Letter 1738. To the Reverend Mother Marie de la Trimté

My very good and dear Mother,—May the divine Saviour reign eternally in our souls, and His gentle and holy Mother be our true protectress!

I hope through the grace of their divine Majesty nor

Alack! how happy is our dear good Father the Commander to have lived and died so holily! He had but one desire in life: to glorify God and to honour His holy Mother. I feel his loss deeply. But, blessed be the holy name of God, His Majesty can make him more useful to us where he now is, and where he can see with our holy Founders the needs of their Institutes, and of our souls in particular, and thus obtain for us all that is necessary. He had greatly at heart the union of our little Congregation with your great and holy Order, and I think he took my letter to you on this subject in which I begged of you, my good Mother, to tell us what we should do on our part in order to entitle us to the privilege of this special bond with you. The Reverend Father Gibieux has honoured us by writing to say that we and you ought to make a general communion for this intention, each for the other, every Saturday. I replied that our Constitutions do not permit us to make general communions other than those that are ordered, but that we will apply to this intention the communions made on Saturdays, which are never less than three; and that if your holy Order will give us a share in its Saturday communions it will be in keeping with the magnanimity of its charity. Oh, my good and dear Mother, ought not the great who abound in spiritual riches to bestow them upon the poor and lowly, as in truth I consider our little Congregation to be in comparison to your holy Order, which has already sent so many saints, men and women, to heaven?

Some days ago I received your letter of the 8th of November, in which you tell me your wish in reference to this holy union, and most willingly do I comply withit. Straightway, I offered my will and that of all the daughters of the

Visitation in agreement with yours, for it is all that we could desire. In doing so I felt a certain sense of consolation that makes me hope for many graces through this bond.

Though the Feast of the Most Holy and Pure Conception of Our Lady and that of St. John were passed when I received your letter, I did not fail to make the offering and to have the intentions of our union written down and clearly explained. This I will send to our monasteries, so that henceforth our sisters may offer their hearts to our divine Saviour and His Blessed Mother for this end while awaiting the general offering on the day of the Immaculate Conception, and I beg of them to write it in the chapter book. Every year on these two feasts let us reconfirm and bind ourselves anew to this holy union. This is, my good Mother, what we intend to do. Let your monastery do the same, so that it may be for us a permanent and binding grace to the greater glory of Jesus and Mary.

You tell me that we shall not live much longer, we two. Oh, my God, what good news! But could you not obtain from the divine Mercy that we should leave this world together, and together reach that wherein we shall praise, adore, love and bless eternally the sovereign Lover of souls? Use your credit for this, my good Mother, provided, however, it be the good pleasure of the Saviour, whom I beseech to fill you and all your dear daughters with His pure and holy love. Recommending myself to their prayers, yours, etc.¹

Footnotes

1. On the death of M. de Sillery, which took place 26th September this year, 1640 [the seventh of his priesthood], St. Vincent de Paul wrote: ‘As he had lived like a saint since he retired from the turmoil of the world, so he died. He has gone to heaven as a monarch who goes to take possession of his kingdom, with a strength and confidence, a peace and sweetness beyond expression. I have been speaking these past days to His Eminence Cardinal Richelieu, and it was not without reason that I assured him that, for the eight or ten years during which I have had the privilege of intercourse with M. de Sillery, I have never seen in him thought, word, or act that was not for God, and that his purity of life was beyond words.’ time, nor silence, nor anything whatsoever will be able in any way to alter what in their holy love they have united. Such affection do I feel for you that to me it seems impossible that I could ever forget you. Nothing is comparable in my eyes to the favour of your friendship and to your remembrance of me before God. Obtain for me from this most gracious Saviour that during the few days that remain to me of life, andin death, I may perfectly accomplish His holy will. ↩