> [[jpc-abandonment-07|← Previous]] | [[jpc-abandonment-toc|TOC]] | [[jpc-abandonment-09|Next →]] # Third Book. On the Obstacles to Abandonment ## Letter I. *About Vanity and Infidelities* To Sister M. Thérèse de Vioménil, about feelings of vanity and frequent infidelities. My dear Sister and very dear daughter in our Lord. The peace of Jesus Christ be always with you. You must know that before curing you of vanity God wills to make you feel all the ugliness of this accursed passion, and to convince you thoroughly of your powerlessness to cure it, so that all the glory of your cure should revert to him alone. You have, then, in this matter, only two things to do. Firstly to examine peacefully this frightful interior ugliness. Secondly, to hope for and await in peace from God alone the moment fixed for your cure. You will never be at rest till you have learned to distinguish what is from God from that which is your own; to separate what belongs to him from what belongs to yourself. You add, "How can you teach me this secret." You do not understand what you are saying. I can easily teach it to you in a moment, but you cannot learn to practice it until you have been made to feel, in peace, all your miseries. I say, in peace, to give room for the operations of grace. Remember the words of St. Francis de Sales: "One cannot put on perfection as one does a dress." The secret you ask for I give you freely; try to understand it so that it may gradually work its way into your soul, which is what you hope. All that is good in you comes from God, all that is bad, spoiled and corrupt comes from yourself. Therefore put on one side the nothingness, the sin, the evil inclinations and habits, a whole heap of miseries and weaknesses, as your share, and it belongs to you in truth. All that remains: the body with all its senses, the soul with its faculties, and the small amount of good performed, this is God's and belongs to him so absolutely that you could not appropriate any part by the least act of complacency without a theft and robbery from God. That which you so often repeat interiorly, "Lord, you can do all things, have pity on me", is a good and a most simple act; nothing more is required to gain his all powerful aid; keep constant to these practices and interior dispositions; God will do the rest without your perceiving it. I am thoroughly convinced that, without great unfaithfulness on your part, God will work great things in you by his holy operation. Count upon this and do not place any voluntary obstacles in the way; and if, unfortunately, you recognize that you have done so, humble yourself promptly, return to God and to yourself always retaining an absolute confidence in the divine goodness. 3rd. A lively sense of your misery, and the continual need you are in of God's help is a very great grace and opens the way to all good but especially to the prayer of humility and annihilation before God which is so pleasing to him. 4th. You do not understand as I do, the effects and the operations of grace in your soul; if you recognized them you would be too satisfied with them, but your weakness and lack of virtue do not allow you to bear the knowledge. It is necessary that this fruit of grace should remain hidden and, as it were, buried in the abyss of your miseries and beneath a keen sense of your weakness. Under this heap of refuse God preserves the fruits of his grace, for such is the depth of our wretchedness that we compel God to hide from us his gifts as well as the rich ornaments with which he adorns our souls; unless he did so the least little breath of vanity, and of an imperceptible self-satisfaction would destroy or spoil these flowers or fruits. When you are in a state to be able to bear, and to enjoy them without danger, God will open your eyes, and then you will only praise and bless him without any reverting to yourself, and ascribe all the glory of your deliverance to your Divine Redeemer. In the meantime follow the guidance given you now by his Holy Spirit, and do not let fear enter your heart. Understand that in all that you actually experience there is no sin, since you endure it with so much pain and would only be too happy to put an end to these wretched effects of your sensitiveness. Maintain yourself in this holy desire, pray for it patiently, above all, humble yourself before God; it is for him to complete the work he has begun in you, no one else could succeed in it. Understand that this is the little sacrifice that God demands of you before filling your heart with the ineffable delights of his pure love. You will have no rest till this merciful design of God shall be realized because your heart cannot exist without love. Let us pray, then, that this thirst may be satisfied by the love of God alone, that he and he alone may captivate our hearts, that he may sustain, possess, enlighten and change them. 5th. The abyss of misery and corruption in which God seems to take pleasure in seeing you plunged is, to my judgment, the chief of graces since it is the true foundation of all self-distrust, and of an entire confidence in God, the two poles of the interior life; at any rate, of all graces it is the one I like best and that I find most frequently in souls that are far advanced. What you think of yourself, therefore, although terrible, is nevertheless perfectly true and very well founded, for, if God were to leave you to yourself you would be a heap of all that is evil and a monster of iniquity. But God makes this great truth known to very few people, because few are capable of bearing it properly, that is to say, in peace, in confidence, in God only, without anxiety or discouragement. 6th. There is no other remedy for these frequent infidelities than to lament them, peacefully to humble yourself, and to return to God as soon as possible. We shall carry these afflictions and humiliations during the whole of our lives, because we shall always be ungrateful and unfaithful; but, as long as it is so only through the frailty of our nature, without any affection of the heart, that is enough. God knows our weakness, he knows the extent of our misery and how incapable we are of avoiding all infidelity; he sees also that we have need of being reduced to this state of misery without which we could not resist the continual attacks of pride, presumption and secret self-confidence. Be careful not to get discouraged even when you find that the resolutions so often renewed, of belonging entirely to God, fail. Make use of these constant experiences, to enter more deeply into the profound abyss of your nothingness and corruption. Learn a complete distrust of yourself to depend only on God. Often repeat: "Lord I can do nothing without your help. Enlightened by sad experience I can depend on nothing but your all-powerful grace, and the more unworthy I feel, the more do I hope, because my unworthiness will more surely draw down your mercy." You cannot carry your confidence in God too far. An infinite goodness and mercy should produce an infinite confidence. 7th. It is a very subtle and imperceptible illusion of self-love to wish to know how you stand with regard to the mystical death, under the pretext of being able to act so as to render this death more complete in you. You will never know it in this life, neither would it be expedient for you to know it, because even supposing a soul to be entirely dead to self; if it became conscious of the fact, it would run a great risk of losing this state; because self-love would be so much pleased, and so satisfied with this assurance that it would rise to life again, and begin a new existence more sensitive and difficult to destroy than the first. Oh God! how subtle is this wretched self-love! It turns and twists like a serpent, and is only too successful in preserving its life in the midst of the most fearful deaths. This is of all illusions the most specious. Have a horror of this accursed self-love, but learn that, in spite of all your efforts, it will not die completely and radically until the last moment of your life. 8th. The impression of the sanctity of God which throws you into such a state of confusion and pain, without, however, causing you trouble is, I am assured, a great grace, more precious and more certain than the consolation by which it is succeeded. I can, then, only wish for you that it may continue. Do not resist it, let yourself be abased, humiliated, annihilated. Nothing is better calculated to purify your soul, and you could not approach Holy Communion in a disposition more in keeping with a state of annihilation to which Jesus Christ has reduced himself in this mystery. He will not be able to repulse you if you approach him in a spirit of humility and as though annihilated in the profound abyss of your misery. If you have not the impulse, nor the facility to discover your interior state after having begged this grace, you must remain in peace and silence. Your discouragement is a sign of a want of purity of intention and is a very dangerous temptation, because you must only desire to improve, to please God, and not to please yourself. You must, therefore, be always satisfied with whatever God wills or permits since his will alone should be the rule, and the exact limit of your desires, however holy they may be. Besides, you must never get it in to your head that you have arrived at a certain state, or you will become self-satisfied, which would be a grievous misfortune. The most certain sign of our progress is the conviction of our misery. We shall, therefore, be all the more rich the more we think ourselves poor, and the more we humble ourselves, distrust ourselves, and are more disposed to place all our confidence in God alone. And this is just what God has begun to give you, therefore let there be neither anxiety nor discouragement. Each day you must say to yourself, "Today I am going to begin." I greatly applaud the practice you have adopted of never upholding your own judgment, and of allowing yourself to be blamed and criticized even in circumstances where you believed you had good reasons to excuse yourself. You sacrifice, you say, the good opinion that you wish others to have of you, and you keep silence although until now you would have thought that it would be better to defend yourself that your conduct might give edification when that which was said against you was untrue. This is my answer: To endure every kind of blame and unjust accusation in silence without uttering a single word in justification under any pretext whatever is according to the spirit of the Gospel, and in conformity with the example of Jesus Christ and of all the saints. Your ideas to the contrary were the result of a pure illusion; therefore, keep firm to your new and holy conduct. You are right in saying that we carry a fund of corruption inseparable from our nature, and that it resembles muddy stagnant water that gives out an intolerable stench when it is stirred. That is an unquestionable truth, and God has given you a great grace in making you feel it so keenly. From this feeling will come, gradually, a holy hatred and complete distrust of yourself in which true humility principally consists. ## Letter II The Defects of Beginners\* I am not surprised at the calmness of the person of whom you speak; it is the fruit of the humility she practiced in opening her heart, in spite of her repugnance to doing so; and also the effect of the words that God never fails to inspire, in such a case, to those who are acting in his place. Make her thoroughly understand that God has begun to try her like this to punish her, and to cure her of a subtle hidden pride which she has been nursing without noticing it. The greater has been the trouble, the more it has shown the greatness of the vanity which it has disconcerted, and which rebels at the least humiliation, even that which is interior. This person, therefore, must try to divest herself gradually of that self-complacency which is hidden in the most secret recesses of the heart; whether it be about natural qualities, or about those virtues that she may have, or flatters herself that she possesses. For, without being careful about it, there may be some foolish self-satisfaction in all that; and without allowing it to herself she thinks herself superior to others in many ways. A subtle self-love feeds on these vanities of the spirit, in the way that worldly pride is satisfied with the beauties of the body; and, as the latter finds pleasure in thinking continually of its beauty and in looking in the mirror; so, in the same way, the former takes interior delight in all the natural and supernatural gifts which it flatters itself to have received from Heaven. The remedy for this diabolical evil (diabolical, because it is the crime of the proud angel) is --- 1st. To imitate modest women who never contemplate themselves in the mirror, or who drive from their minds all vain thoughts about their appearance, or exterior accomplishments. 2nd. To force this self-love often to look at its defects, miseries, and weakness, to enjoy abjection, and to feed on contempt. 3rd. To consider what we have been, what we are and what we should become, if God removed his hand from us. When we neglect to apply ourselves to these humiliating reflections, God, in his fatherly goodness, feels obliged to take other means to destroy the secret vanity of souls whom he desires to lead to a high state of perfection; he allows temptation, or even falls that throw them into the deepest confusion to cure them of this inflation of the mind and heart. When God makes use of this bitter but salutary remedy, we must be on our guard to prevent our hearts rebelling against it, but submit humbly without vexation, and without voluntary agitation. 4th. We ought not to imagine that by dint of reflections we shall be able to lessen our troubles, but should remain as if motionless in the bosom of the mercy of God, and let the storm pass without struggling against it, and without interior disturbance which would aggravate the evil instead of lessening it. 5th. We should never ask to be delivered from our afflictions since they have been brought about by the favorable action of Providence, but we must pray for patience with ourselves and others, and for an entire resignation. 6th. Instead of becoming strong-minded, we must become like children by a great simplicity, candor, ingenuousness and openness of heart toward those who have the task of guiding us. ## Letter III. *The Illusions of the Devil* To Sister Charlotte-Elizabeth Bourcier de Monthureux (1735). On interior troubles voluntarily entertained, and weakness. My dear Sister, For several days past I have had so many letters to write, either for this country, or for France, that I have not been able to read your long account. I do not disguise from you that it seemed to me very useless, because God has given me the grace to thoroughly understand your state without my having the trouble to read all this. However, I have read the most essential part, that against which you have put a particular mark, and it has only confirmed the opinion I had formed of you some time ago. Excuse me, my dear Sister, if I insist on the same direction that I have always hitherto given you. Until now you have derived great benefit from having followed it, why then allow yourself to be misguided by the illusions of the devil? I am not speaking to you at random, but with full conviction, do then believe me, and prove, by your docility, that the confidence with which you honor me is not a vain pretense. If you really have a good will, if you are sincerely and earnestly resolved to belong to God, you ought to make every effort to maintain yourself in peace in order not to give the lie to the message of the angels, "Peace to men of good will." But you must expect that Satan will exert every effort to prevent you acquiring a peace so desirable. I know that, unfortunately, he has but too well succeeded up to now. The greatest evil in your soul at present is that of anxiety, uneasiness and interior agitation. This malady is, thank God, not incurable, but as long as it remains unhealed it cannot but be even more dangerous than painful to you. Interior disturbance renders the soul incapable of listening to and following the voice of the Divine Spirit, of receiving the sweet and delightful impressions of his grace, and of applying itself to pious exercises and to exterior duties. It is the same with such sick and afflicted souls as with bodies enfeebled by fever, which cannot accomplish any serious task until delivered from their malady. And as there is a certain analogy between them there is also some resemblance between the remedies to be used. The health of the body can only be restored by three means, obedience to the physician, rest and good food. These are, likewise, the three means of restoring peace and health to a soul that is agitated, sick and almost in agony. The first condition for its cure is obedience, a childlike blind obedience founded on the principle that God, having authorized his priests to guide us, cannot allow those souls to be deceived who, on this account, abandon themselves blindly to their guidance. Before all things, therefore, make your virtue consist in the renunciation of your own judgment, and in a humble and generous intention of believing and doing all that your director judges, before God, to be expedient. If you are animated with this spirit of obedience you will never allow yourself voluntarily to entertain thoughts opposed to what has been enjoined you, and you will take good care not to give in to the inclination to examine and scrutinize everything. If, however in spite of yourself, some thoughts contrary to obedience enter your mind, you must reject them, or better still, despise them as dangerous temptations. The second remedy for your complaint is rest, and peace for your soul. To acquire this, you must first of all desire it ardently, and pray to God earnestly for it, and then work with all your might to acquire it. If you wish to know how to set about this task I will tell you. Be very careful not to allow any thoughts which would bring about uneasiness, sadness or depression to remain in your mind. These thoughts are, in one sense, more dangerous than temptations to impurity; you must, therefore, let them alone, without dwelling on them; despise them, and let them fall like a stone into the sea. Resist them by fixing your mind on contrary ideas, and above all by making aspirations suitable for the occasion, with sighs and interior groanings accompanied by acts of humility. But this struggle while being energetic and generous must also be quiet, tranquil and peaceful, because if it were to be restless, unhappy, ill-humored and wild, the remedy would be worse than the disease. In the second place avoid in your actions, whether exterior or interior, all eagerness, hurry and natural activity; accustom yourself, on the contrary, to speak, to walk, to pray and to read quietly, slowly, without overexerting yourself no matter for what, not even to repulse the most frightful temptations. You must remember that if these temptations are displeasing to you that is the best sign that you have not consented to them. As long as the free will feels nothing but horror at, and hatred for the objects presented to the imagination in these temptations, it is evident that it does not in any way consent to them. Keep yourself, therefore, in peace in the midst of these temptations as you have done in other trials. 1st. It only remains then to cure the weakness resulting from the fever which torments a soul in trouble. For that a strengthening diet is necessary ---that is to say ---to read good books, and to get accustomed to read very slowly with frequent pauses, more to try and take an interest in what you read than to make use of the intellect in reflections on it. Remember the wise saying of Fénélon, "The words we read are like the bark of the tree, but the interest we take in them is like the sap which feeds and fattens the soul." We must act as regards this spiritual nourishment as gluttons and sensualists act with regard to their feasts which they taste in remembrance, and enjoy after having swallowed them. 2nd. We must only speak on useful and edifying subjects, and with those who are most capable of leading us to God by their holy conversation. 3rd. Never seek consolation from creatures by useless intercourse. This is an essential matter for those who are suffering interior trials. God, who sends them for our good, desires that we should bear them without going elsewhere for consolation, but to him; and he claims the right to settle the moment when such consolation should be given to us. 4th. We must apply ourselves, each according to his or her capacity and attraction to interior prayer, but without intense application or strain, keeping very quietly in the holy presence of God, addressing him occasionally by some interior act of adoration, repentance, confidence or love. If, however, it is not possible to make such acts, we must be content with the good desire of doing so; for, whether for good or evil, desire is equivalent to an act in the sight of God. Bossuet, somewhere in his works very truly says: "Desire is, with regard to God, what the voice and words are with regard to men. We ask, and return thanks by the desires we have, which say everything, and make our petitions known to God much more distinctly than any words could do, or even those interior acts which are called particular and formal." This is what gave rise to the saying that a cry uttered only in the depths of the heart is the same in the sight of him who sounds all hearts, as a cry that pierces the heavens. 5th. It is necessary to put this manner of praying into practice, not only at morning devotions, but also during the whole day in a quiet, easy, tender and affectionate manner by frequently raising the heart to God, or by an interior attention to the Divine Presence. To gain greater facility you might review in the morning nearly every event both interior and exterior, likely to occur during the day, and ask yourself, "If I find myself in such a circumstance, or such a position, what shall I say to God, what act should I make?" and if, when the time arrives you are prevented from carrying out your good intentions, you can be content to adhere to them, even if only indistinctly, and to lay before God your inability. Finally the best food for the soul consists in willing in all and for all what God wills; or, in other words to adhere to all the designs of Divine Providence in every imaginable circumstance whether interior or exterior, health or sickness, aridity, distractions, weariness, disgusts, temptations, et cetera, and to accept all this very heartily, saying, "Yes, my God, I will everything; I accept all, I sacrifice all to you; or, at any rate I wish to do so, and ask for this grace, help me and strengthen my weakness." In the most fearful temptations say to him, "My God, preserve me from sin in this matter; but I willingly accept as much confusion to my pride, and interior abjection and humiliation as you will and for as long as you will, I unite my will to yours." The most uneasy and enfeebled soul could not fail to recover its lost peace and joy if it adopted these means for regaining them. ## Letter IV. *Interior Troubles* To the same person (1755). If my letter distressed you, my dear Sister, I will say to you with St. Paul that I rejoice not, indeed, at your affliction, but at the good effect it has produced. It is good to recognize that one has been culpable in many ways, not in order to reproach oneself in a hard, bitter, angry and disturbed manner, but to humble oneself quietly and peacefully without self-contempt or bitterness. You do not consider yourself disobedient, you say, in relating to me quite frankly your fears and doubts. That is not the question, my dear Sister; but what is, is that you continue to cling to your fears and doubts; you study them too much, instead of despising them and abandoning yourself entirely to God, as I have preached to you for a long time past. Without this happy and holy abandonment you will never enjoy a solid peace full of absolute confidence in God alone, through Jesus Christ. But, I ask you again, what have you to fear in this abandonment, especially after such evident signs of the very great mercy of God toward you? You are endeavoring to find help in yourself and your works, and to satisfy your conscience, as if your works gave your conscience greater security and stronger support than the mercy of God and the merits of Jesus Christ; and as though they could not deceive you. I pray God to enlighten you, and to give you a change of heart about this matter so essential to you. You say that I should feel distressed and surprised if you laid bare to me all that you experience. This is exactly what people in your state so often say to me, people with whom I am not so well acquainted as with you. Here is my answer to you, and to others like you. The keen perception of faults and imperfections is the grace suitable to this state, and it is a very precious grace. Why? First because this clear view of our miseries keeps us humble, and even sometimes inspires us with a wholesome horror and a holy fear of ourselves. Secondly, because this state, apparently so miserable and so desperate gives occasion to a heroic abandonment into the hands of God. Those who have gauged the depths of their own nothingness can no longer retain any kind of confidence in themselves, nor trust in any way to their works in which they can discover nothing but misery, self-love and corruption. This absolute distrust and complete disregard of self is the source from which alone flow those delightful consolations of souls wholly abandoned to God, and form their inalterable peace, holy joy and immoveable confidence in God only. Oh! if you but knew the gift of God, the value, merit, power, peace and holy assurance of salvation hidden in this state of abandonment, you would soon be delivered from all your fears and anxieties. But you imagine you will be lost directly you think of abandoning yourself; and yet the most efficacious means of salvation is to practice this total and perfect abandonment. I have never yet come across any who have so set themselves against making this act of abandonment to God as you. Nevertheless you will, necessarily, have to come to it, at least at the hour of death; because, without an express revelation and assurance of eternal salvation, no one can be free from fear at the last moment, and therefore, every one is absolutely compelled then to abandon themselves to the very great mercy of God. "But," you say, "if I had lived a holy life and performed some good works I might think myself authorized to practice this abandonment, and to divest myself of my fears." An illusion, my dear Sister. Such language can only have been inspired by your unhappy self-love, which desires to be able to trust entirely to itself, whereas you ought to place your confidence only in God and in the infinite merits of Jesus Christ. You have never really thoroughly fathomed this essential point but have always stopped short to examine into your fears and doubts instead of rising above them, and throwing yourself heart and soul into the hands of God, and upon his fatherly breast. In other words you always want to have a distinct assurance based on yourself, in order to abandon yourself better. Most certainly this is anything but an abandonment to God in complete confidence in him only, but, rather, a secret desire of being able to depend on yourself before abandoning yourself to his infinite goodness. This is to act like a state criminal who, before abandoning himself to the clemency of the king, wishes to be assured of his pardon. Can this be called depending on God, hoping only in God? Judge for yourself! And God has for so long a time been calling you to this state of abandonment in filial confidence. And you, instead of responding to this loving call allow yourself to be tyrannized over, and martyrized by a slavish fear. I greatly insist on this matter, because experience has taught me that this is the last battle of grace for souls in your state; the last step to take in forsaking self, and the one that costs the most. But it seems to me that no one has ever offered so much resistance as you. This proceeds from a very strongly rooted self-love, from a secret great presumption and confidence in yourself that, possibly, you may never have found out; for, mark well, that directly you are spoken to about this total abandonment to God you feel a certain interior commotion as though all were lost, and as if you had been told to throw yourself, with your eyes shut, into an abyss. It seems a trifle, yet it is very much the contrary, for the greatest assurance of salvation in this life can only be obtained in this total abandonment, and this consists, as Fénélon says, in becoming thoroughly tired of, and driven to despair of oneself, and made to hope only in God. Weigh well the force of these words which at first sight seem too strong and exaggerated. However, to bring you to this state of total abandonment God has imparted to you two great graces. Firstly, a powerful attraction to induce you to place all your confidence in his very great mercy and goodness; secondly, a great knowledge of, and a very penetrating insight into your miseries, weaknesses, perversity, powerlessness to act well, et cetera; as if to say to you: "You see that in this state you neither ought nor can, in any sort of way, depend on yourself, since you are nothing but a heap of corruption. Let me then, have the care of you, and forsake yourself once for all, to depend only on me." "But how shall I work out my salvation?" What! do you not understand that the most certain way of assuring this is to leave the care of it entirely to God, and to occupy yourself only with him; as a man in the confidence of a great king leaves the question of recompense to him, and thinks only of the service and interests of his master. Do you not think that, in acting in this generous manner he would be doing better for himself than others who, more selfish, would think continually of what they might gain or obtain? But are we not commanded to think of ourselves, to enter into ourselves, to watch over ourselves? Yes, certainly, when beginning to enter the service of God in order to detach ourselves from the world, to forsake exterior objects, to correct the bad habits we have contracted, but, afterward we must forget ourselves to think only of God, forsake ourselves to belong to God alone. But as for you, you wish to remain always wrapped up in yourself, in your, so-called, spiritual interests; and God, to draw you out of this last resource of self-love, allows you to find nothing in yourself but a source of fears, doubts, uncertainty, trouble, anxiety and depression, as though this God of all goodness said by this, "Forget yourself, and you will find in me only, peace, spiritual joy, calmness and an absolute assurance of salvation. I am the God of your salvation, and you can be nothing but the cause of your own destruction." But again you say, "In this forgetfulness of self, far from correcting myself of my sins and imperfections, I do not even know them." An error! an illusion! ignorance! Never can you more clearly detect your faults than in the clear light of the presence of God. This is like an interior sunshine, which, without necessitating a constant self-examination, makes us see and understand everything by a simple impression. In this way also, better than in any other, all our defects and imperfections are gradually consumed like straw in a fire. And then how happy is this state at which you should have arrived a long time ago! and of which God has given, and still gives me frequent experience. As the human heart is a bottomless abyss of misery and corruption, the more the light of God penetrates into it the more sad and humiliating are the objects disclosed; but at the same time these fresh disclosures, far from grieving the soul, console it in keeping it in an interior humility which it knows to be the solid foundation of the whole spiritual edifice. Far from disturbing its holy joy, and casting it down they inspire in it a solid confidence which it feels is placed in God alone, and that this confidence, according to holy Scripture, has never been confounded. I have known, and know now many souls that, following this method, are astonished to find that the more feeble, poor and miserable they realize themselves to be, the greater becomes their confidence in God. The reason of this is that in proportion to our insight into our own misery and corruption will be our distrust in ourselves and our confidence in God. God then imparts to those souls which have acquired this insight, an absolute self-distrust joined to an entire confidence in him, from which proceeds total abandonment; these are the two strong springs of the spiritual life, and as long as you are in this state you run no risk of your salvation. In abandoning all to God, therefore, we regain all in him alone and with profit to our souls. In this way we are delivered once for all from these foolish self-examinations, fears, troubles and uneasiness; in one word from these tortures to which those self-engrossed souls condemn themselves who wish to love God only out of self-love, who seek salvation and perfection, not so much to please God and to glorify him, as for their own interests and eternal happiness. But, you will say, God commands us to desire our salvation and eternal felicity. Yes, without doubt, but according to, and in submission to the ordaining of his will. Well! this is God's rule, which it is necessary for you to understand thoroughly; God has created us for his own glory and to do his will, and he could not have created us for any other purpose, for he owes this to himself, and to his own sovereign dominion; but, as he is also infinitely merciful he has so arranged that his creatures find their own interests and eternal happiness in doing his will. But see how this miserable self-love which seeks itself before all else, reverses the order of things. We want first and principally to provide for our own interests, spiritual and eternal, and as for the glory of God, in our preoccupation we give him only the second place. God sees this subversion with a jealous eye in souls he has loaded with graces, and by which he desires to be loved with a pure and disinterested affection! and, in order to make them return to this right order of things he sends them troubles, fears and interior agitation, seeking by means of these secret trials to destroy that self-love so harmful to them. He desires to induce them by degrees to think less of themselves and their own interests, and to occupy themselves quietly with him alone by abandoning to him the care and management of their salvation; and this is the meaning of those words of Jesus Christ addressed to many holy souls. "My daughter think of me and I will think of you, busy yourself for my glory, and allow me to occupy myself with your interests and eternal welfare." As for us, what are we doing when we always worry, and are busied about ourselves? It is as though we said, "Lord, what are you saying? I shall be lost if I do not continually think about my own soul, if I am not constantly asking myself how I stand with you, and what is going to become of me. This is what I am obliged to do without ceasing. As for what concerns your glory and your good pleasure I can only think of them now and then. I hope I shall be able to occupy myself with them more habitually by the time I have conquered all my faults, and it is proved to me that I shall risk nothing by this constant attention to your divine interests. But first of all I cannot now decide about it for I should consider myself lost and you wish me before all things to try and provide for the safety of my soul." To those of his spouses who address such language to him, this is the very clear and concise reply of our Lord in the Gospel, "Whosoever loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal." And, in fact, I have never met with souls which have a greater horror of sin, more strength for the practice of virtue, or which make greater sacrifices for God when occasions arise than those souls which seem never to think of themselves but depend upon him for everything, including their salvation. It is in this state that salvation is most certain; from which I conclude that not only scruples, but excessive fears, distressing doubts, spiritual trials and bitterness of heart, are caused by selfish feelings, a greater preoccupation about personal interests than about the glory of God and a desire to please him out of pure love and all that should take the first place in our hearts. Since he is the sovereign good, love of him should take precedence of the charity we owe ourselves. And since he has promised to love those who love him, and to love most those who love him only, we can be assured that in making use of all our powers to love him for himself we shall regain with interest by this pure love all that we seem to have sacrificed; therefore, far from losing, we gain all in abandoning ourselves entirely to God by love and confidence. The sight of that confused heap of weaknesses, miseries, unworthiness, and of all corruption should never distress you. It is on this account that I say boldly, all is well, for I have never known a soul endowed with this keen insight, so humiliating to it, to whom it was not a most singular grace of God; nor who has not found in it, combined with a true knowledge of itself, that solid humility which is the foundation of all perfection. I have known, and do know many saintly souls who, for their sole possession, have that profound conviction of their misery, and are never so happy as when they feel themselves, as it were, engulfed in it. They then dwell in truth, and consequently in God who is the sovereign truth. If you but knew how to walk before him, your head bowed in this spirit of self-effacement, you would find in it all that makes the spiritual life. It only remains to know how to preserve this spirit of peace and abandonment. Would to God that you had the grace to pass all your time of prayer in this holy interior self-humiliation, engulfed in your misery, but in peace, submission, resignation and confidence. Then I should say to you: stay as you are, and all is well; God will do the rest, and perhaps without you knowing, or feeling that he is doing it. You are trembling over your state, and I am blessing God for it. I only wish you changed in one particular, and that is that your self-humiliation should be mingled with peace, submission, confidence and abandonment, as I have just said. After that I should have no fear for you not even about the laxness of which you tell me, which makes you walk like a crab. God will prevent great laxness and will allow small relaxations to keep you humble. St. Francis de Sales said it was an heroic virtue to rise again unceasingly without ever losing courage. God be praised in all, and for all. ## Letter V. *On the Love of One's Neighbor* To Sister de Lesen. Nancy, 1735. I am not at all surprised at the friendship you have for your dear relative, and understand that it is due to her for many reasons. However, because by your own showing this affection disturbs you, and prevents you giving your whole heart to God, there must needs be some irregularity about it. If you wish to sanctify it, and to render it altogether supernatural, this is what God demands of you. 1st. That you will not allow yourself to think about this person too often nor to be engrossed by thoughts of her; there is moderation in all things. 2nd. That in the illnesses and afflictions she has to endure you will submit to them as a sacrifice you must make to God, and abandon yourself to him so that he may dispose of her, and of you in all things, and about all things according to his most holy will and loving good pleasure. You must know that in abandoning her thus to the will and care of Divine Providence you render her, as well as yourself, the greatest possible service, since by this sacrifice you place her in the hands of God who is infinitely good, and infinitely powerful. We must certainly make use of our reasoning faculties in our trials; but, as a very holy and learned Christian has well said, we must not depend too much on this feeble faculty which is stronger in opposition to what is good, than in overcoming evil. It is religion, and the grace we obtain through humble prayer, which can sustain us. Sadness, depression, interior rebellion when our relatives suffer from various causes, taking rise in a too affectionate disposition, will be a grand occasion of virtue and merit to us, if, endeavoring to raise ourselves by faith above our natural feelings, we understand that all has to be sacrificed to the adorable and most holy will of God. Do we not know that nothing can happen in this world without his permission, and that he has arranged everything for the greater good of those who submit to him, or at least who desire to acquire and to practice this submission? If we could only understand the value of this virtue! Of all the means of salvation this is, together with the fulfillment of the divine precepts, the most universal and the most infallible. Nothing more is required to sanctify most people and to lighten for them the trials of life. A wise pagan thought in this way when he said, "If one has a sensitive nature, and is accustomed to foster in oneself what the world calls refined and generous sentiments, it is no easy matter to cure oneself of thinking too much about the family honor, and of taking too great an interest in family affairs, and also of being too much moved by every incident affecting those to whom we are most tenderly attached." It is necessary to pray much about this, and also to reflect how to combat it. Firstly, to reflect on the uselessness of our worries and our feelings, and on the harm they do ourselves, as much to the bodily health, as to the welfare of the soul. Secondly, to combat it by refraining from frequent, lengthy, and earnest thoughts on the subject, and by sacrificing and abandoning it entirely to God in spite of the pangs the heart must endure from the violence of such sacrifices; consider that, after all, there is only one thing necessary, and that provided that this great affair succeeds everything else must be as God pleases. These feelings are quickly overcome, or rather, they are so trifling and paltry that they pass like shadows, to return no more. Let us act like worldly people when they have to attend to business of the utmost importance on which depend their honor, their life, their property, in fact everything, as they think. They have nothing else in their minds day or night but this important business, and neglect everything else as being nothing in comparison. As Jesus Christ has said, we must learn from the children of this world who are "wiser in their generation than the children of light." Remember that what can help to save us is not exterior solitude, nor retirement, for these can be had even in the world; but an interior withdrawal and solitude of the mind and heart; of the mind, by banishing superfluous cares and thoughts and by endeavoring to make God the absorbing occupation of the heart, by lamenting its defects, by humbling it and frequently sighing after God, and by detaching it gradually from the creature to attach it solely to the Creator. He is the supreme truth, and nothing has any reality apart from him. Consequently purely temporal interests, the business, the honors, pleasures or sufferings of this lower world are nought but shadows and phantoms; they appear to exist, but, in reality, are nothing. ## Letter VI. *On Attachments* To Sister Anne-Marguerite Boudet de la Bellière, on attachment too keenly felt. My very dear daughter in Jesus Christ. I cannot thank God enough for this great desire of giving yourself to him without reserve that he has bestowed on you with the courage which inspires you to make so many little sacrifices, and to moderate even the most harmless attachments. Oh! my dear Sister, how thoroughly God has enlightened you about this, and how many dangers you will escape if you are faithful in following this light. We, unhappily, find only too many who, making profession of piety, are caught in this snare, and thus prevented from making any progress. With the excuse that there is no sin in the attachments they allow themselves, they give themselves up to them without scruple, and thus place an impenetrable barrier to the grace and the communications of God. He desires to fill and inflame their hearts with his pure love, but how can he do so as long as those hearts are distracted by foolish amusements, and filled with a miserable love for some creature? You know what a dangerous snare this was for St. Teresa, and in truth after such an example you cannot be too much on your guard. Go on then, detaching yourself more and more, and I assure you that in proportion as your detachment becomes more complete you will feel more drawn to God, to prayer, recollection and the practice of every virtue; for, when the heart is empty in this way God fills it, and then one can do everything easily and pleasantly, because all is done out of love, and that, you know, makes all things easy, and sweetens all bitterness. ## Letter VII. *Personal Attachments* My dear Sister, Allow me to tell you, in all sincerity, a fear that makes me anxious about you. It seems to me that your too frequent intercourse with the members of your numerous family, and with other people from outside, raises a serious obstacle to your advancement. Take care that, while trying to do good to others, you do no harm to yourself. Although I am obliged by my vocation to have more communication with the world than you, I assure you, nevertheless, that I find it very good for my soul to keep these communications within bounds. Since I came here I have only made necessary visits, and try as much as possible to avoid receiving them. To those who come to me I speak only of God, of salvation or of eternity. This is the rule laid down by St. Ignatius and one which he declared suited him well. If people like this kind of conversation they will profit by it, and their visit will not have been a waste of time; if they do not care for it they will not come again, or, at any rate not so often, and then I shall have more time left me for my priestly duties. It is useless to expect to make any progress as long as your mind is filled with news from outside, and your heart preoccupied with temporal affairs. The first condition for the interior life is recollection. I cannot urge you too strongly to restrict your communications and to follow the plan of St. Ignatius about those that you think you ought to retain. This plan is better suited to a Religious, who is obliged by her vocation to keep secluded, than to other people. Far from being surprised, people in the world cannot but be edified at the fidelity with which she conforms her conduct to her vocation. On the contrary, if by these useless communications with people in the world she frequented society too much, she would only scandalize them, and would also lose all those graces which she might have acquired by her communications with God. ## Letter VIII. *On Natural Activity* To Sister Marie-Henriette de Bousmard. I wish, my dear Sister, that you were able to understand well all the harm that the excessive activity of your nature, unless completely under the rule and direction of grace, will infallibly cause you. This is one of those defects that the world mistakes for virtues, but which is nonetheless disastrous to the soul in its progress in the path of sanctity. Natural activity is the enemy of abandonment, without which, as I have often told you, there can be no real perfection. It prevents, obstructs or spoils all the operations of grace, and substitutes, in the soul which succumbs to it, the impulsion of the human spirit for that of the Divine Spirit. In fact there is no doubt that the impetuosity with which we give ourselves up to good works proceeds from a hidden source of self-confidence, and a thoughtless presumption that makes us imagine that we are doing or can do great things. How much more modest and reserved we should be if we were thoroughly penetrated with the undoubted truth that we have nothing of our own, and are utterly powerless to do anything good, but only powerful for evil. To cure, and to tear up by the root, an evil so fruitful in imperfections, and even in sins, requires much time and much trouble. These are the means I most recommend to you. 1st. To be thoroughly convinced, by past and present experience, of your own weakness and misery, in order to distrust more and more your own works even to the length of feeling a kind of horror of them. 2nd. To repress your excessive exterior activity by performing all your actions without eagerness or hurry, quite gently and quietly, as St. Francis de Sales advises. 3rd. To do the same in all your spiritual exercises, and always to mortify the initial eagerness with which you start any good work, no matter what it may be; to undertake it only under the influence of the pure Spirit of God, and by the peaceful impulse of grace. 4th. When you pray and hold intercourse with God interiorly, try to avoid all sensible ardor, all that fiery fervor, and excitement of the imagination characteristic of beginners. To effect this, follow the advice of St. Francis de Sales and manage so that all your interior acts shall flow, and be drawn from, and distilled by, the highest point of the mind, so that you hardly feel that you are praying and making acts. Far from these acts being, on this account, less fruitful, they make a deeper impression on the soul and penetrate more deeply and more pleasantly into the heart. 5th. When you feel, however confusedly, that something is acting in your soul, the stronger this impression is, the more necessary it is to keep quiet and still, and as though in a state of inaction, so that you may not spoil all by interfering unseasonably. 6th. When God makes you experience certain consolations, or strong emotions, instead of giving yourself up to them with a sensual avidity, behave with the reserve and modesty of a mortified person invited to a great feast. 7th. During the day let the principal interior occupation be what is called simple interior waiting, silent, peaceful and entirely resigned; and do not think that this is idleness, waste of time or in any way useless, because, as a beggar who waits the whole day long at a rich man's gate, or at the church door, is by no means idle but much occupied interiorly with his own misery, his wants and continual necessities; so, in the same way, a soul in this simple waiting before God is very much occupied interiorly, and in this simple manner is making the following acts; of faith in the presence of God, of adoration before this great God whose infinite power and mercy it acknowledges; of self-distrust, of profound humility in thinking itself incapable of anything; of desire for the holy operations of God, of hope since one does not wait for what one does not expect to receive; and of abandonment to Divine Providence in regard to all his gifts or operations. And although these acts may not be accurately performed, specified, nor sensible, yet they are nonetheless there, at the bottom of the heart; and God, at least, sees them in our desires, and in our state of preparation. Now, as you are aware, our wishes and desires, even if only begun to be formed, are to God what the voice is to our fellow men. He hears them, in fact, far more clearly than men hear our voices, and it is enough for him that we form these desires; for, as the Psalmist says, he knows even the mere intention and disposition of our hearts from the first moment that they begin to turn, and to move toward him. And this, by the way, is very consoling to you in the present state of your soul. But a still more efficacious way than any other is to bear patiently darkness, dryness, coldness and weakness. This sad state is the specific remedy employed by God to suppress natural activity by reducing us to our own nothingness. Without this we should never be able to overcome it, because the inordinate activity of our powers cannot be regulated until, by constantly reiterated efforts, we force them to act only under the influence of the Spirit of God, and by his grace, and never of themselves, or by themselves. You see in this how blindly and unjustly we act when we turn the benefits of God into subjects of affliction and complaint; for they not only tend to extinguish our natural activity but to kill our self-love, and to enable us to live the supernatural life of grace. ## Letter IX. *On Excessive Fervor* To Sister Marie-Thérèse de Vioménil, on excessive fervor of good desires. My very dear Sister, The desire about which you have consulted me is very good in itself, but I fear lest it may become too strong. If you wish that it may not be hurtful to you under the appearance of good, you must manage to be always submissive and resigned about it, and consequently, peaceful. You know how, in even our best desires, nature and passion get mixed, making them violent, restless, hasty and wild. For this reason, and to preserve us from this danger, and also gradually to purify our desires, even those that are most saintly, God defers granting them for a long time. For the wild desires of our natural inclinations do not deserve to be answered, only those desires formed by the Holy Spirit deserve to be heard by God, and these are always quiet, gentle and peaceful. Keep yourself, as much as possible, in a state of peace and even of a holy joy in order to be fit to receive holy impressions. You know that grace more easily makes way in hearts that are calm and free than in those that are full of uneasiness and trouble, for the latter are more exposed to be under the influence of the evil spirit. ## Letter X. *Restraint of Overeagerness* To the same person, on eagerness to read good books. I send you the book on "Christian Hope" that I promised you. It will prove a real treasure to you, but if you wish to derive from it all the fruit that I expect, you must restrain your eagerness to read, and not allow yourself to be carried away by curiosity to know what is coming. Make use of the time allowed by the Rule to read it, concentrate all your attention on what you are actually reading without troubling about the rest. I advise you above all, to enter into the meaning of the consoling and solid truths that you will find laid down in this book; but more in a practical way than by speculative reflections, and, from time to time, make short pauses to allow these truths time to flow through all the recesses of the soul and to give occasion for the operation of the Holy Spirit who, during these peaceful pauses, and times of silent attention, engraves and imprints these heavenly truths in the heart. All this, however, without disturbing your attraction, or violent effort to prevent reflections, but simply and quietly trying to make them enter into your heart more than into your mind. Take particular notice of certain more important chapters, of which you are in greater need, in order to read them again when next you have time. In general I advise you strongly not to overload your mind with readings and outward practices, it is much better to read little, and to digest what you read. Just now, too, your soul is in need of unity and simplicity, and all your readings and practices should tend to a single end, and that is, to form in you a spirit of recollection. In time God will give you this grace if you aspire to it with confidence quietly, simply and humbly, without eagerness, trouble or uneasiness. Frequently ask God to detach you absolutely from all things, so that you may love and enjoy him only, in Jesus Christ, and through Jesus Christ, in fine, that he may take full possession of your heart and make it altogether his. "My God I abandon myself to you, grant that I may desire only you." ## Letter XI. *Intemperate Zeal* To the same person, on intemperate and indiscreet zeal. I see, my dear Sister, that a mistaken zeal exposes you to dangers all the more serious because they are hidden under the most insidious appearances. Desire for the perfection of our neighbor is, doubtless, very good; the pain that is felt interiorly at the sight of his defects is good also, provided it proceeds from a pure desire for his perfection. But with all this there must needs be mingled much secret self-complacency, confidence in one's own superior light, and severity toward one's neighbor. Zeal such as this cannot, you must well understand, come from God; it is an illusion of the devil, hurtful to yourself and to others. However, the evil can be easily cured provided you are sincere enough, and submissive enough to recognize the gravity of it, and to apply the remedy. That which I am about to offer you has already produced a very happy result in a soul which was subject to the same illusion. Let us hope it will not be less efficacious in your case. I advise you, therefore, and command you in the most sacred name of Jesus Christ, and that of his divine Mother, never more to think of practicing the virtue of zeal as long as this prohibition is not expressly removed. I exculpate you before God absolutely, and I take upon myself the responsibility of all the ill consequences that may result from this prohibition. If you should get scruples about it, and the devil should put in your mind that you could do some good or avert some evil, say to God, "My God, although charity is the queen of virtues, I may not practice this zeal until you have made me able to do so without detriment to the charity I owe to others and to myself. When I am found to be sufficiently strong, or rather sufficiently humble, to exercise zeal without disturbing the peace of my soul, and with all possible sweetness, compassion and thoughtfulness for my neighbor, and a helpfulness, kindness and charity which nothing can embitter, a charity which is scandalized at nothing but its own shortcomings; with all that patience and long-suffering which enables one tranquilly to endure the defects of others, and for as long as you will suffer them, Oh, my God; and when I am neither troubled, nor uneasy, nor astonished that others are incorrigible, then this prohibition will be removed, and I shall be able to think that I can glorify you in my neighbor. But until then, Oh, my God, I must exercise my zeal on myself, in the correction of my numerous defects." In fact, my very dear Sister, when humility has dug that deep foundation indispensable to every virtue, I shall be the first to urge you to resume the practice of zeal; until then think only of yourself. Remember that God, to punish those who have practiced this indiscreet zeal, and to correct them, has often allowed them to fall into much graver faults than those which had scandalized them in others. In the second place I command you never to speak of God, or of anything good, unless in a spirit of humility and meekness, in an amiable and gracious manner, with moderation and encouragement, and never with bitterness and severity, or in a way to wound and repel those who hear you, because, although you may only say what is in the Gospel and in the best books, I believe that in your present state of mind you might say it very badly and in such a way as only to do harm. Did not Satan make use of the words of holy Scripture to tempt our Lord? Truth is the proper relation of things. It is changed when pushed to extremes, or wrongly applied. Your peevish temper is like a smoked glass, which, if you do not take care will prevent you seeing things in their true light, or showing them to others. Keep always on your guard against this fatal influence, and feed your mind on thoughts and feelings that are contrary to those inspired by temper. Entertain yourself and others with conversations on the infinite goodness of God, and on the confidence we ought to have in him. Compel yourself to offer an example in your whole conduct, of a virtue that has no bounds, and which imposes no restraint on others. If you have nothing kind to say keep silent, and leave the care of deciding to others. They can avoid better than you too much laxness, and will be exact without being severe. If exactitude be praiseworthy, severity is blamable, it does nothing but revolt people instead of convincing them, and embitter their souls instead of gaining them. As much as true meekness, with the help of God, has power to repel evil and to win to good, so much has an excessive harshness power to make goodness difficult and evil incurable. The first is edifying, the latter, destructive. ## Letter XII. *On Obedience* On disinclination to accept the comforts enjoined. Be careful never to leave off the practice of obedience under the pretext of mortifying yourself; and never forget these words of the Holy Spirit, "I will have obedience and not sacrifice." Do not, therefore, hesitate to take those little comforts that the doctors, the superiors and infirmarians prescribe for you; at any rate, you should have much scruple about refusing them. In this way you will practice a more meritorious self-denial than any bodily mortification ---that which consists in the renunciation of your own ideas, of your own judgment and of your own will. Through ignorance or forgetfulness of this truth certain devout persons, who are strongly attached to their own ideas, commit many faults in being obstinately determined in their pretended self-denial, and extremely unmortified in their mortifications. How can they delude themselves so far as not to understand that self-love spoils and corrupts even the most holy practices? Those who renounce their own will, their own judgment, and their own ideas for the love of God will make great progress in the path of true and solid perfection. Henceforth, do not make any other use of your mind and of your reason than to know what you are ordered to do, and to do it promptly, joyfully, with a great confidence in God, and an absolute abandonment to his mercy. It will be all the easier to practice this confidence when you no longer have any other ambition than to do his holy will. And in fact, could there be a pleasanter task? Does not this divine Will sanctify all its decrees? Follow it then in all things, as much in what gives you pleasure, as in that which costs you most; in consolations, as well as privations; working and resting; in mental and vocal prayer, in the Office, at Mass, in confession and Communion; in all things. Blind obedience makes no exception, it generally sacrifices its own thoughts, ideas, judgments, inclinations, repugnances, aversions, tempers, in one word all its own will. On this account is this sacrifice more pleasing to God than any other that could possibly be made, and without this sacrifice all else is of little value, and cannot fail to be harmful. The Divine Spirit also assures us in holy Scripture that the obedient man will gain many victories. ## Letter XIII. *On Being Self-Opinionated* On attachment to one's own judgment. My dear Sister, At last you are freed from your ties and released from all those engagements by which the world expected to keep you always captive. I do not doubt that you understand the full value of the inestimable grace of a religious vocation, and that you are disposed to accomplish generously all its duties. The longer you have waited for this grace, the greater is the gratitude you owe to him who has, at last, bestowed it on you. You must, however, be prepared to encounter many difficulties in your new life, difficulties not felt by those who embrace it earlier; but humility, renunciation, simplicity and the holy spiritual infancy of the Gospel will diminish these difficulties considerably and will finish by making them disappear altogether. With the help of these virtues you will be preserved from a very subtle illusion of pride, to which many novices yield, and which is all the more dangerous because it is almost imperceptible. With the excuse of trying themselves better, they always want to do a little more than the rest, or to deprive themselves of those little comforts that the charity of the Superiors offers them. All this is nothing else but a refined self-love, and a disguised vanity. As for you, my dear Sister, never, I implore you, have any other ambition than to follow the ordinary course in all things; not one iota beyond that. Accept with simplicity and humility the little comforts and alleviations that the weak are allowed, rejoice at seeing yourself reduced to the level of a small child and treated like one and take good care not to seem strong and courageous. What profound and meritorious humility will you not thus exercise! delightful in the eyes of God, and more pleasing to his heart than the most austere life chosen by yourself. What an amount of pride and vanity may be concealed in conduct contrary to this! I do not wish to hide from you what a good long experience has taught me; that those who were most devout in the world before entering the religious state, have generally given the most trouble to their Superiors and Mistresses. This comes of their having formed certain ideas of virtue for themselves which they will not relinquish. Accustomed to be admired by all who surrounded them, and to be, usually, approved of by their directors, they cling to their own ideas and their own spirit without suspecting that this attachment is the very antipodes of all true sanctity. Therefore it is far more difficult to make those persons practice humility and renunciation, to give up their notions and self-will than in the case of young people of unformed character; or even of worldly people who have become converted. Nevertheless if we do not become as little children we shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. I hope, therefore, that you are treated exactly as if you were a young person of fifteen or sixteen years of age, equally unformed physically and mentally, and who is told: "Sister, you must rest tomorrow; you are dispensed from such or such a thing; you must take some recreation in the garden", or "My dear Sister, that work is too hard for you, the Mother Superior will dispense you from it", while you, a formed character, formerly most devout, should, without replying by a single word or frowning, carry out all you are told to do, to the letter, in a spirit of humility and simplicity, satisfied to be treated thus, as if you were the weakest and the least of all. Look upon yourself as such, and even rejoice at it, or at least, do your best to do so. Admire the loving charity of the Rev. Mother and the Sisters, and bless God for it. This is what a true interior spirit, and a spirituality that is real and good should teach you, and inspire you with. But, it must be admitted, it is a most difficult matter to reduce these pretended devotees to this. Poor souls! blinded and deceived, the less they know how to humble themselves the further they are from real greatness. If they would but go to Bethlehem, and there contemplate the God of Heaven become a little Infant in swaddling clothes, in a manger, handled, carried and taken from place to place, turned and touched by everyone, it might effect their cure. Let this example, my dear Sister, be that which you propose to follow during your novitiate; and it is by becoming like this little Child that you will merit to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. ## Letter XIV. *On Reserve with a Director* To Sister Marie-Thérèse de Vioménil, on a difficulty in and a dislike to opening one's mind to a director. Believe me, my dear Sister, it is necessary to struggle with all your power against the repugnance you feel to open your mind, and to regard as a most dangerous temptation the jealous susceptibility you experience when you imagine that someone has revealed your fault. It is the devil who inspires such fear and pain at having your interior miseries made known, because he knows by countless experiences that those souls that have sufficient courage and humility to disclose themselves thus, simply and straightforwardly, are speedily cured, or at least very greatly consoled. He knows, too, that those wounds of the soul most frequently healed by such a disclosure, can become poisoned and inflamed if not shown to the physician. In fact nothing is more evident than that, as long as we are full of self-love, which only dies when we die, we shall be exposed to deceive ourselves as to what concerns us, and to make to ourselves a false conscience. This consideration is calculated to make us tremble, whoever we are. To avoid this danger there is only one means; not to trust to our own light in what regards ourselves, but to allow our directors to guide our conscience, and to them we must make known with great frankness all that might serve to enlighten them. The misfortune is that even in these revelations we risk being deceived by our self-love, and also to mislead those of whom we ask advice. What is to be done to guarantee ourselves against this fresh danger? Well! those who guide us must be enlightened by others about us; and this is just what is so difficult to put up with. There are plenty of people very much inclined to exercise zeal with regard to others, who find it very unpleasant when they are subject to it themselves. This ought not to be. True zeal should say to itself "Think of yourself, and do not trouble about others who are not under your care, and be very thankful that some charitable person has made known to your director what is thought about you, so that he will be better able to guide you in future." This twofold feeling is only to be found in the most perfect souls, and, perhaps, in some persons of an extraordinary natural sincerity if but of moderate virtue. Usually a zeal for instructing others is accompanied by a great sensitiveness with regard to the persons who desire to render us the same good office by instructing our director thoroughly as to what is thought and said about us. Here again we have that twofold illusion of all ordinary devotees in the world, and also in the cloister. Examine yourself without any flattery as to this twofold matter, and enlighten yourself with the considerations I have just given you. ## Letter XV. *On Discouragement* To the same person. My dear Sister, At this moment you are suffering from one of the most dangerous temptations that could assail any soul of goodwill; the temptation to discouragement. I conjure you to resist it with all your might. Have confidence in God, and be convinced that he will finish the work he has begun in you. Your foolish fears about the future come from the devil. Think only of the present, abandon the future to Providence. It is the good use of the present that assures the future. Apply yourself to obtaining attachment and conformity to the will of God in all things and everywhere, even to the smallest things, for in this consist all virtue and perfection. For the rest, God only allows our daily faults to keep us humble. If you know how to gain this fruit, and to remain in peace and confidence, then you will be in a better state than if you had not committed any apparent fault, which would only have greatly flattered your self-love, and have exposed you to the extreme danger of being satisfied with yourself. Nothing, on the contrary, can be more easy than to make use of your faults to acquire a fresh degree of humility, and thus to dig more deeply in yourself the foundation necessary for building up true sanctity. Ought we not to admire, and to bless the innate goodness of God who knows how to make our very faults serve for our greater good? For this it suffices to dislike them, to humble ourselves quietly about them, and to raise ourselves again with an untiring perseverance after each fall, and to work peacefully to correct ourselves. Submit to the will of God as to your employments, but do not be uneasy or eager about them. Do amiably all that you know you ought to do, and depend on Divine Providence for success, without solicitude or anxiety, in order to have a free mind and a tranquil heart insofar as it is possible. If you are faithful in this practice, you will be able to live in peace even in the midst of disturbances, and the involuntary trouble these may occasion you will but increase the merit that is grounded on the conformity of your will to the will of God. May he be blessed by all and in all, now and forever. ## Letter XVI. *Fear of Singularity* To the same person, on the fear of being deceived, and of appearing singular. When one begins to wish to belong to God entirely and unreservedly, he increases, by the interior operations of his grace this holy desire which he has himself inspired; but the more vehement this desire becomes, the more does the soul feel seized and penetrated with fear lest it should be deceived. This fear is a fresh gift of God, and provided the soul knows how to make good use of it, she will derive great benefit, become more humble, more self-distrustful, vigilant and eager to obtain the help of God. But precisely because it is a gift of God, the spirit of darkness does not fail to make use of his ordinary tactics, and if he cannot prevent these gifts of God, he sets to work to spoil and corrupt them by every kind of stratagem. This is what he does with regard to the salutary fear of which I speak; and for this he makes use of two kinds of deception. At first he attempts to make this fear immoderate, excessive, uneasy and vexatious, to unsettle and weaken the soul, and having effected this, to cast it into a state of pusillanimity, and depression. For this, the only remedy is to turn the laugh against the tempter, and to address him thus: "He who has begun the work will finish it, and since of his own goodness he has chosen me even when I shunned him, he will take care not to abandon me when I seek him with my whole heart." Remember, besides, that a good beginning is the best guarantee of perseverance. It is very much easier to continue in the same way than to change it. There never would have been any conversions if attention had been paid to foolish fears. These are the first temptations of beginners. But another and more dangerous stratagem still is this; the tempter seeks accomplices, and too frequently finds them amongst good people. In the way of our good resolutions he throws people not wanting in a sort of wisdom, nor in good intention, who find something to carp at in everything that grace inspires in our souls to take them out of the ordinary groove. To listen to these counselors, who are the more eager to offer their advice the less they are asked for it, one would think that to aim at perfection is to make yourself remarkable in a dreadful way. We ought never, say they, to exaggerate, nor to undertake a course of life contrary to nature; what is out of the common never lasts, and exaggeration is blamable in everything. I do not hesitate to say that this is one of the greatest obstacles to divine grace that souls called to perfection can encounter. It is human respect in the cloister, which in its way, is as dangerous as that in the world, and no less prevents the conversion of souls from imperfection to sanctity, than the latter prevents the conversion from bad to good. By what means can these dangers be avoided? By these. We must overcome, courageously, for the love of Jesus Christ, the impressions made on us by a false human respect, and make a generous sacrifice of them to our Lord, begging him to help and sustain us that we may despise all these foolish remarks. It is enough to compare the maxims of the Gospel with the captious sophisms to which they are opposed, to convince ourselves that they cannot possibly proceed from the Spirit of God but only from human reasons, and that carnal spirit which is reprobated by God. "But those who talk like this are pious people." That may be, but it only proves that some pious people do not always judge things by the pure light of the Gospel, but allow themselves to be deceived by false prejudices, and natural considerations, by interested self-love, error, blindness or ignorance. They must, in fact, of necessity, be very ignorant and very blind not to perceive that there never has been a true conversion nor real change of heart that escaped notice either in the world or in religion. And why are these conversions noticeable when they are real? It is because they, necessarily, extend to the regulation of outward conduct, and even if there were nothing in the outward conduct that required regulating, the perfect order and heavenly peace restored to the soul would be manifested by infallible signs by which the good would be edified, but which, perhaps, would irritate the jealous self-love of others. One must needs be voluntarily blind not to see that at the beginning of a new life one's conduct may seem constrained and uneasy, for this reason; because neither the person who is changed, nor others, are accustomed to an altered way of acting. In all things ease comes with habitude. Besides, how can a soul which is entirely employed in keeping recollected, in fighting against itself, in compelling itself to do violence in a hundred different ways, both interior and exterior, be expected to appear gay, free, happy, agreeable and amusing? Truly, if I saw it like this I should have strong doubts as to any interior change whatever. However there are some people who are very interior, and at the same time appear very gracious outwardly. This is when a sufficiently long experience has made the exercise of interior recollection, in a sort of way, natural to them. But when they began they were just like you, my dear Sister, and the same things that are said of you, were said of them. They went their way without taking any notice of the talk, and God at last placed them in a state that is called the liberty of the children of God. Like them you also will attain to this, be assured: the day will come when your recollection will be without compulsion, constant, sweet, agreeable and good-humored; then you also will be able to add to the pleasure of others by reflecting exteriorly that abounding peace and joy which is caused in the soul by the pure love of God, and of your neighbor. But no one can arrive at this suddenly, or at once: it is the result of a sufficiently long practice of virtue and of an interior life, which, at the beginning, seems of necessity uncomfortable and rather constrained; but in the end it will become natural. Then you will be able to resume your light-heartedness and gaiety, for both will be reformed and spiritualized by the holy operations of grace. In the beginning, however, it is impossible to do this without spoiling something. You see the ignorance of these clever reasoners? Their judgments and remarks are to be pitied because it is precisely in this way that the world judges and reasons when God by his grace effects one of those great changes that are visible to all. Can it be possible that Religious talk in this way? It must be the work of the father of lies, who alone could make them speak and reason in such a wrong way. God be praised in all things! He will procure glory from it in some way or other. As for you, think only of bearing this trial bravely, and encourage yourself with the teaching of faith and the evangelical counsels which these grand reasoners seem to have lost sight of. Rejoice interiorly at this appearance of folly and stupidity which exposes you to their mockery; for it is a most sure sign of the change that has taken place in you. Say to our Lord with the Psalmist: "I am become like a beast of burden in your presence, Oh my God; no one can separate me from you again." In the service of so great a Master can any position be without honor? Act the part that he has given you at present, of seeming silly and awkward, as well as you can, and with a joyful heart wait patiently for the moment when another change will take place quite different to that which you are going through now. Then your faculties which now seem in bonds will regain their freedom of action; ease will succeed restraint and the holy liberty of the children of God will drive away excessive fear. The sight of the imperfection of all your works is a great grace of God who, by this, wishes to keep you humble, and with a poor opinion of yourself, but the excessive severity you are tempted to exercise toward yourself about it, the sadness, low spirits and the idea that you will be lost, are suggestions of Satan who tries in this way to spoil the gift of God in you, and to turn it into poison. Cast them away therefore as diabolical imaginations. For a certain time such thoughts will return again and again without ceasing and will be matter for combats, for victories, and for merit; but, have a little patience, perfection is not the work of a day. At first do not attempt what is the most perfect; that would be trying to fly before you have got your wings, as St. Teresa says. Be content with what God gives you, and what he does for you at present, without desiring anything more until he judges fit to give it to you. In this way you will avoid interior agitation by which the devil succeeds too well in upsetting those souls who seek in the practice of virtue, more the satisfaction of their own self-love than the glory of God. In fact, it is impossible not to recognize the vexation of injured pride in the impatience with which they behold their imperfections and in the pain they feel in finding themselves at the foot of the ladder of sanctity when they wished to persuade themselves that they had arrived at the top. Do you, Sister, behave in a totally different manner. Love your abjection, allow the good God to carry out peacefully his work in you. Allow him to place there a solid foundation of humility, and to cement it with frequent experiences of your misery and weakness. We should run too great a risk of losing everything by our vain imaginations if God were to give us, at once, all the perfection we desired. The inordinate love of our own excellence would carry us to as high a flight as Lucifer, but only, like him, to fall into the abyss of pride. God, who knows our weakness in this respect, allows us to grovel like worms in the mud of our imperfections, until he finds us capable of being raised without feeling any foolish self-satisfaction, or any contempt of others. This conduct of God, full of wisdom and goodness, fills with admiration those who have the guidance of souls, but they cannot help feeling sad when they see souls who refuse to understand the object of these merciful trials, getting out of temper when the ineffable ways of Divine Providence are explained to them. --- ![[maps/bibliography#^biblio-adp]] > [[jpc-abandonment-07|← Previous]] | [[jpc-abandonment-toc|TOC]] | [[jpc-abandonment-09|Next →]]