Letter 1955

[No date.] Vive > Jésus!

May our divine Saviour be equally blessed in the tribulations as in the consolations that He sends us! Were it not that you are in tribulation I should not be writing to you now, but you have in a manner roused my compassion by your state of affliction. Yet, clearly, the harm would be slight but for the reflections you are continually making on yourself which exaggerate your infidelities. I know quite well all this proceeds from a good source, that of self-hatred, but this hatred must be accompanied by a gentleness that reforms by way of compassion rather than by pressure. Never was Our Lord nearer to you, I assure you, than Heisnow. He leaves you a little while in dryness and without light or consolation, but it is only that you may learn to walk in naked and simple faith, and to teach you that a soul should be able to maintain itself in true peace in times of dryness as in those of consolation. For God’s sake do not examine what passes within you, but turn to Him with all the simplicity in your power. Never, amidst trials, lose the equanimity and peace of your heart, nor overburden it by scrutinising your infidelities and your want of discernment. God, I observe, heaps favours upon you and fills you with good desires and sentiments, rewarding your practice of blindly giving yourself to Him by rare graces and lights. Yet from all this you draw nothing but torment to yourself. Truly you are wearing yourself out, and if you go on like this you will soon make yourself seriously ill. Oh! for God’s sake leave the care of your perfection to Our Lord. Do what you can cheerfully and willingly; humble yourself for your failings, but joyously and briefly. Walk gvosso modo in good faith, without surrounding yourself with all this punctiliousness. What respect and obedience are you showing to the advice of our holy Father, which is absolutely opposed to what you are doing? Follow, I beg of you, his guidance, and not your own. At any rate, in the name of God believe me for this once, and profit by the sorrow you are causing me in seeing you thus worry your heart. See how angry you have made me. Make me calm again by curing yourself.