it was not committed in a matter of special command, and contains no denial of truth, but simply an indiscreet respect. To speak clearly, there was in it no mortal sin, nor, as I think, venial, but a simple coldness, arising from disturbance and irresolution. Remain then in peace on that score.

My dearest daughter, you ever make too much consideration and examination about the cause of your drynesses: if they came from your faults still you would not have to be disquieted about them, but with a very simple and gentle humility to reject them, and then to put yourself back into the hands of our Lord, that he might make you bear the penalty of them or spare you it, as he might please. You must not be so curious as to want to know whence proceeds the diversity of the states of your life. You must be resigned to all that God ordains.

Well now! here is the dear husband off, my dear daughter, since his position and also his fancy give him the desire of making a show now and then: you must humbly recommend his departure and his return to our Lord, with confidence in his mercy that he will arrange about them unto his greater glory.

Live sweetly, humbly and tranquilly, my dearest daughter, and ever be all to our Lord, whose most holy blessing I wish with all my heart to you and to your little ones, but specially to my dear good little godchild, who is, I am told, all sugar. Your dear cousin is in her vintage, and I am told she is well; so is Madam de N., who I think, advances much with all her sisters, in the love of God. Your, &c.

B-VI/29. To one of his Sisters: The Saint recommends to her gentleness and peace in the troubles of this life.

30th June, 1612.

My dearest Sister,—My child, I am grieved not to have sooner received the salutation which Maître Constantine had brought me from you, for I should have had more leisure to write to you according to my heart, which is full of affection for you, and cherishes you so warmly that it cannot be satisfied with entertaining you for a little time. It is one of the satisfactions of my life to know that your soul is completely dedicated to the love of God, towards which you aim, advancing little by little in all sorts of pious exercises. But I ever recommend to you, more than all, that of holy sweetness and gentleness in the troubles this life no doubt often causes you. Remain quiet and all loving, with Jesus Christ on your heart. How happy will you be, very dear sister, my child, if you continue to hold the hand of his divine majesty, amid the care and course of your affairs, which will succeed much more after your wish if God help you in them! And the least consolation, which you have from him will be better than the greatest you can have from earth.

Yes, my dear child, my sister, I love you, and more than you could credit: but principally since I have seen in your soul the excellent and honourable desire to will to love our Lord with all fidelity and sincerity. In this I beseech you to persevere constantly, and also in loving me very entirely, since I have a heart quite completely and faithfully, my dearest child, yours, &c.

B-VI/30. To a Lady: Of resignation in trials, and of Christian mildness.

17th August, 1612.

Well, what do you want me to say, my dearest daughter, about the return of our miseries, except that in presence of the enemy we must again take up arms, and courage to fight more strongly than ever? I see no very great things in the letter. But, my God! carefully beware of entering into any sort of distrust: for this heavenly goodness does not let you fall into these faults to abandon you, but to humble you, and to make you hold more tightly and firmly to the hand of mercy.

You please me extremely by continuing your exercises amid the interior drynesses and weakness which have returned upon you. For, since we only want to serve him for the love of himself, and since the service we pay him amid drynesses is more agreeable to him than that we give amid sweetnesses, we ought also to like it better, at least with our superior will; and though according to our taste and self-love, sweetnesses and tendernesses may be nicer, still, drynesses, according to the taste of God and his love, are more profitable. So dry meats are better for the dropsical than wet, though they always love the wet better.

For your temporal means, as you have tried to put them right, and could not, you must now use patience and resignation, willingly embracing the cross which has fallen to your share; and as occasions arise you must practise the advice I have given about this.

Remain in peace, my dearest daughter; say often to our Lord that you want to be what he wants you to be, and to suffer what he wants you to suffer. Resist faithfully your impatiences by exercising not only on all occasions, but without occasions, holy mildness and sweetness towards those who are troublesome to you; and God will bless your design. Good night, my dearest daughter: God only be your love. I am in him with all my heart, your, &c.

B-VI/31. To Madame de Chantal: Resignation to God’s Will. Cure for spiritual troubles.

12th August, 1613.

Let us lift up our hearts, my dearest Mother: let us behold that of God all-loving for us; let us adore and bless his will, his wishes. Let them sever, let them cut in us, wherever he pleases: for we are his eternally. You will find that in so many bye-ways we shall still make progress, and that our Lord will conduct us by the deserts to the holy land of promise. And from time to time he will give us what will make us prize the deserts more than the fertile lands, in which the corn ripens in its seasons;—but the manna falls not.

My God! dearest mother, when you wrote to me that you were a poor bee, I thought I could not wish that, so long as your drynesses and afflictions last; for this little animal which in health is diligent and busy, loses heart and remains idle as soon as it gets ill.

But then I changed my wishes, and said: Ah! yes, I quite wish that that my mother may be a bee, even while in spiritual trouble: for this little animal has no other cure for itself in its maladies, than to expose itself to the sun, and to await heat and health from its rays.

O God! my daughter, let us put ourselves thus before our crucified sun, and then say to him: O lovely sun of hearts, you vivify all by the rays of your goodness: behold us here half-dead before you, and we will not move till your heart quicken us, Lord Jesus. My dear child, death is life when it happens in presence of God.

Lean your spirit on the stone which was represented by that which Jacob had under his head when he saw the beautiful ladder: it is the very one on which St. John the Evangelist reposed one day by the excess of the charity of his master. Jesus, who is our heart and the heart of our heart, will watch lovingly over you. Rest in peace. May God be for ever in the midst of your heart! May he make it for ever more entirely his own! Vive Jésus. Amen, Amen.

B-VI/32. To a Religious: Different effects and signs of self-love and true charity.

1615.

Oh! would to God, my dearest child, that it was the treatise of heavenly love which kept me occupied all the morning! It would soon be finished, and I should be very happy to apply my soul to such sweet consideration: but it is the infinite number of little follies, which the world perforce brings me every day, which causes me trouble and annoyance, and makes my hours useless; still, so far as I can run away from them I ever keep putting down some little lines in favour of this holy love, which is the bond of our mutual love.

Well, let us come to our letter. Self-love can be mortified in us, but still it never dies; indeed, from time to time and on different occasions, it produces shoots in us, which show that though cut off it is not rooted out. This is why we have not the consolation that we ought to have when we see others do well; for what we do not see in ourselves is not so agreeable to us; and what we do see in ourselves is very sweet to us, because we love ourselves tenderly and amorously. But if we had true charity, which makes us have one same heart and one same soul with our neighbour, we should be perfectly filled with consolation when he did well.

This same self-love makes us willing enough to do things of our own election, but not by the election of another, or by obedience; we would do it as coming from us, but not as coming from another. It is always we ourselves, who seek our own will, and our own self-love; on the contrary, if we had the perfection of the love of God, we should prefer to do what was commanded because it comes more from God, and less from us.

As for taking more pleasure in doing hard things ourselves than in seeing them done by others, this may be through charity, or because secretly self-love fears that others may equal or surpass us. Sometimes we are more distressed to see others ill-treated than ourselves by goodness of disposition; sometimes because we think ourselves braver than them, and that we should support the trouble better than they, according to the good opinion we have of ourselves.

The proof of this is that ordinarily we would rather have small troubles than let another have them; but the great we wish more for others than ourselves. Without doubt, my dear child, the repugnance we have to the supposed exaltation of others comes from this, that we have a self-love which tells us we should do even better than they, and that the idea of our good designs promises us wonders from ourselves, and not so much from others.

Besides all this, know, my very dear child, that the things you feel are only the dispositions of the lower part of your soul: for I am sure that the superior part disavows it all. It is the only remedy we have, to disavow the dispositions, invoking obedience, and protesting that we love it, in spite of all repugnance, more than our own election; praising God for the good which one sees in others, and beseeching him to continue it, and so of other ill-feelings.

We must be in no way surprised to find self-love in us, for it never leaves us. It sleeps sometimes, like a fox, then all of a sudden leaps on the chickens; wherefore we must constantly keep watch on it, and patiently and very quietly defend ourselves from it. But if sometimes it wounds us, we are healed by unsaying what it has made us say and disavowing what it has made us do.

Well, I only see casually the lady who was to come to make her general confession, and her eyes are all moist after leaving her daughter: for the great of the world leave one another in parting. Those of God not so; they are always united together with their Saviour. God bless you, my dear child.

B-VI/33[36]. To one of his Spiritual Daughters: Effects of self-love very different from those of fraternal charity.

Early in 1616.

When will this natural love, which rests on consanguinity, on propriety, on politeness, on similarity, on sympathy, on amiability,—be purified, and reduced to the perfect obedience of the simple pure love of the good pleasure of God? When will this self-love no longer desire exterior presence, testimonies and signs, but will remain fully satisfied with the invariable and immutable assurance that God gives it of his perpetuity? What can presence add to a love which God produces, sustains and preserves? What marks of perseverance can be required in a unity which God has created? Distance and presence will never add anything to the solidity of a love, which God has himself formed.

When shall we all be steeped in gentleness and sweetness towards our neighbour? When shall we see the souls of our neighbour in the sacred bosom of our Saviour? Ah! he who sees his neighbour outside this, runs the risk of not loving him purely, nor constantly, nor equally; but there, in that place, who would not love him, who would not bear with him? Who would not suffer his imperfections? Who would find him ill-favoured? Who would find him tiresome? Well, my dearest child, this neighbour is really there on the bosom and the breast of this amiable Saviour, and he is there so loved, and so loveable that the lover dies of love for him, a lover whose love is in his death, and death in his love.

B-VI/34. To a Superior of the Visitation, his Niece: We must serve God at his pleasure, not our own.

12th Oct., 1615.

What is the heart of my dearest child doing, which mine loves in truth very perfectly? I feel sure that it is always closely united to that of our Lord, and that it often says to him: The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life, of whom shall I be afraid.[37] My dearest child, throw your solicitude upon the divine shoulders of the Lord, and he will bear us and sustain us.[38] If he calls you (and he does) to a sort of service which is according to his pleasure, though not to your taste, you must have not less courage but more, than if your taste agreed with his pleasure; for when there is less of our own in anything it goes so much the better.

You must not, my dear niece, my daughter, allow your spirit to look at itself, or to reflect upon its own strength or its own inclinations: you must fix your eyes on the good pleasure of God and on his Providence.

We must not discuss (discourir) when we ought to run (courir); nor devise (deviser) difficulties, when we should spin them off (dévider).

Gird your loins with strength, and fill your heart with courage, and then say: I will advance; not I but the grace of God in me.[39] The grace of God, then, be ever with your spirit.[40] Amen.

B-VI/35. To a Lady: We should not refrain from speaking of God when it may be useful. It is not being a hypocrite to speak better than we act. Advice for a person in society.

Annecy, 26th April, 1617.

I answer your letter of the 14th, my dearest daughter,

1°. Tell that dear B. Marie, who loves me so much, and whom I love even more, to speak freely of God wherever she may think it will be useful, quite indifferent as to what those who hear her may think or say of her. In a word, I have already told her that she must do nothing and say nothing for the sake of being praised, nor omit to say or do anything for fear of being praised. And it is not to be a hypocrite not to do as well as we speak; for, Lord God! where should we be? I should have to be silent for fear of being a hypocrite, since if I spoke of perfection it would follow that I should think myself perfect. No, certainly, my dear child, I do not think myself perfect when I talk of perfection, any more than I think myself an Italian when I talk Italian: but I think I know the language of perfection, having learned it from those with whom I have conversed, who spoke it.

2°. Tell her she may powder her hair, since her intention is right; for the fancies she has about it are not at all to be considered. You must not entangle your spirit in these cobwebs. The hair of the soul of this daughter is even more scant than that of her head; this is why she embarrasses herself. We must not be so punctilous, nor occupy ourselves with so many reflections; this is not what our Lord wants. Tell her then to walk in good faith, by the middle path of the lovely virtues of simplicity and humility; and not by the extremes of these subtleties of discussion and consideration. Let her boldly powder her head; for even respectable pheasants powder their plumage for fear of insects.[41]

3°. She need not lose the sermon, or any good work for want of saying: make haste; but let her say it gently and quietly. If she is at table, and the Blessed Sacrament passes, let her accompany it in spirit, if there are other people at table with her; if there is no one, she may accompany it if, without hurry, she can get there in time; and then let her return quietly to take her refection; for our Lord did not wish that even Martha should serve him with a troubled eagerness.

4°. I have told her that she may speak strongly and decidedly when required, to keep in order the person she knows of; but I have reminded her that strength is more effective when it is quiet, and is allowed to spring from reason, without mixture of passion.

5°. The society of the twelve cannot be bad, for the exercise which it uses is good; but this B. M., who wishes to have no perhaps, must suffer it here, and must let us say, that perhaps this is a good society; being in no way certified by any prelate, nor by any person worthy of faith, we cannot be assured that it has been properly instituted; the little book which says so, alleges neither author nor witness to prove it. Still, that is good which cannot harm and may profit.

6°. Let her practise prayer, either by points, as we have said, or after her own custom, it matters little: but we distinctly remember telling her just to prepare the points, and to try at the beginning of prayer to relish them; if she relish them it is a sign that at least for that time, God wants her to follow this method. If, however, the sweet customary presence engages her afterwards, let her entertain it; let her also enter into the colloquies which God himself suggests, and which, as she explains them to me in your letter, are good; still she must sometimes also speak to this great All, so that our nothing may do the part. Well, as you read our books, I will add nothing, save to tell you to go simply, sincerely, frankly, and with the naiveté of children, sometimes in the arms of the heavenly Father, sometimes holding his hand.

I am glad that my books have found entrance into your soul, which was so bold as to think that it sufficed for itself; but they are the books of that father and of that heart whose dear daughter you are, since it has so pleased God, to whom be honour and glory for ever.

B-VI/36. To a Lady: We must not be surprised at spiritual coldness, provided we are firm in our resolutions. A Servant of God.

Your coldness, my dearest daughter, must not surprise you at all, provided that you do not, on account of it, interrupt the course of your spiritual exercises.

Ah! my dearest child, tell me, was not the sweet Jesus born in the heart of the cold? And why should he not also stay in the cold of the heart I speak of, that cold, of which, I think, you speak; which consists not in any relaxing of our good resolutions, but simply in a certain lassitude and heaviness of spirit which makes us move with difficulty; but still we move in the course in which we have placed ourselves, and from which we will never deviate till we arrive at the port. Is it not so, my child?

I will go, if I can, for your feast, and will give you holy confirmation. Oh! may I share in the spirit of that saint who has called you by his name from your baptism, and who will confirm it in your favour on the very day on which all the church invokes him. I will tell you on that day one or two of those divine words which impressed our Saviour so deeply in the heart of his disciples. Meanwhile, live all for God; and for his love bear with yourself and all your miseries.

In fine, to be a good servant of God is not to be always consoled, always in sweetness, always without aversion or repugnance to good, for in that case neither St. Paula, nor St. Angela, nor St. Catharine of Sienna would have served God well. To be a servant of God is to be charitable to our neighbour; to have in the superior part of the soul an inviolable resolution to follow the will of God; to have a very humble humility and simplicity in trusting ourselves to Almighty God, and in getting up as often as we fall; to bear with ourselves in our abjections; and quietly to bear with others in their imperfections. For the rest, you know well how my heart cherishes you; it is, my dearest child, more than you could tell. May God be ever our all. I am, in him, all your, &c.

B-VI/37. To a Lady: God does not give good desires without giving the means to accomplish them.

The marks which I have seen in your soul of a sincere confidence in mine, and of an ardent affection for piety, make my heart fraternally amorous of yours. Courage then, my good child, you will see we shall get on; for this dear and sweet Saviour of our souls has not given us these inflamed desires of serving him, without giving us the chance of doing so; without doubt he only defers the time for accomplishing your desires in order to choose a more suitable one; for you see, my dearest daughter, this amorous heart of our Redeemer measures and adapts all the events of this world unto the good of the souls which, without reserve, are willing to serve his divine love.

This good time then which you desire will come on the day which this sovereign providence has named in the secret of his mercy; and then, with a thousand secret consolations, you will open out your interior before his divine goodness; and this will convert your rocks into water, your serpent into a rod, and all the thorns of your heart into roses, and into abundant roses, which will recreate your spirit and mine with their sweetness.

For it is true, my daughter, that our faults, which while in our souls are thorns, are changed into roses and perfumes when voluntary accusation drives them out; because while it is our malice draws them into our hearts, it is the goodness of the Holy Spirit which draws them out.

Since you have strength to rise an hour before Matins, and make mental prayer, I approve it very strongly. What a happiness to be with God while no one knows what passes between God and the heart, except God himself and the heart which adores him. I approve that you practise yourself in meditation on the life and Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the evening, between Vespers and supper, you may retire, for quarter of an hour or a short half-hour, either into your room or the church, and there, in order to rekindle the fire of the morning, either taking up again the same subject or taking Jesus Christ crucified as your subject, you must make a dozen fervent and amorous aspirations to your beloved, always renewing your good resolutions to be all his.

Have good courage; God undoubtedly calls you to much love and perfection. He will be faithful on his side to help you; be faithful on yours to follow him and correspond with him. And as for me, my child, be well assured that all my affections are dedicated to your good and the service of your dear soul, which may God will to bless for ever with his great benedictions. I am then, in him, all yours, &c.

B-VI/38. To a Lady: The Saint consoles her on her spiritual dryness.

Certainly, my dear daughter, it is not that I have not a heart very tender for you; but I am so harassed by encumbrances that I cannot write when I wish, and, again, your trouble, which is no other thing than dryness and aridity, cannot be remedied by letter. It is necessary personally to hear your little accidents, and after all, patience and resignation are their only cure: after the winter of these coldnesses the holy summer will arrive, and we shall be consoled.

Alas! my daughter, we are always attached to smoothness, sweetness, and delicious consolations; but the rigour of dryness is more fruitful: and though St. Peter loved Mount Thabor, and avoided Mount Calvary, yet the latter fails not to be more profitable than the other; and the blood shed in the one is better than the brightness shed over the other. Our Lord already treats you as a brave daughter, so be something of one. It is better to eat bread without sugar than sugar without bread.

The disquiet and grief which are caused you by the knowledge of your nothingness, are not desirable; for while the cause of it is good, the effect is not. No, my child, for this knowledge of our nothingness should not trouble us, but soften, humble and abase us; it is self-love which makes us become impatient when we see ourselves vile and abject. So then I conjure you by our common love, who is Jesus Christ, to live quite consoled and quite tranquil in your infirmities. I will glory in my infirmities, says our great St. Paul, that the strength of my Saviour may dwell in me;[42] yes, for our misery serves as a throne for the sovereign goodness of our Lord.

I wish you a thousand blessings. O Lord, bless the heart of my dearest child, and make it burn as a holocaust of sweetness unto the honour of your love! May she seek no other contentment than yours, nor require other consolation than to be perfectly consecrated to your glory! May Jesus be for ever in the midst of this heart, and this heart for ever in the midst of Jesus! May Jesus live in this heart, and this heart in Jesus!

B-VI/39. To a Lady: The will of God gives a great value to the least actions. We must love nothing too ardently, even virtues.

Madam, my dearest Sister,—You see me in readiness to write to you, and I know not what, except to tell you to walk always gaily in this all-heavenly way in which God has placed you. I will bless him all my life for the graces he has prepared you; prepare him, on your side, as an acknowledgment, great resignations, and courageously lead your heart to the execution of the things you know he wants from you, in spite of all kinds of contradictions which might oppose themselves to this.

Regard not at all the substance of the things you do, but the honour they have, however trifling they may be, to be willed by God, to be in the order of his providence, and disposed by his wisdom; in a word, being agreeable to God, and recognised as such, to whom can they be disagreeable?

Be attentive, my dearest child, to make yourself every day more pure of heart. This purity consists in estimating and weighing all things in the balance of the sanctuary, which is nothing else but the will of God.

Love nothing too much, not even virtues, which are lost sometimes by passing the bounds of moderation. I do not know whether you understand me, but I think so: I refer to your desires, your ardours.

It is not the property of roses to be white, I think; for the red are lovelier and of sweeter smell; but it is the property of lilies.

Let us be what we are, and let us be it well, to do honour to the Master whose work we are. People laughed at the painter, who wishing to represent a horse, painted a perfect bull; the work was fine in itself, but of little credit to the workman, who had another design, and had done well by chance.

Let us be what God likes, so long as we are his, and let us not be what we want to be, if against his intention; for if we were the most excellent creatures under heaven, what would it profit us if we were not according to the pleasure of God’s will?

Perhaps I repeat this too much; but I will not say it so often again, as our Lord has already strengthened you much in this point.

Do me this pleasure, to let me know the subject of your meditations for the present year. I shall be charmed to know it, and also the fruit they produce in you. Rejoice in our Lord, my dear sister, and keep your heart in peace. I salute your husband, and am for ever, Madam, &c.

B-VI/40. To Mademoiselle de Traves: The Saint removes two scruples which she had.

4th July, 1620.

It is the truth that not only are you my very dear daughter, but it is the truth that every day you are more so in my love. And, God be praised because he has not only created in my heart an affection for you really more than paternal, but also because he has placed in your heart the assurance you ought to have of this. And, indeed, my dearest daughter, when in writing to me you say sometimes, your dearest daughter loves you, and when you speak to me in that quality, I confess that I receive an excellent satisfaction from it. Believe it, and say truly, I pray you, that you are assuredly my dearest child, and never doubt it. What you said to save a little temporal good was not a lie, but only an inadvertence, so that at most there could only be a venial sin, and as you describe the case to me, there would even seem to be no sin at all, as there was no question of injustice to your neighbour.[43]

Make no scruple, either little or great, in communicating before holy Mass, above all where there is so good a cause as you mention; but even if there were not, still there would not be the merest shadow of sin.

And keep your soul always in your hands, my dearest daughter, to preserve it well for him who having ransomed it for you alone deserves to possess it. May he be for ever blessed! Amen. Truly I am very faithfully yours in him, and the very humble servant of yourself, and of your dear sister, and of all your house.

B-VI/41. To a Lady: Merit of the services which we pay God in desolations and drynesses.

20th September, 1621.

It has been a very sweet consolation to have news of your soul, my dearest daughter; of your soul, I say, which in all truth mine cherishes very singularly.

The trouble you have to put yourself in prayer will not lessen the value of it before God, who prefers the services we pay him amid interior or exterior contradictions to those we give him amid sweetnesses; since he himself, to make us agreeable to his Eternal Father, has reconciled us to his Majesty in his blood, in his labours, in his death.

And be not astonished if you do not yet see in yourself much progress, either in your spiritual or your temporal affairs: all trees, my dearest daughter, do not produce their fruit in the same season; yea, those which have the best are also longest in bringing them forth, and the palm-tree, it is said, takes one hundred years.

God has hidden in the secret of his Providence the mark of the time when he means to hear you, and the way in which he will hear you; and perhaps he will hear you excellently, not according to your thoughts, but his own. So repose in peace, my dearest daughter, in the paternal arms of the most loving care which the sovereign Heavenly Father has and will have of you, since you are his, and no longer your own.

For in this I have my chiefest sweetness, in remembering the day in which, prostrate at the feet of his mercy, after your confession, you dedicated to him your person and your life, to remain, in everything and everywhere, humbly and filially submissive to his most holy will. So be it, my dearest daughter; I am universally your, &c.

P.S.—O my God, dearest child, how many different ways has this eternal Providence of gratifying his own! Oh! what a great favour is it when he preserves and keeps his gratifications for eternal life! I have said this word to finish and fill up the page. May God ever be our all. Amen.

B-VI/42. To a Religious of the Visitation: Answers to questions on the truths of Faith.

28th November, 1621.

The truths of the faith, my dearest child, are sometimes agreeable to the human spirit, not only because God has revealed them by his word, and proposed them by his Church, but also because they suit our taste, and because we enter into them thoroughly, we understand them easily, and they are according to our inclinations. As, for example, that there is a Paradise after this mortal life,—this is a truth of faith which many hold much to their satisfaction, because it is sweet and desirable. That God is merciful the greatest part of the world finds to be a very good thing, and easily believes, because even philosophy teaches us this; it is conformable to our taste and to our desire.

Now, all the truths of faith are not of this kind; as, for example, that there is an eternal hell for the punishment of the wicked,—this is a truth of faith, but a bitter, terrifying, fearful truth, and one which we do not believe willingly, except by the force of God’s word.

And now I say, firstly, that naked and simple faith is that by which we believe the truths of faith, without considering any pleasure, sweetness, or consolation we may have in them, but solely by the acquiescence of our spirit in the authority of the word of God, and the proposition of the Church: and thus we believe no less the terrifying truths than the sweet and agreeable truths: and then our faith is naked, because it is not clothed with any sweetness or any relish; it is simple, because it is not mingled with any satisfaction of our own feelings.

Secondly, there are truths of faith which we can apprehend by the imagination; as that our Lord was born in the manger of Bethlehem, that he was carried into Egypt, that he was crucified, that he went up to heaven. There are others, which we cannot at all grasp with the imagination, as the truth of the Most Holy Trinity, Eternity, the presence of our Lord’s body in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist: for all these truths are true in a way which is inconceivable to our imagination, since we cannot imagine how these things can be. Still, our understanding believes them firmly and simply, on the sole assurance it has of the word of God: and this faith is truly naked, for it is divested of all imagination; and it is entirely simple, because it has no sort of action except the action of our understanding, which purely and simply embraces these truths on the sole security of God’s word. This faith, thus naked and simple, is that which the saints have practised and do practise amid sterilities, drynesses, distrusts, and darknesses.

To live in truth, and not in untruth, is to lead a life entirely conformed to naked and simple faith, according to the operations of grace and not of nature; because our imagination, our senses, our feeling, our taste, our consolations, our arguments, may be deceived and may err; and to live according to them is to live in untruth, or at least in a perpetual risk of untruth; but to live in naked and simple faith,—this is to live in truth.

So it is said of the wicked spirit, that he abode not in the truth,[44] because having had faith in the beginning of his creation, he quitted it, wishing to argue, without the faith, about his own excellence, and wishing to make himself his end, not according to naked and simple faith, but according to natural conditions, which carried him on to an extravagant and irregular love of himself. This is the lie in which live all those who do not adhere with simplicity and nudity of faith to the word of God, but wish to live according to human prudence, which is no other than an ants’ nest of lies and vain arguments.

This is what I think good to say to you on your two questions.

B-VI/43. To a Lady: Of piety in the midst of afflictions.

Annecy, 28th April, 1622.

May it please the Holy Spirit to inspire me with what I have to write to you, Madam, and, if you please, dearest daughter. To live constantly in devotion there is only need to establish in our mind strong and excellent maxims.

The first to establish in yours is that of St. Paul. To them that love God, all things work together unto good.[45] And in truth, since God can and does draw good from evil, for whom will he do so if not for those who, without reserve, have given themselves to him? Yes, even sins (from which God by his goodness defend us!) are overruled by Divine Providence, unto the good of those who are his. Never would David have been so crowned with humility if he had not sinned, nor Magdalen so amorous of her Saviour if he had not forgiven her so many sins, and he would not have forgiven them, if she had not committed them.

Behold, my dear daughter, this great craftsman (artisan) of mercy; he alters our miseries into graces, and makes the salutary thériacum[46] of our souls from the viper of our iniquities. Tell me, then, what will he not do with our afflictions, with our labours, with the persecutions used against us? If then it ever happens that any pain touches you, from any quarter whatever, assure your soul that if it truly loves God, all will turn unto good. And though this “good” works by springs which you do not see, remain all the more assured that it will come. If God puts the clay of ignominy on your eyes, it is to give you excellent sight, and to make you a spectacle of honour. If God lets you fall down, like St. Paul, whom he struck to the earth, it is to lift you up into glory.

The second maxim is, that he is your Father: for otherwise, he would not order you to say: Our Father, who art in heaven. And what have you to fear, who are daughter of such a father, without whose providence not a single hair of your head shall perish. It is a marvel that being child of such a father, we have or can have other care than to love and serve him well. Take the pains he would have you take about your person and your family, and no more; for you will see that he will have care of you. Think in me, he said to St. Catharine of Sienna (whose feast we keep to day) and I will think in thee. O, Eternal Father! says the wise Man, your providence governs all.[47]

The third maxim you must have is that which our Lord taught to his Apostles. Did gou want anything?[48] Look, my dear daughter; our Lord had sent his Apostles up and down, without money, without staff,’ without shoes, without scrip, with but one coat,—and afterwards he said to them, When I sent you so, did you want anything? But they said: nothing. And now, my child, when you have had afflictions, even in the time when you had not so much confidence in God, did you perish in the affliction? You will tell me: no. And why then will you not have courage to come safely out of all other adversities? God has not abandoned you up to now, will he abandon you from this time, when more than formerly you would be his? Fear not future evils of this world, for perhaps they will never happen; and in any case, if they do happen, God will strengthen you. He ordered St. Peter to walk on the waters, and St, Peter, seeing the wind and the storm, was afraid, and the fear made him sink, and he begged help from his master, who said to him: Man of little faith, why didst thou doubt?[49] And giving his hand he reassured him. If God makes you walk on the waves of adversity, doubt not, my child; fear not, God is with you; have good courage, and you shall be delivered.

The fourth maxim is eternity. Little matters it what I am in these passing moments, if I am eternally in the glory of my God. My child, we move towards eternity, we have almost already one of our feet therein; if our eternity be happy, what matters it that these transitory moments be burdensome? Is it possible for us to know that our tribulations of three or four days work such a weight of eternal consolations, and to be unwilling to bear them? In fine, my dearest daughter, What is not for eternity, Can nothing be but vanity.

The fifth maxim is that of the Apostle: God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.[50] Plant in your heart Jesus Christ crucified, and all the crosses of this world will seem roses to you. Those who are pricked with the thorns of the crown of our Lord who is our head, scarcely feel other thorns.

You will find all I have said to you in the 3rd, 4th (or 5th), and last books of the Love of God. You will find many things about it in the Sinners’ Guide (the large one) of Granada. I must conclude, for I am pressed for time. Write to me with confidence, and point out to me what you think I can do for your heart, and mine will give it very affectionately; for I am, in all truth, Madame, your, &c.

B-VI/44. To a Lady: Purity of Christian friendships: God is their bond.—The world is insipid to those who love God.—Humility must supply the want of courage.

My God, dearest daughter, how I love your heart since it wishes to love nothing but its Jesus and for its Jesus! Alas! could it possibly be that a soul which considers this Jesus crucified for her, should love anything outside him? Could it be that after so many true movements of fidelity, which have so often made us say, write, sing, breathe and sigh, Vive Jésus! we should will, like Jews, to cry out: Let him be crucified, let him be killed in our hearts? O God! my child, I say very true child, how strong shall we be if we continue to keep ourselves united to one another by this cord dyed in the crimson blood of our Saviour! For no one will attack your heart without finding resistance from you, and from my heart, which is quite dedicated to yours.

I have seen it, this wretched letter. The wicked, says David, have told me their fables, but not as your law.[51] O God! how insipid is this compared with the sacred divine love which lives in our hearts!

You are right; as once for all you have declared the invariable resolutions of your soul, and he pretends not to be willing to acknowledge them, do not answer a single word until he speaks otherwise; for he does not understand the language of the cross, nor we that of hell.

You do well also to receive these few words I say to you with tenderness of love: for the affection I have for you is greater and stronger than you would ever think.

You are glad that the troublesome girl has left you: a soldier must have gained much in the war, when he is very glad of peace. We shall never have perfect sweetness and charity, if they are not practised amid repugnances, aversions, and disgusts. True peace does not lie in not fighting but in conquering the conquered fight no longer, yet they have not true peace. Well, we must greatly humble ourselves for being still so little masters of ourselves, and so much lovers of ease and rest.

The child who is about to be born for us is not come to rest himself, nor to have his conveniences, either spiritual or temporal, but to fight, to mortify himself, and to die. So, then, henceforward, since we have not courage, let us at least have humility.

I will see you soon; keep quite ready on the tip of your tongue what you will have to say to me, so that, however little leisure we have, you may be able to pour it out into my soul: meantime, press closely this divine baby to your heart, that you may, with that soul, inebriated with heavenly love, breathe forth these sacred words of love: My beloved to me, and I to him. He shall abide between my breasts.[52]

So, my dearest daughter, may this divine love of our hearts be for ever on our breast, to inflame and consume us by his grace! Amen.

B-VI/45. To one of his Sisters: The Saint exhorts her to live in a great conformity with our Lord.

My dearest Sister,—I am writing just to wish you good-night, and to keep you in assurance that I do not cease wishing a thousand thousand heavenly blessings to you, and to my brother; but particularly that of being ever transfigured in our Lord. Oh! how lovely are his face, and his eyes, how mild and wondrous in sweetness, and how good is it to be with him on the mount of glory! It is there, my dear sister, my child, that we ought to lodge our desires and our affections, not on this earth, where there are but vain beauties and beautiful vanities. Well, now, thanks to this Saviour, we are on the slope of Mount Thabor, as we have firm resolutions to serve and love fully his divine goodness; we must then encourage ourselves to a holy hope. Let us ascend ever, my dearest sister, let us ascend without growing tired to this heavenly vision of the Saviour; let us withdraw ourselves, little by little, from earthly and base affections, and aspire after the happiness which is prepared for us.

I conjure you, my dear child, to beseech our Lord earnestly for me, that he would keep me henceforth in the paths of his will, that I may serve him in sincerity and fidelity. Look, my dear child, I desire either to die or to love God, either death or love: for life that is without this love, is infinitely worse than death. My God! dearest child, how happy shall we be, if we love well this sovereign goodness, which prepares us so many favours and benedictions.

Let us belong entirely to it, my dearest child, amid the many trials which the diversity of worldly things causes us. How would we better testify our fidelity than amid contrarieties! Ah! my dearest child, my sister, solitude has its dangers, the world has its snares, but everywhere we must have good courage, since everywhere the help of heaven is ready for those who have confidence in God, and who, with humility and sweetness, implore his paternal assistance.

Be on your guard not to let your carefulness turn to solicitude and anxiety; and though you are tossed on the waves and amid the winds of many troubles, always look up to heaven, and say to our Lord: O God, it is for you I voyage and sail: be my guide, and my pilot. Then comfort yourself in this, that when we are in port, the delights we shall have there will outbalance the labours endured in getting there. But we are on our way there, amid all these storms, if we have a right heart, good intention, firm courage, our eyes on God, and in him all our trust.

And if the violence of the tempest sometimes disturbs our stomach, and makes our head swim a little, let us not be surprised; but, as soon as ever we can, let us take breath again, and encourage ourselves to do better. You continue to walk in our good resolutions, I am sure. Be not troubled, then, at these little attacks of disquiet and annoyance which the multiplicity of domestic affairs causes you; no, my dearest child, for this serves as an exercise to practise those most dear and lovely virtues which our Lord has recommended us. Believe me, true virtue does not thrive in exterior repose, any more than good fish in the stagnant waters of a marsh. Vive Jésus!

B-VI/46. To the Same: The Saint exhorts her to communicate often, and to abandon herself to Providence in contradiction.

May our Lord take away your heart as he did that of the devout St. Catharine of Sienna (whose feast we keep to-day), to give you his own most divine, so that you may live solely by his holy love. What a happiness, my dearest sister, if some day, in coming from Holy Communion, I found my weak and miserable heart out of my breast, and established in its stead the precious heart of my God! But, my dearest child, since we ought not to desire things so extraordinary, at least will I that our poor hearts should henceforward live only under the obedience and commandments of the Lord: this will be quite enough, my dear sister, to imitate profitably in this point St. Catharine; and then we shall be gentle, humble and charitable, since the heart of our Saviour has no laws more dear to it than those of gentleness, humility, and charity.

You will be very happy, my dearest sister, my child, if amid all these follies of personal attachments, you live all in yourself, and all for God, who indeed alone merits to be served and followed with passion; for thus doing, my dear sister, you will give good example to all, and will gain holy peace and tranquillity for yourself. Let others, I beg you, philosophize about the reason you have for communicating: for it is enough that your conscience, that you and I, know that this diligence in often looking over and repairing your soul, is greatly required for the preservation of it. If you wish to give account of it to some one, you may well say that you need to eat this divine food so often because you are very weakly, and without this refreshment, your spirit would easily faint away. Meanwhile, continue, my dearest sister, to clasp closely to your breast this dear Saviour. Let him be a lovely and sweet nosegay on your heart, in such sort that every one who approaches you may smell that you are perfumed, and know that your odour is the odour of myrrh.

Keep your soul in peace, notwithstanding these disquieting things round about you. Submit to the most secret providence of God what you find hard, and firmly believe that he will sweetly conduct you, your life, and all your affairs.

Do you know what the shepherds of Arabia do when they see it lighten and thunder, and see the air charged with thunderbolts? They withdraw under laurels, themselves and their flocks. When we see that persecutions or contradictions threaten us with some great pain, we must withdraw, ourselves and our affections, under the holy cross, by a sweet confidence that all things work together unto good to them that love God.[53]

So then, my dearest child, my sister, keep your heart entirely recollected in peace; keep yourself carefully from worry; often throw your confidence on the providence of our Lord. Be quite certain that rather will heaven and earth pass away, than our Lord be wanting to your protection so long as you are his obedient child, or at least desirous to obey. Two or three times a-day think whether your heart is not disquieted about something; and finding that it is so try at once to put it back in repose. Adieu, my dearest child. May God ever be in the midst of your heart. Amen.

B-VI/47. To a Lady: The means to be all to God is to crucify our strongest inclinations.

My dearest Mother,—Now what shall I say to you? Many things, without doubt, if I wished to follow my affections, which are always full for you, as I desire that yours be full for me, above all when you are in the little oratory. I beseech you there to pour them forth before God for my amendment; as on my part I pour forth, not mine, which are unworthy, on account of the heart whence they come, but the blood of the Immaculate Lamb before the Eternal Father, for the good intention you have of being all his.

What happiness, my dear mother, to be all his, who, to make us his, made himself all ours! But for this it is necessary to crucify in us all our affections, and specially those which are more strong and active, by a continual slackening and tempering of the actions which proceed from them, that they may be done not with impetuosity, nor even by our own will, but by the will of the Holy Spirit.

Above all, my dear mother, we need a kind, sweet and loving heart towards our neighbour, and particularly when he is burdensome and displeasing to us; for then we have nothing to love in him but his relation to our Saviour, which, without any doubt, makes love more excellent and worthy, inasmuch as it is more pure and free from transitory conditions.

I pray our Lord to increase in you his holy love. I am, in him, your, &c.

B-VI/48. To a Superior of the Visitation: God regards us with love, provided that we have good will. Our imperfections must neither astonish nor discourage us.

It would have been to me a consolation beyond compare to see you all when I passed by; but God not having willed it, I could not will it. And meanwhile, my dearest daughter, I very willingly read your letters and answer them.

Our Blessed Lady knows, dearest child, whether her Son thinks of you, and regards you with love! Yes, my dearest daughter, he thinks of you; and not only of you, but of the least hair of your head: this is an article of faith, and we may not have the least doubt of it: but of course I know well you do not doubt of it; you only express thus the aridity, dryness, and insensibility in which the lower portion of your soul finds itself now. Indeed the Lord is in this place and I knew it not,[54] said Jacob: that is, I did not perceive it, I had no feeling of it, it seemed not so to me. I have spoken of this in the book of the Love of God, treating of the death of the soul and of resignations; I do not remember in what book.[55] And you can have no doubt whether God regards you with love; for he regards lovingly the most horrible sinners in the world on the least true desire they have of conversion. And tell me, my dearest child, have you not the intention of being God’s? Do you not want to serve him faithfully? And who gives you this desire and this intention, if not himself in his loving regard for you? The way is not to examine whether your heart pleases him, but whether his heart pleases you; and if you look at his heart, it will be impossible for it not to please you; for it is a heart so gentle, so sweet, so condescending, so amorous of poor creatures, if only they acknowledge their misery; so gracious towards the miserable, so good to penitents! And who would not love this royal heart, paternally maternal towards us?

You say rightly, my dearest child, that these temptations come because your heart is without tenderness towards God: for it is true that if you had tenderness you would have consolation, and if you had consolation you would no longer be in trouble. But, my daughter, the love of God does not consist in consolation, nor in tenderness: otherwise our Lord would not have loved his Father when he was sorrowful unto death, and cried out: My Father, my Father, why hast thou forsaken me?[56] and it was exactly then that he made the greatest act of love it is possible to imagine.

In fact, we would always wish to have a little consolation and sugar on our food, that is, to have the feeling of love and tenderness, and consequently consolation; and similarly we would greatly wish to be without imperfection; but, my dearest child, we must patiently continue to be of human nature and not angelic.

Our imperfections must not give us pleasure; indeed we should say with the holy Apostle: Unhappy man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death?[57] But they must neither astonish us nor take away our courage; we must, indeed, draw from them submission, humility, and distrust of ourselves, but not discouragement, nor affliction of heart, and much less distrust of the love of God towards us. So God does not love our imperfections and venial sins, but he much loves us in spite of them. So again, as the weakness and infirmity of the child displeases the mother, and still not only does she not cease to love it, but even loves it tenderly and with compassion; in the same way, though God does not love our imperfections and venial sins, he does not cease to love us tenderly; so that David had reason to say to our Lord: Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.[58]

Well, now, that is enough, my dearest daughter; live joyous, our Lord regards you, and regards you with love, and with as much more tenderness as you have more infirmity. Never let your spirit voluntarily nourish thoughts contrary to this; and when they come do not regard them in themselves; turn your eyes from their iniquity, and turn them back towards God with a courageous humility, to speak to him of his ineffable goodness, with which he loves our failing, poor and abject human nature, in spite of its infirmities.

Pray for my soul, my dearest child, and recommend me to your dear novices, all of whom I know, except Sister Colin.

I am entirely yours in our Lord. May he live for ever and ever (pour tout jamais) in our hearts! Amen.

B-VI/49. To a Lady: A Confessor may for various reasons withdraw frequent communion from certain persons; this privation must be borne with a humble obedience, to make it advantageous.

You have by this time, my dearest daughter, my answer to the letter which N. brought me; and here is the answer to yours of the 14th of January. You have done well to obey your Confessor, whether he has withdrawn from you the consolation of communicating often in order to try you, or whether he has done it because you did not take sufficient care to correct your impatience. I think he has done it for both motives, and that you ought to persevere in this patience as long as he orders you, since you have every reason to believe that he does nothing without proper consideration; and if you obey humbly, one communion will be more useful in its effect than two or three otherwise. For there is nothing which makes meat so profitable as to take it with appetite and after exercise: the delay will give you a greater appetite, and the exercise you will take in mortifying your impatience will reinvigorate your spiritual stomach.

Meanwhile, humble yourself gently, and often make an act of love of your own abjection. Remain somewhat in the attitude of the Chananæan: Yes, Lord, I am not worthy to eat the bread of the children,[59] if I am truly a dog that snarl at and bite my neighbour without cause by my words of impatience. But if the dogs do not eat the bread, at least they have the crumbs from their master’s table. So, O my sweet master! I beg, if not your body, at least the benedictions which it sheds on those who approach it with love. These are the sentiments you might have, my dearest daughter, on the days when you were wont to communicate and do not.

The feeling you have of being all God’s is not a deceitful one; but it requires that you should occupy yourself a little more in the exercise of virtues, and have a special care to acquire those in which you find yourself most wanting. Read again the Spiritual Combat, and give a special attention to the teachings therein: it will be very useful to you.

The sentiments we feel in prayer are good; but still we must not so delight in them as not diligently to employ ourselves in virtues and the mortification of the passions. I pray ever for the good mother of the dear daughters. And, indeed, since you are in the way of prayer, and the good Carmelite mother helps you, it is sufficient. I recommend myself to her prayers and yours; and am, without end or reserve, very perfectly yours. Vive Jésus. Amen.

B-VI/50. To a Lady: The Saint exhorts her to fidelity in her spiritual exercises and the practice of virtue. How we are to treat our heart when it has committed a fault.

Madam,—I truly and greatly desire that when you expect to gain any consolation by writing to me, you should do so with confidence. We must join these two things together: an extreme affection for practising our exercises very exactly, whether of prayer or virtues, and a not being troubled or disquieted or astonished if we happen to commit a fault in them; for the first point depends on our fidelity, which ought always to be entire, and grow from hour to hour; the second comes from our infirmity, which we can never put off during this mortal life.

My dearest daughter, when faults happen to us, let us examine our heart at once, and ask it if it has not still living and entire the resolution of serving God; and I hope it will answer us yes, and that it would rather suffer a thousand deaths than withdraw itself from this resolution.

Thereupon let us ask it: why then do you now fail, why are you so cowardly? It will answer: I have been surprised, I know not how; but I am now fallen, like this.

Well, my child, it must be forgiven; it is not by infidelity it falls, it is by infirmity; it needs then to be corrected gently and calmly, and not to be more vexed and troubled. We ought to say to it: Well now, my heart, my friend, in the name of God take courage, let us go on, let us beware of ourselves, let us lift ourselves up to our help and our God. Ah! yes, my dear daughter, we must be charitable towards our soul, and not scold it, so long as we see that it does not offend of set purpose.

You see, in this exercise we practise holy humility: what we do for our salvation is done for the service of God; for our Lord himself has worked out in this world only our salvation. Do not desire the battle, but await it with firm foot. May our Lord be your strength. I am, in him, your, &c.

B-VI/51. To a Superior of the Visitation: Considerations on the death of the Blessed Virgin.

My dearest Mother,—I was considering last evening, according to the weakness of my spiritual eyes, this Queen dying of a last attack of a fever dearer than all health—the fever of love, which, drying up her heart, at last inflames it, burns it and consumes it, in such way that it gives up its holy spirit, which goes straight away into the hands of her son. Ah! may this holy Virgin deign to make us live by her prayers in this holy love! May it be for ever the most unique object of our heart. May our union for ever give glory to the love of God, which bears the sacred name of Unitive!

I have the happiest of birthdays, my dearest mother, in having been born into this world on the day when the most holy Virgin, our Queen, appeared in heaven, in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety.[60] Thus we shall speak on Sunday, the day on which I was born, and which has this glory, that it was during the octave of this great Assumption. Ah, God! dearest mother, how entirely would I hollow out our heart before this exalted Lady, that it may please her to fill it with that overflowing dew of Hermon, which distils on all sides from her holy plenitude of graces.

O how absolute and sovereign is the perfection of this dove, in comparison of which we are ravens! Ah! Amid the deluge of our miseries, I have wished that she should find the olive branch of holy love, of purity, of sweetness, of prayer—to carry it back in sign of peace to her dear dove-spouse, to her Noe. Vive Jésus, vive Marie, the support of my life! Amen.

B-VI/52. To a Lady: We must support with patience our own imperfections.—Advice on meditation.—The judgments of the world.

Madam, my dearest Sister,—I see you ever languishing with the desire of a greater perfection. I praise this longing, for it delays you not, I well know; on the contrary, it excites and goads you on to acquire what you want.

You live, you tell me, with a thousand imperfections. It is true, my good sister, but do you not try from hour to hour to make them die in you? It is a certain truth that so long as we are here encompassed with this heavy and corruptible body, there is always in us a something wanting, I know not what.

I am not sure whether I have said to you that it is necessary to have patience with all the world, and firstly with ourselves. We are more troublesome to ourselves than any one else is to us, as soon as we are able to distinguish between the old and the new Adam, the interior and the exterior man.

Well; you say you always have your book in your hand for meditation; otherwise you do nothing. What does that matter? Whether book in hand, and reading a little at a time, or without book, what difference? When I said you were only to take half an hour, it was in the beginning, when I was afraid of hurting your imagination; but now, there is no danger in employing an hour.

On the day of communion, there is no danger in doing all sorts of good things or in working; there would be more in doing nothing. In the primitive Church, where all communicated every day, think you that therefore they kept their arms folded? And St. Paul, who said Holy Mass habitually, nevertheless gained his sustenance by the work of his hands.

From two things only must we keep ourselves on the day of communion: from sin, and from delights and pleasures eagerly sought out (recherchés). As to those which are of duty, or required, or necessary, or taken in an honest spirit of condescension to others, these are not at all forbidden on that day; on the contrary, they are counselled, under the condition of observing a gentle and holy modesty. No, I would not abstain from going to an innocent feast or party (assemblée) on that day, if I was invited, though I would not seek it out.

You ask me if those who wish to live with some perfection can see so much of the world.

Perfection, my dear lady, does not lie in not seeing the world, but in not tasting or relishing it. All that the sight brings us is danger; for he who sees it is in some peril of loving it: but he who is fully resolved and determined, is not harmed by the sight. In a word, my sister, the perfection of charity is the perfection of life; for the life of our soul is charity. Our first Christians were of the world in body and not in heart, and failed not to be very perfect. My dear sister, 1 would wish no pretence in us, no pretence in the proper sense of the word. Sincerity (rondeur) and simplicity are our great virtues.

But I am vexed, you say, about the incorrect judgments made of me; I do no good, and am thought to do some: and you ask me a remedy. This is it, my dear child, as the saints have taught it me: if the world despises us, let us be glad; for it is right—we know that we are fit to be despised: if it esteems us, let us despise its esteem and its judgment, for it is blind. Trouble yourself little about what the world thinks, put yourself in no anxiety about it, despise its esteem and its disesteem (son prix et son mépris), and let it say what it likes, good or ill.

So I do not approve that we should commit a fault, to give a bad opinion of ourselves; this would be to err, and to make our neighbour err. On the contrary, I wish that keeping our eyes on our Lord, we should do our works without regarding what the world thinks about them nor what view it takes of them. We may avoid giving a good opinion of self, but not seek to give a bad one, especially by faults, committed on purpose. In a word, despise almost equally whichever opinion the world will have of you, and put yourself in no trouble about it. To say that we are not what the world thinks, when it thinks well of you is good; for the world is an impostor, it always says too much, either in good or evil.

But what, again, do you say? That you envy others whom I prefer to you? And the worst is that you say you know well I prefer them. How do you know it well, my dear sister? In what do I prefer others? No, believe me, you are dear and very dear to me; and I well know that you do not prefer others to me, though you ought to do so; but I am speaking to you in confidence.

Our two sisters, who are in the country, have more need of assistance than you who are in the town, where you abound in exercises, in counsel, and in all that is needful, while they have no one to help them.

And as to our sister Du N. Do you not see that she is alone, not having the inclination to accept those whom our father proposes to her? And our father does not like those whom we propose; for according to what she writes to me, our father cannot approve the choice of M. Vardôt. Do I not owe more compassion to this poor crucified one than to you, who, thanks to God, have so many advantages?

B-VI/53. To a Lady: The remedy for calumny is not to trouble ourselves about it. Advice on Confession.

My dearest Sister,—I have not had the pleasure of seeing Monsieur N., but I am not ignorant that you have been afflicted on account of certain libels which have appeared yonder, and I should much wish always to bear your troubles and labours, or at least to help you to bear them. But since the distance of our residences does not allow me to help you in any other way, I beseech our Lord to be the protector of your heart and to banish therefrom all inordinate grief.

Truly, my dearest sister, the greater part of our ills are rather imaginary than real. Do you think the world believes these libels? It is possible that some take an interest about them, and that others imbibe some suspicion; but know, that your soul being good and truly resigned into the hands of our Lord, all attacks of this sort vanish into air like smoke; and the more wind there is, the quicker they disappear. The harm of calumny is never so well cured as by appearing not to feel it, by despising contempt, and showing by our firmness that we are beyond attack, principally in the case of a libel of this kind: for a calumny, which has neither father nor mother willing to acknowledge it, shows that it is illegitimate.

Now, my dearest sister, I want to tell you a saying of St. Gregory to an afflicted bishop: Ah! said he, if your heart was in heaven, the winds of earth would not ruffle it at all; he who has renounced the world, can be harmed by nothing that belongs to the world. Throw yourself at the feet of the crucifix, and see how many injuries He receives: beseech him, by the meekness with which he received them, to give you strength to bear these little evil reports which, as to his sworn servant, have fallen to your lot.

Blessed are the poor, for they shall be rich in heaven, that kingdom belonging to them: and blessed are the injured and calumniated, for they shall be honoured of God.

As to the rest of your letter:—the annual review of our souls is made, as you understand, to supply the defects of ordinary confessions, to provoke and strengthen by exercise a more profound humility, but especially to renew, not good purposes, but good resolutions. These we must apply as remedies to the inclinations, habits, and other sources of our trespasses, to which we find ourselves most subject.

Now, it would indeed be more suitable to make this review before him who had received our general confession, in order that by the consideration and reference of the preceding life to the following life, we might better take the requisite resolutions; that would be more desirable; but the souls which, like you, have not this convenience, may make use of some other confessor, the most discreet and wise they can find.

To your second difficulty I answer, my dearest sister, that there is no need whatever in your review to signify in particular the number or little circumstances of your faults, but it suffices to say in general what are your principal falls, what your primary weaknesses of spirit. You need not say how many times you have fallen, but whether you are very subject and given to the sin. For example, you must not scrutinize yourself to see how often you have fallen into anger; perhaps this would give you too much to do; but simply say whether you are subject to this irregularity; whether, when it happens, you remain a long time entangled in it; whether it is with much bitterness and violence. In fine, say what are the occasions which most provoke you to it; the passion for play, self-consequence or pride, melancholy or obstinacy (of course I give them as examples): and thus in a short time you will have finished your little review, without much tormenting either your memory or your leisure.

As to the third difficulty,—some falls into mortal sin, provided we have no intention of staying in them, and do not go to sleep in the sin, do not prevent our making progress in devotion. This devotion, although lost by sinning mortally, is nevertheless recovered at the first true repentance we make of the sin, when, as I say, we have not long remained steeped in sin. So that these annual reviews are greatly salutary to souls which are still a little feeble; for if, perchance, the first resolutions have not altogether strengthened them, the second and third will confirm them more; and at last, by dint of resolving often, we remain entirely resolved, and we must not at all lose courage, but with a holy humility look at our weakness, declare it, and ask pardon, and beg the help of heaven. I am your, &c.

B-VI/54. To a Lady: The consideration of the sufferings of our Saviour ought to console us in our pains.

It is the truth, my dearest daughter, that nothing is more capable of giving us a profound tranquillity in this world than often to behold our Lord in all the afflictions which happened to him from his birth to his death. We shall see there such a sea of contempt, of calumnies, of poverty and indigence, of abjections, of pains, of torments, of nakedness, of injuries, and of all sorts of bitterness, that in comparison with it we shall know that we are wrong when we call our little accidents by the names of afflictions, pains and contradictions; and that we are wrong in desiring patience for such trifles, since a single little drop of modesty is enough for bearing these things well.

I know exactly the state of your soul, and I seem to see it always before me, with all these little emotions of sadness, of surprise and of disquiet that come troubling it. They do so because it has not yet driven deep enough down into the will the foundations of love of the cross and abjection. My dearest daughter, a heart which greatly esteems and loves Jesus Christ crucified, loves his death, his pains, his torments, his being spat on, his insults, his destitutions, his hungers, his thirsts, his ignominies; and when some little participation of these comes to it, it makes a very jubilee (il en jubile) over them for joy, and embraces them amorously.

You must then every day, not in prayer, but out of prayer, when you are moving about, make a study of our Lord amid the pains of our redemption, and consider what a blessedness it will be to you to share in them; you must see in what occasions you may gain this advantage, that is, the contradictions you may perhaps meet in all your desires, but especially in the desires which will seem to you the most just and lawful; and then, with a great love of the cross and passion of our Lord, you must cry out with St. Andrew: O good cross, so loved by my Saviour, when will you receive me into your arms?

Look you, my dearest child, we are too delicate when we call poverty a state in which we have not hunger, nor cold, nor ignominy, but simply some little contradiction to our desires. When we see one another again, remind me to speak to you a little about the tenderness and delicateness of your dear heart: you have need for your peace and repose, to be cured of this before all things; and you must form clearly in yourself the idea of eternity; whoever thinks well on this troubles himself little about what happens in these three or four moments of mortal life.

Since you are able to fast half Advent, you can continue to the end; I am quite willing for you to communicate two days together when you have the convenience. You may certainly go, only go with devotion, to Mass after dinner;[61] it is the old fashion of Christians. Our Lord does not regard these little things: reverence is in the heart, you must not let your spirit feed on these little considerations. Adieu, my dearest daughter, hold me ever as all yours; for in true truth I am so. God bless you. Amen.

B-VI/55. To a Lady: The Saint recommends her peace of the soul and trust in God.

October, 1617.

I firmly believe, my dearest daughter, that your heart receives consolation from my letters, which are also written to you with an incomparable affection, since it has pleased God that my affection towards you should be quite paternal; according to which, I cease not to wish you the height of all blessings.

Keep your courage ever high, I beseech you, my dearest daughter, in the confidence which you should have in our Lord, who has cherished you, giving you so many humble attractions to his service; and cherishes you, continuing them to you, and will cherish you, giving you holy perseverance.

I do not understand, in good sooth, how souls which have given themselves to the divine goodness, are not always joyous: for is there a happiness equal to this? Nor should imperfections which may arise trouble you at all; for we do not wish to entertain them, or even to stay our affections on them. Remain, then, quite in peace, and live in humility and sweetness of heart.

You have well known, my dearest daughter, all our little afflictions, which I might well have had reason to call great, had I not seen a special love of God towards the souls whom he has withdrawn from amongst us; for my brother died as a religious among soldiers; my sister as a saint among religious. It is only to recommend them to your prayers that I say just this word.

Your husband is quite right to love me; for I wish ever to honour him and you, my dearest daughter. I figure to myself that you always have a cordial affection for me, and your soul will answer you for me that I am yours, since the Lord and Creator of our spirits has made this tie between us. For ever may his name be blessed! and that he may make you eternally his, is the continual desire, my dearest daughter, of your, &c.

B-VI/56. To an Ecclesiastic: Advantage of Christian friendship over that of the children of the world.

September, 1617.

Amid the incertitudes of the desirable journey which was to bring us together for several months, my dearest brother, I regret nothing so much as to see deferred the happiness which our hearts promised themselves of being able to entertain one another at will on the subject of our holy intentions. But the world and all its affairs are so subject to the laws of inconstancy that we must suffer the inconvenience of them, while our hearts may say: I shall never be moved.[62] No, nothing shall shake us in the love of the cross, and in the dear union which the crucifix has made between our spirits. But now is the time when we must use the advantage which our friendship has over that of the children of this world, and make it live and gloriously reign, in spite of absence and the division of abodes; for its author is not tied to time or place. Truly, my dearest brother, these friendships which God has made are independent of all that is outside God.

Now, if I were truly Theophilus,[63] as your great prelate calls me (rather according to the greatness of his charity than his knowledge of my infirmities), how delightsome should I be to you, my dearest brother! But if you cannot love me because I am not such, love me that I may so become, praying our great Androphilus[64] to make me by his prayers Theophilus. I hope to go in a few days to take a little holy repose with him, who is our common phoenix, to smell the burning cinnamon, in which he wishes to die. He will live again amid the flames of sacred love, of which he describes the holy properties in a book which he is composing.

But who can have told you that our good Sisters of the Visitation have been in trouble about their places and buildings! O my dear brother! The Lord hath been made a refuge for us:[65] our Lord is the refuge of their soul; are they not too happy? And as our good mother, all vigorous in her feeble state, said to me yesterday: If the sisters of our congregation are very humble and faithful to God, they will have the heart of Jesus, their crucified Spouse, for their dwelling and abiding-place in this world, and his heavenly palace for their eternal habitation.

I needs must say into the ear of your heart, so lovingly beloved by mine, that I have an inexpressible sweetness of spirit in seeing the moderation of this dear mother, and the total disengagement from things of earth which she has testified amid all these little contrarieties. I say this to your heart only: for I have taken a resolution to say nothing of her who has heard the voice of the God of Abraham: Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land which I shall show thee.[66] In truth she does that, and more than that. Well, it means that I recommend her to your prayers, because the frequent attacks of her maladies often give us attacks of fear, although I cease not to hope that the God of our fathers will multiply her devout seed as the stars of heaven and the sand we see on the beach of the seas.

But, my God, I say too much on a subject whereon I meant to say nothing: at the same time it is to you, to whom all things may be said, since you have a heart incomparable in affection for him who, with an amorous respect, protests to you that he is incomparably, sir, &c.

B-VI/57. On, humility of heart and ravishments

We ought not to desire extraordinary things, as, for instance, that God should do to us as to St. Catherine of Sienna, taking away our heart, and in its place putting his precious own; but we must wish that our poor hearts should henceforth live only under the obedience of the heart of this Saviour; this will be quite imitation enough of St. Catherine in this point: thus shall we be meek, humble and charitable. And since the heart of our Lord has no more affectionate law than meekness, humility and charity, we must keep quite strong in us these dear virtues—sweetness towards our neighbour and very amiable humility towards God. True sanctity consists in the love of God, and not in foolishnesses of imaginations, of ravishments, which feed self-love, but starve obedience and humility: to wish to play the extatic is an abuse. But let us come to the exercise of true and veritable meekness and submission, renunciation of self, pliancy of heart, love of abjection, condescension to the desires of others; it is this which is the true and most loveable extasy of the servants of God.

When we see a person who in prayer has ravishments by which he goes out from and mounts above himself in God, and yet has no extasies in his life, that is, leads not a life lifted up and united to God by abnegation of worldly concupiscences, and mortification of natural will and inclinations, by an interior meekness, simplicity, humility, and above all by a continual charity—then we may believe that all these ravishments are very doubtful and perilous; they are ravishments proper to make men wonder, but not to sanctify them. For what good does a soul get from being ravished unto God by prayer, if in its conversation and life it is ravished away by earthly, low, and natural affections? To be above self in prayer, and below self in life and operation; to be an angel in prayer and a beast in intercourse with men, this is to go lame on both legs; it is to swear by God and by Melchom; and to sum up, it is a true sign that such ravishments and such extasies are only amusements and deceits of the evil spirit.

Blessed are they who live a superhuman, extatic life, raised above themselves, though not ravished above themselves in prayer! Many saints are in heaven who were never in extasy or ravishment of contemplation; for of how many martyrs and great saints does history tell us that they have never had in prayer any other privilege than devotion and fervour! But there was never a saint but has had the extasy of life and operation, overcoming himself and his natural inclinations. In fact, there have been seen in our age several persons who thought themselves, and every one thought with them, very often divinely ravished in extasy; and at last it was discovered that really it was only diabolical illusions and amusements.

B-VI/58. To a Protestant who had asked to have a Conference with Him

Sir,—My design was not to enter into any conference with you; the necessity of my near departure entirely took away the opportunity of it. If conferences are not well regulated, and accompanied by leisure and convenience for carrying them through to the end they are without fruit. I only look at the glory of God, and the salvation of my neighbour. When this cannot be procured, I hold no conference.

You well know what I mean when I speak of the Book of Machabees. There are two; and two make one volume. I will not take the trouble to say more, for I do not quibble.

It is true that we say and insist on it, and you deny and regret it. The Church has always been fought against in the same way; but your negations ought to be proved by the same sort of proofs as you demand from us; it is for the denier to prove, when he denies against possession, and when his negation is to be the foundation of his argument. Jurisconsults testify it to you; the maxim is taken from them; you will not refuse its application.

Prayer for the dead has been used by all the ancient Church, Calvin himself acknowledges it; the Fathers have proved it by the authority of the Book of Machabees, and the general usage of their predecessors. See the end and the beginning of St. Augustine’s book on this subject: we walk in their steps and follow their traces.

Neither the book of Machabees, nor the Apocalypse were recognized so soon as the others; both, however, were equally so at the Council of Carthage, at which St. Augustine assisted. Some canonical books were lawfully doubted of for a time, which may not be doubted of now: the passages I have cited are so express, that they cannot be turned to another sense. I conjure you by the bowels of Jesus Christ, to be willing henceforth to read the Scriptures and the ancient Fathers with a mind dispossessed of prejudices; you will see that the principal and essential features of the face of the ancient Church are preserved in that which is now.

I am told that God has placed in you many gifts of Nature; do not abuse them so as to keep away those of grace; and consider attentively the true bearing of the matter about which you want to confer. If opportunity allowed, be sure that I would not refuse, any more than I would refuse Messieurs of Geneva, my neighbours, if they desired it on proper terms.

It would not be possible with profit to have conferences in writing; we are too far apart. And further, what could we write that has not been repeated a hundred times? Give, for your salvation’s sake, attentive meditation to your reasons and to the ancient Fathers; and I will give my poor and feeble prayers; these I will present to the mercy of our Saviour, to whom and for whose love I offer you my service, and am your, &c.

B-VI/59. To Madame de Chantal: The Saint deplores the misfortune of a lady who had fallen into heresy.

2nd December, 1609.

O God! What a misfortune! This poor thing then means to be lost with her husband! The Confessions of St. Augustine, and the chapter I showed her when I passed that way, ought to have been enough to hold her back, if she is only driven to the precipice by the considerations she mentions. God, at the day of his great Judgment, will justify himself against her, and will make clearly appear why she has abandoned him. Ah! one abyss calls upon another. I will pray God for her, and especially on the feast of St. Thomas, whom I will conjure by his happy infidelity, to intercede for this poor soul so unhappily unfaithful.

What thanksgivings do we owe to this great God, my dear child? To think that I, so many ways tempted, in a frail and unstable age, to surrender myself to heresy, and that I have not cared so much as even to look upon it except to spit in its face, and that my feeble and young soul, going through all the most infected books should not have had the least emotion of this miserable evil! O God! when I think of this benefit, I tremble with horror at my ingratitude.

But let us calm ourselves in the loss of these souls; for Jesus Christ, to whom they were more dear, would not let them go after their own sense, if his greater glory did not require it. It is true we ought to regret them and sigh after them, like David, over Absalom hanged and lost. There was no great harm in that indignation you showed when speaking with her. Alas! my child, sometimes we cannot contain ourselves in occurrences so deserving of abhorrence.

The other day, at an early hour, a very learned man, and one who had been a minister for a long time, came to see me, and telling me how God had withdrawn him from heresy:—I had for instructor, he said, the most learned bishop in the world. I expected he would name some one of the great reputations of this age: he said, St. Augustine. His name is Corneille, and he is just now printing a splendid book for the Faith. He is not yet received into the Church, and has given me a hope that I shall receive him. This good man went off contented with me, saying that I had lovingly entertained him, and that I had the true spirit of the Christian. We must conclude that these ancient Fathers have a spirit which breathes against heresy, even in the points where they are not disputing against it.

When I was at Paris, and preaching in the Queen’s Chapel on The Day of Judgment (it was no sermon of controversy), a young lady was present out of curiosity, named Madame de Perdreauville; she was caught in the meshes, and on this sermon she took a resolution to get instructed, and three weeks afterwards she brought all her family to confession to me, and I was godfather to them all in Confirmation. Do you see? That sermon, which was not made against heresy, still breathed against heresy: for God on that occasion gave me that spirit in favour of those souls.

Since then I have always said that he who preaches with love preaches sufficiently against heretics, though he say not a single word of controversy against them. And this is the same as to say that in general all the writings of the Fathers are suitable for the conversion of heretics.

O my God, dear child, how many perfections do I wish you! One for all, unity, simplicity. Live in peace and joyous, or at least contented, in all that God wishes and wills to do in your heart. I am in him and by him all yours. Your, &c.

B-VI/60. To his Brother, Coadjutor of Geneva: About one of their friends who had turned Calvinist and gone into England.

Annecy, 21st November, 1620.

Here is a letter which I have opened without perceiving that it was not for me. O God! my dearest brother, what anguish did the reading of it cause to my soul! Certainly it is quite true that in all my life I have not had so painful a surprise. Is it possible that this soul can so have gone to ruin? He used to say so distinctly to me that he would never be aught else than child of the Roman Church; though he thought the Pope exceeded the limits of justice, to extend those of his authority. Meantime, after having cried out so strongly that it did not behove that the supreme Pastor, the ruler of the Church, should undertake to release subjects from the obedience of the supreme prince of the commonwealth, whatever evil this prince might do; —he himself, for these pretended abuses, goes and becomes a rebel against this supreme Pastor; or (to speak after his language), against all the pastors of the Church in which he has been baptized and brought up!

He who did not find clearness enough, he used to say, in the passages of Scripture to prove the authority of St. Peter over the rest of Christians, how has he gone to place himself under the ecclesiastical authority, of a king, whose power the Scripture has never authorized save for civil matters?

If he found that the Pope was exceeding the limits of his power by claiming some power over the temporal authority of princes, how will he find that the king, under whom he has gone to live, exceeds the limits of his authority, by claiming rights over the spiritual?

Is it possible that what brought back and kept St. Augustine to the Church has not been able to retain this spirit? Is it possible that the reverence for antiquity and rejection of novelty has not had the power to stop him?

Is it possible that he has believed that all the Church has so greatly erred, and that Huguenots or English Calvinists have so happily met with the truth everywhere, and not erred in the understanding of the Scripture? Whence can such universal knowledge of the sense of Scripture have come into those heads in the matters of our controversies, as that everywhere they should be right, and we everywhere wrong, so that he must leave us to cling to them?

Alas! my dear brother, you will soon perceive the trouble there is in my spirit, when I say all this to you. The modesty with which he behaves in writing to you, the friendship he begs from you with so much affection, and even submission, has made a great wound of condolence in my spirit, which cannot rest when it sees the soul of this friend perishing.

I was on the eve of getting a place made for him here, and M. N. had word to treat with him about it; and now there he is, separated from the rest of the world by the sea, and from the Church by schism and error! However, God will draw his glory from this sin.

I have a particular inclination for that island and its king, and I unceasingly recommend its conversion to the Divine Majesty. I have confidence that I shall be heard with so many souls that sigh after this grace; and henceforth I will pray even more ardently, methinks, in consideration of that soul.

O my dearest brother, blessed are the true children of the Holy Church, in which have died all the true children of God. I assure you, my heart has a continual extraordinary throbbing on account of this fall, and a new courage to serve better the Church of the living God, and the living God of the Church.

Meanwhile we must keep this miserable news secret, though it is sure soon to be spread about on account of the number of the relatives and friends of him who gives it you. And if you write to him, as he seems to ask, through M. Gabaléon, assure him that all the waters of England can never quench the flames of my affection, so long as I can keep any hope of his return to the Church, and to the way of eternal life.

B-VI/61. To his Holiness Paul V: On the Venerable Ancina.

(From the original Latin.):

I received a very great joy and satisfaction when I heard that there would shortly appear the life and the details of all the actions of the most illustrious and most reverend Father and Lord, Juvenal Ancina. For since bishops, as said the great Bishop of Nazianzum, St. Gregory, are the painters of virtue, and as they have to paint so excellent a thing by their words and their works as accurately as possible, I do not doubt that in the life of our most illustrious and admirable Juvenal, we shall see a complete and perfect image of Christian justice, that is, of all virtues.

And, indeed, during the space of four or five months that I was negotiating at Rome the affairs of this See, by the command of my most devout and virtuous predecessor, Monseigneur Claude de Granier, I saw many men excelling in sanctity and doctrine, who were by their works illustrating The City, and in the City the world (in urbe orbem); but amongst all these great personages, the virtue of this one particularly struck the eyes of my spirit.

For I admired, in the profound science of this man which embraced so many different subjects and with so full an erudition, a corresponding contempt of self; in the perfect gravity of his appearance, of his discourse and of his manners, as much also of grace and modesty; in his great solicitude for devotion, an equal remembrance of politeness and sweetness: so that he did not tread down pride by another pride, as happens with many, but by a true humility; and he did not display his charity by knowledge which puffeth up, but made his knowledge fruitful by the charity which edifieth. He was a man beloved of God and men, because he loved them with the purest charity. Now, I call purest charity that in which can scarce be found the smallest trace of selflove or philautia, a rare and exquisite charity, which is hardly met with even among those who make profession of piety, wherefore from far and from the uttermost coasts is the price thereof.[67]

I have noticed that when the occasion presented itself, this man of God was accustomed so openly, frankly, and lovingly to praise the different institutes, virtues, teaching, and ways of serving God, of various religions, ecclesiastics, and laymen, as if he were a member of their congregations or meetings. And whilst he embraced with most sweet and entirely filial heart his own and his most beloved Congregation of the Oratory, he did not on that account more coldly, as often happens, or more weakly love, esteem, or extol other houses or assemblies of persons serving God.

This was why, looking only at the greater glory of God, he most lovingly guided with his own hand and influence, into the society which he thought most suited to them, those who, touched interiorly with heavenly love, desired to follow the course of a purer life, and sought his counsel: a man, in sooth, who was neither of Paul, nor of Cephas, nor of Apollo, but of Jesus Christ,[68] and who listened not to those cold words, mine and thine, either in temporals or in spirituals; but did all things sincerely in Christ and for Christ.

Of this perfect charity of this Apostolic man I have an example now at hand. Just lately there died, in the College of the Clerks Regular of St. Paul in this city of Annecy, a most religious man, William Cramoisy, of Paris; with whom when I was once talking, in an ordinary way, I happened to mention the name of our most Reverend Juvenal Ancina. And he, suddenly filled with joy, said: “How grateful, how precious to me should be the memory of this man! For he as it were brought me forth again in Christ.” And when he saw that I had a desire of hearing the whole thing fully, he thus continued: “When I was twenty-four years old, Divine Providence had already attracted me to the religious life by many inspirations; but I felt myself, from my weakness, so agitated by contrary temptations, that altogether despondent in my soul, I was seriously thinking of marriage; and the affair had already gone so far among my friends that it seemed almost done.

“But how great is the benignity of God! When I entered the Oratory of Vallicelle, what should I hear but Father Juvenal Ancina preaching to the people, first on the inconstancy and weakness of the human heart, then on the magnanimity with which divine instincts are to be put in execution. He spoke with such skill of language and argument, that he seemed to shake off as with his hand the miserable slothfulness of my heart: so that at length, lifting up his voice as a trumpet, he compelled me to surrender. Wherefore, as soon as ever the sermon was finished, anxious and hesitating I go to him in a corner of the oratory where he was praying, as I think, for the happy issue of his sermon, and expose to him what was taking place in my soul.

“He said: ‘This matter must be treated more fully, and there is not time now, as the day grows late. So to-morrow, if you will come to me, we can more conveniently go into everything.

Meantime, and this is the chief point, by prayer invoke the heavenly light.’

“So I went next day, and sincerely declared all that I was doing about my vocation, on either side; and particularly that I was chiefly afraid of the religious life because I was weak and delicate.

“When he had attentively heard and weighed all, that servant of God said: ‘On this very account it is, by Divine Providence, that there are in the Church various orders of religious—namely, that any one who could not give his life to those orders which are austere and devoted to exterior penance, may enter the milder. And here you have the Congregation of Clerks Regular of St. Paul, in which the discipline of religious perfection excellently flourishes; still it is not weighed down by any bodily labour so great but that by almost any man its customs and constitutions may be quite easily observed, with God’s favour: go to their college, and see for yourself whether it is not so.’ Nor from that time did the man of God cease his efforts till he had seen me enrolled and joined to this most venerable Congregation.”

From which it is easy to understand how great was the power of the great Juvenal Ancina in preaching, his wisdom in counselling, and his perfect and constant charity in helping his neighbour. For this very thing which I have just mentioned by way of example, I and several others know to have been done; and indeed, for myself, I openly declare that by the many letters which I have received from him through his affection to me, I have been vehemently united to the love of Christian virtue.

But after he was transferred from the excellent life of the Congregation of the Oratory to the most holy Episcopal office, then did his virtue begin to shine more splendidly, and more clearly, as was fitting, to send forth its rays, as a burning and shining light[69] placed on a candlestick, that it may give light to all that are in the house.[70]

And, indeed, when in 1603, I went a little out of my direct journey, in order to salute him, at Carmagnola, a town of his diocese of Saluces, where he was then fulfilling his duty of pastoral visitation, I saw what love, mingled with veneration, his piety and wealth of virtues had excited in those people. For when they learnt that I had arrived, I cannot sufficiently express the ardour of soul with which, by a certain friendly violence, they drew me from the public hospice into the house of some noble citizen, saying that they would like, if they only could do it, to lodge in the midst of their bosoms a man who had gone out of his way for the sake of honouring their most beloved pastor.

Nor could they ever satisfy themselves in joyously expressing by words, and looks, the satisfaction felt at the presence of such a pastor; whilst he, with a certain most dignified familiarity, and most sweet good-will towards all, drew to himself at once their eyes and souls, and as a glorious and loving-hearted shepherd, called his own sheep by name[71] to verdant pastures, and with his hands full of the salt of wisdom, enticed them, nay, drew them, to come after him.

In fine, I will say one word; may I say it without offence? I do not remember that I have seen a man more copiously, more splendidly adorned with the gifts which the Apostle so earnestly desired for Apostolic men.

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[1] Referring to some vestments she had made for him.

[2] John 11:4.

[3] Gen. 25:22. , 23.

[4] Ps. 118:83. 1378 By F. Ribadaneira, S.J.

[5] Luke 21:19.

[6] Ps. 133:2.

[7] John 11:40.

[8] Job 3:3.

[9] Gal. 6:17.

[10] Ps. 20:2.

[11] Ciron, a little insect; here, apparently, under the skin of the hand. Cotgrave gives handworm.

[12] Prov. 31:19.

[13] Job 13:15.

[14] Mat. 17:4.

[15] Luke 1:48.

[16] Ps. 83:12.

[17] Madame de Chantal lived with her father-in-law, and had much to suffer from his ways and humours.

[18] The eldest daughter.

[19] Celse-Bénigne, the son. The uncle is Monseigneur Frémiot, Archbishop of Bourges.

[20] Ps. 72:25.

[21] Gen. 15:1.

[22] Matt. 8:25.

[23] Paul V.

[24] Gen. 15:12. , 17.

[25] The Saint doubtless refers to the “Love of God.”

[26] Prov. 25:16.

[27] Prov. 30:23.

[28] Matt. 4.

[29] Matt. 26:39.

[30] Ps. 124:4.

[31] Alluding to the Gospel for Thursday, fourth week of Lent.

[32] Phil. 2:13.

[33] Introduction, ii. 2.

[34] Rom. 7.

[35] Ps. 6:3.

[36] This letter corresponds, word by word, with a part of Conference XII.

[37] Ps. 26:1,2

[38] Ps. 54:23.

[39] 1. Cor. 15:10.

[40] Gal. 6:18.

[41] We are unable to express in English the fineness of the irony, the persuasiveness of the hidden argument, or the simplicity of the Saint’s language, “Qu’elle poudre hardîment sa tête; car les faisans gentils poudrent bien leurs pennages, de peur que les poux ne s’y engendrent.”

[42] 2. Cor. 12:9.

[43] The Saint does not say that a lie would be no sin if it did no harm to our neighbour, but that we might plead inadvertence with more probability, when there was no question of serious consequences.—(Translator’s Note.)

[44] John 8:44.

[45] Rom. 8:28.

[46] A medicine in which one of the ingredients was the head of the viper. It was used against poisons.

[47] Wisdom 14:3.

[48] Luke 22:35.

[49] Mat. 14:31.

[50] Gal. 6:14.

[51] Ps. 118:85.

[52] Cant. 1:12.

[53] Rom. 8:28.

[54] Gen. 28:16.

[55] Book ix.

[56] Mat. 26:38.

[57] Rom. 7:24.

[58] Ps. 6:3.

[59] Mat. 15:26.

[60] Ps. 44:10.

[61] That is after the morning meal.

[62] Ps. 29:7.

[63] Godlover.

[64] Man-lover.

[65] Ps. 89:1.

[66] Gen. 12:1.

[67] Prov. 31:10.

[68] 1. Cor. 3.

[69] John 5:35.

[70] Mat. 5:15.

[71] John 10:3.