Letter 1702. To Mother Marie Suzanne Lescalopier,}
Superior at Portiers. Annecy, 3 June, 1640.
Vive >K Jésus!
My good and dearest Sister.—God has given me a knowledge of your dear soul that enables me to remember your Charity very well. I am delighted that the lot of guiding your dear house has fallen upon you, for I hope that God will be thereby glorified. Keep very humbly before His divine goodness and you will see that, walking in His presence in this spirit of lowliness, with distrust of self and trust in His divine assistance, He will bless you and all your family. Carry out your government, I beseech you, in a spirit of humility, straightness, simplicity, gentleness, and suavity. Such will be no hindrance to the gravity and firmness required of a superior in order to make each one as far as possible faithful to the observance. Lean first and chiefly with holy confidence on God, and after that on the good and wise advice of my very dear sister the Déposée. She will be to your community, I am confident, because of her true virtue, her humility, recollection, and regularity, a torch of good example. You have every reason to desire to keep her with you; besides, we have not thought of taking her away, seeing that your house is in its infancy, and her presence is necessary for the good of the monastery and for your support and consolation. Once more I beseech you not only to keep your good heart ever in humility before God, but unceasingly to let it grow greater in trust in this divine Saviour. For He who has placed the burden upon your shoulders will not fail to give you, as the Rule says, ‘the strength and light that you need,’ provided you have recourse to Him with filial confidence. I pray Him in His goodness to give you this grace, and I beseech you to bear me and my very great needs in remembrance when you are before this good God, in whose love I am, with a sincere heart, etc.1
Footnotes
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A native of Paris, Mademoiselle Lescalopier was received into the monastery of Bourges on the recommendation of St. Jane Frances de Chantal, and was sent some years later to the foundation of Poitiers. In 1640 she was elected to succeed Mother A. N. de Lage de Puylaurens, with whom, for thirty years, she alternately governed the community. While still young in religion the Lord Jesus made known to her that He would be to her a crucified Spouse. She knew how to appreciate the honour, and received with joy the humiliations and sufferings that filled her life, avowing that when God sent them to her they were accompanied with such peculiar graces as to make her taste of a sweetness not to be compared to any other consolation that she had ever enjoyed. She led a life wholly apart from the senses, entirely directed by heavenly guidance, a life of complete immolation and sacrifice, and became, according to her desire, ‘ the perpetual victim of the Cross and of divine love.’ She died the death of a saint June 24, 1671.—Taken from the Année Sainte, vol. vie ↩
Chapter 190 of 252