Letter 975. To Mother Anne Marie Rosset

Superior at Crémieux. Annecy, 18 Dec., 1629.

Vive > Jésus!

We were making up our packet when we received your last letter, my very dear daughter, but those who were to have taken it have been prevented, so there is still time to answer you. First, as to the money you wish to borrow. All our monasteries are really themselves in need, except Lyons, and I do not think that any of them, with the exception of that house, could do you this charity. You had better apply there, and ask the sisters to lend you five hundred or a thousand crowns to help you to start your building. That sum will be quite enough for the present, and it would be a shame to ask for two or three thousand crowns. When you have spent a thousand, or five hundred, in building, it will, I think, quite suffice for the present.

I do not know what to say about Sister N You can hardly go by outside advice in such matters, for we have no opportunity of judging minds or dispositions. What you tell me of her acquiring but little of the spirit of the Institute is important, inasmuch [as] we ought not to receive nor to keep those who lack it. You have the ‘Conference’ of our Blessed Father on this subject, and I say enough in my ‘Answers’ to guide you and to make you resolve, with the advice of your sisters, how to act. Ifyou do not think her suitable, the delay that these gentlemen, her relatives, are making will be a good pretext for sending her away. Consider the matter well before God with our sisters, for it is a serious thing to receive into religion one who is not suitable, just as it is to send away one who is, and whom God has called. This, dear daughter, is all the advice I can give you in the matter.

If you can get out of receiving M. N ’s niece, who is of another religious Order, you will do well. You must, at all events, so that he may give her a good pension, humbly represent to him that, considering the condition of your house, you ought not to overburden it by receiving anyone who cannot bring enough to keep herself.

In regard to allowing the Countess of N into your monastery, you know well, my dearest daughter, that only foundresses and benefactresses can enter our houses. As to religious who are not reformed, we ought not to have them. Our Blessed Father never would allow the religious of St. Bernard to have entrance here from the time that we were under the Rule of St. Augustine.¹ And you were here when the Bishop of Geneva refused a gentleman who used his influence in favour of one of his relatives, a religious of St. Pierre-de-Lyon, who had come to this town and wished to be allowed into our enclosure. You must hold in such matters to what is marked in the ‘ Book of Customs,’ and to what you have seen practised in this monastery. If Madame la Présidente de Granet becomes your benefactress she can enter, but her entrances must be limited, and also those of the other two ladies, so that they be not allowed

As to the Office, I am afraid your weak little voice will make those who hear you laugh. Still, if you wish it and your daughters think it is possible, I make no objection. I should be very glad if the sisters would not write to me when they have nothing necessary to say which you cannot settle; for as I have a big family to look after, and answers to send to all our monasteries, I have very little spare time, and the seeing their letters or not is indifferent to me. Nevertheless it is well to honour the very least thought and intentions of our Blessed Father.

Assure your good confessor that for the present you would like him to go on as he is, so that he may be at liberty to go away when it seems good to him; and tell the two ladies a little about the agreement you wish to make with him. You know what I say about such matters in my ‘ Answers.’ As for the night veils, it is better to make them of some kind of serge rather than of dyed silk.

Now God be praised! Although you have no conscious feeling of your faults, and you see them, as it were, apart from yourself, yet do not fail, in proportion as you thus see them, to humble your spirit simply before God. As to what passes in your interior, you know long since what has been told you, and you have no reason to be uneasy about it. Make progress without ceasing and without stopping in this way wherein God has placed you. There is nothing to fear in it, but avoid as much as possible all introspection and thoughts of self-esteem, and never do anything knowingly to follow them up.

Footnotes

1. In 1618 Pope Paul V approved of the Constitutions of the Visitation, and from this time the new Institute was under the Rule of St. Augustine, in simply as a compliment to them, but only on certain days which they desire to pass in retirement and devotion. You had better give this lady and also the confessor a copy of the Rules, but on condition that they do not show them to anyone. Oh no, my dearest daughter, I do not wish you to rise with the community, nor to do the other things from which you have been dispensed, for your health needs these dispensations, and they are necessary too in order to mortify your natural inclinations. ↩