Letter 1775. To Mother Anne Catherine de Beaumont

My best and dearest of Daughters,——What you said to the Vicar-General was altogether as it should be. It is quite true, as he told you, that the ‘Book of Customs’ has not had the approbation of Rome, but it is equally true— and this I have learned from men of wide knowledge and experience—that there is no need for the Directories and Customs of an Institute to be approved at Rome. It is enough if the Constitutions be approved. Show him that in them, which have been approved at Rome, reference is made in various places to the Directory. We do not need consultations to keep us to observance, by which, thank God, the whole Congregation lives in peace. You and your sisters must, my daughter, comport yourselves with great gentleness and humility towards this good Vicar-General, letting him see that you have an abiding love for faithful and exact observance, that you are very united together and have but one common will. Thus will you testify to him that this mode of life is sweet and peaceful, and that the sisters live very contentedly therein, because they try to live in close union with God, who ought to be the only joy of religious souls.

I am writing, as you wish, to the French ambassador so that he may procure some relief for you in your trouble. But, my dear daughter, if we carry the cross round our neck, we must needs sometimes feel the weight of tribulations. Those that come from our ecclesiastical superiors and on account of our observance are those which we feel the most acutely. We must turn to God at such times with all our strength: He who holds in His hands the hearts of creatures, and can incline them in our favour when we least expect it. We pray and get prayers for you; I cannot tell you how I sympathise with your suffering. You have done well not to offer a determined resistance to the ecclesiastical superior against giving the habit of novice to that sister; but if it were for her profession you would have to be much more firm, letting it be seen with all respect that we cannot be false to our Order by incorporating a bad member, who, being tainted and rotten, would upset the whole healthy body, and that, though our ecclesiastical superiors are our superiors and established over us, it is not to abolish our laws and observances but to maintain us in them. Yet, verily, daughter, we must represent our case with such humble, respectful, and cordial submission that our very manner of doing it will touch the heart of these superiors.

The province you are in being a little foreign, you should, I think, sometimes forgo certain minor points in order to be able to keep to what is essential to the observance. Do not, I beg of you, daughter, worry about or have any fear of grieving me. I know so well the sincerity and candour of your heart and its zeal for the Institute that I cannot blame you, and I quite understand that on such occasions poor superiors hardly know how to act, and suffer a great deal without any fault, yet not without merit, if they keep themselves closely united to the will of God. Continue to be courageous, and put your whole trust in this divine Master. Pray much for her who will never cease to be yours in heart, etc.