Letters 37–49

Letter 37. Danger of Scruples

I OFTEN apply the words to you, " As water puts out fire, so scruples put out the spirit of prayer." Do not indulge your scruples so much, and you will be at rest. There are two things which ought to clear away all your fears. One is the consciousness of your excitability, and your skilfulness in tormenting yourself about nothing. You have often perceived it; all your spiritual guides have convicted you of it. It was a recognised temptation before you began to practise meditation, and that cannot have increased it. To meditate profitably, you must cast aside your scruples as old temptations which you have been always told not to encourage. Meditation does not make that which was innocent bad or dangerous; it does not prove your former Directors wrong in what they all decided upon, independently of such matters.

The second thing which ought to satisfy you is the harm which these scruples do you. Every time that, contrary to your own good sense and to obedience, you begin again with those self-investigations so often forbidden you, you distract and perplex yourself; you

Banger of £cmple$ 85 get farther from the power of prayer, and so from God; you fall back into your natural difficulties; you rekindle your old troubles, your fastidiousness and other faults; you become almost entirely self-absorbed. Now, I ask you, is all this of God? is it by following the eadings of His Grace that you wander so far from Him? When I returned, I found you so depressed, so ready to break down altogether, that I hardly knew you. Is that God's doing? Do you trace His Hand in it? Does love make us leave off loving? Moreover, in the simple, regular life you have led since you began to meditate more, you can only recall trifling faults. Is it not wrong in God's Sight to forsake close communing with Him in prayer in order to indulge an anxious search after all these trifles, which you magnify in your imagination? Let us take them at their worst, and grant them to be real sins; at any rate they can only be venial sins, for which you should humble yourself, and strive diligently to correct them, but which a loving prayer will readily blot out. What you need is to turn your scrupulous sensitiveness chiefly against your very scruples. Can it be right, under pretext of hunting out the smallest faults, to dry up the sources of prayer, and to do one's self so much harm in order to remedy so little? I am not referring to the present moment; just now you do not need such exhortations, but the need may recur at any

86 £ptritttal Betters time. Scruples are an illusion as to evil just as much as unreal prayer is an illusion concerning what is good. All such prayer as calms and sustains the soul, which humbles and detaches it, which only flags when scruples intervene, and which is only lost by losing love, can but be good. There can be no illusion in believing without seeing, in loving without selfishness, in receiving without stopping short in what is given, in renouncing all that is of self, in act or will.

Letter 38. Love of God the Antidote to Scruples

You are not mistaken in thinking that the exaltation which comes of love does not puff up. It is a token which may reassure one as to any danger of illusion. Our inmost experience teaches us that love comes infinitely more from God than from ourselves; the love that fills our hearts is God s own creation. It is a somewhat which is our very life, and which yet is altogether superior to us; we can take no credit to ourselves from it. The more we love God, the more we feel that He is at once the Lover and the Beloved. Verily, those who love truly are little disposed to any self-complacency because of it! Love is but a borrowed treasure; we feel that it does all,

£ooc the ^tnttUote 87 and that were it not given us we could do nothing. If I strove to love in my own strength, what should I love but myself? God, in His Ail-wise adaptation, never gives the highest love without its makeweight. We feel two altogether opposite elements within us — an overwhelming weakness and imperfection in all that is of us, and a borrowed transport of love so out of proportion to all the rest, that we cannot take credit to ourselves for it. If you lift a child up on high, so far from imagining itself to have attained a great height, it is terrified lest it fall, unless you hold it tight in its exalted position. Love is the real source of humility, for it abases all save the Beloved; it so engrosses us with Him, that we altogether forget self; it sets something so far beyond our nature before us, that we learn to appreciate our own worthlessness and want of strength.

Persevere with your communions. Scrupulous consciences need to be urged onwards, like restive, shying horses. The more you yield to your scruples, the more you develop them. You can only cure them by repression; and as you conquer them you will gain peace and rest. Moreover, this will not be mere peace, but an enlightened state, which will enable you clearly to perceive where the snare of your scruple lies, and which will bring forth good fruit This will be a token that God is leading you. Nothing is so hurtful to simplicity as a

88 j&pmtuat $etttr* scrupulous mind; it is a cloak for all manner of falseness and duplicity. We fancy that all our anxiety arises from our sensitive love of God, but really there is a great deal of self-seeking in it, of jealous study of our own perfection, of natural self-interest. We deceive ourselves to our own discomfort, and turn aside from God under pretext of caution.

Letter 39. How the Love of God Lightens Suffering

I SYMPATHISE, Madame, with your invaild's sufferings, but I rejoice that she bears them so well. Do you remember a passage in Le Chretien Interieur:* "They who reject suffering do not love, for love is ever ready to suffer for the Beloved One"? You are not wrong in distinguishing between willingness and courage. Courage is a sort of strength and vigour of mind by which we overcome everything; but souls which God intends to keep lowly, and conscious of their own weakness, do all that is allotted them without any sense of their own capability to do it. They feel as if everything were too much for them, yet they triumph over all difficulties by a.je ne sais

1 A book written somewhere between 1640-50 by M. de Bernieres Louvigny.

to lighten buffering 89 quoi, which springs up altogether independently of themselves when needed, and for which they never dream of taking credit to themselves. They do not lay themselves out to suffer well, but somehow we find that each cross as it comes has been bravely bome, because they have had no will save God's. There is nothing striking, nothing powerful, nothing very obvious even to others, still less to themselves. If you say to such a person that he has endured bravely, he would not understand you. He does not know how it has all been; he does not dissect his feelings. If he did, there would be no more simplicity. This is what you mean by willingness, which makes less show, but is really much more solid than what is generally called courage. Good water has no smell; the purer it is the less it tastes. It is colourless; its purity makes it transparent, and consequently you see the colour of all extraneous matter thrown into it So willingness, which is really love of God, has no colour of its own, only at every call it is ready to will whatever God wills. Happy they who have ever so small a seed of so great a blessing!

It is your task to foster and mould gradually this new life in one so dear to you. Do not hurry or forestall anything, but go on step by step as God leads; He will give the signals, be it yours to watch needfully, and to shun alike negligence or politic reserve and eager haste.

Letter 40. Care of Health and Duty

IF you are poorly, Madame, rest yourself, and do not go out. The good Saint we love so well will be with you by your own fireside. You know how he adapted himself to every weakness of mind or body. Love is love everywhere, and bodily weakness does not lessen the heart's warmth. Love is never so powerful as when resting on the Bosom of the Beloved. It seems that you have done too much on your journey; natural energy and eagerness have led you to overstep your physical power. Man may praise you for it, but God likes simpler, less ambitious proceedings. If you feel unequal to going to Mass to-morrow, give it up cheerfully, and be sure that if S. Francis de Sales were still among us, and your Director, he would certainly forbid you to go. He forbids you yet where he is. You will obey his mind in abstaining from the celebration of his fete-day. If you feel really fit to go to church, only remain during one Mass; but mistrust yourself, and condemn yourself not to go if there is any doubt in the matter.

1 S. Francis de Sales' festival-day.

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Letter 41. Patience \Y1Th Self

PEOPLE who love themselves aright, even as they ought to love their neighbour, bear charitably, though without flattery, with self as with another. They know what needs correction at home as well as elsewhere; they strive heartily and vigorously to correct it, but they deal with self as they would deal with some one else they wished to bring to God. They set to work patiently, not exacting more than is practicable under present circumstances from themselves any more than from others, and not being disheartened because perfection is not attainable in a day. Such people judge their most trivial failings unsparingly, and are not blind to their own deformity, but endure all the mortification and humiliation involved. They neglect no means of amendment, but they are not fretful while so doing. They do not heed the pettishness of pride and self-esteem, which so often mingles with that quiet resolution wherewith grace inspires us for the correction of our faults. That sort of irritable pettishness only discourages a man, makes him self-absorbed, repels him from God's service, wearies him in his way, makes him seek unworthy consolations, dries him up, distracts, exhausts him, fills him with disgust and despair of ever reaching his end. Nothing so hinders souls as this inward peevishness when it is encouraged; but if endured without consenting to it, it may be turned to good, like all other trials by which God purifies and perfects us. The only thing to be done is to let such troubles pass away, like a headache or a feverish attack, without doing anything to promote or prolong them.

Meanwhile, it is well to go on with your interior practices and your exterior duties as far as possible. Prayer may be less easy, the Presence of God less evident and less comforting, outward duties may be harder and less acceptable, but the faithfulness which accomplishes them is greater, and that is enough for God. A boat which makes a quarter of a mile against wind and tide requires greater power on the part of the rowers than when it makes a mile with both favourable. The vexations of self-esteem should be treated as some men treat their nervous fancies, taking no notice of them any more than if they did not exist.

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Letter 42. Evil of Scruples

I AM sorry for you, and not at all inclined to scold you, but I wish you would correspond faithfully to what God appears to require of you. The matters with which you reproach yourself, and speak of with such horror, are mere trivialities of talk, devoid of all malice, and perfectly harmless to your neighbours. Surely there is nothing in these to trouble you so much? These trifles rouse your scruples; your restless scruples disturb your prayer, draw you away from God, wither and distract your soul, open the door to earthly inclinations, and waken temptations in spite of grace. See how much worse the remedy is than the disease; the disease is imaginary, but the remedy is a real evil.

I am not surprised that your too lively imagination, and the habit of giving way to wandering thoughts, which you have never checked sufficiently, should trouble you; but it is not too late to overcome these hindrances in your heavenward path. At all events, you ought to be on the guard against your imagination, realise the harm it does, acknowledge how it engrosses you with trifles, which hide more important things; and, above all, you ought to be docile, and persevere in following the advice given you. So far from giving you up, I intend to persecute you unremittingly. I am not going to be discouraged by all your scruples; do not you lose courage to fight them. I most earnestly wish you to communicate to-morrow without going to confession. You will be wanting in your duty to God if you do not do as I ask you in His Name, and for love of Him.

Letter 43. Forebodings to Be Avoided

I HAD hoped, Madame, to find you here, and was rejoicing in that hope, but God has sent you elsewhere. Well, the best place is wherever He sends one, and any other would be undesirable, all the more because it was our own choice. ... I am glad that the spiritual guide you have found seems likely to help you. I like and esteem him much, and am certain he might often do you good; but I do not mean to give you up myself. We were brought together by God, and so our union must last. I see nothing likely to remove me from hence, and there is no foundation at all for what you heard. So do not dwell upon these unlikely events; such forebodings as to the future are not wholesome for you. When God

/ orcboDtng* to be auoibet) 95 sends you help, try to see Him only in it, and take such help from day to day, as the Israelites their manna, without anxious thought for the morrow's provision.

Two things are essential to the life of pure faith: first, it teaches you always to see God behind all the frail agents He uses; and next, it keeps the soul ever in a state of suspense. One is, so to say, always in mid-air, without being able to touch the ground; one can never calculate from moment to moment on the help that will be given. We must leave to God whatever depends upon Him, and only try to be faithful in whatever depends upon ourselves. This dependence from hour to hour, this shadow, this calm amid uncertainty, is a silent but real martyrdom — like that of a slow fire. It is so slow and interior, that it is almost as imperceptible, even to the soul which endures it, as to those without. When God takes away that which once He gave you, He knows very well how to replace it, either through other means or by Himself. He is able to raise up children to Abraham from the stones.' When S. Paul the Hermit was in a solitary desert, a raven brought him half a loaf daily. If the Saint had been mistrustful, and wanted to secure his next day's bread, perhaps the raven would not have returned. Do you eat your half loaf quietly as your raven brings it " The morrow shall take thought for * Luke iii. 8.

96 jspirittral ^Letter* the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."1 He Who feeds you to-day will feed you tomorrow; and manna will fall again, as in the desert, before God's children will be left hungry.

Letter 44. How to Accept Encouragement

I AM delighted to hear that you are tranquil and happy, but beware of saying in your inward prosperity, " I shall never be removed." 2 If we are proud of our borrowed treasures, the lender is wont to overthrow the ungrateful borrower. Profit by your prosperity without treating it as your own merit. . . . Do nothing which can injure your weak health. As to your fear of comfort, you carry it too far: accept simply whatever is sent you, certain that you will be corrected if you do not use it soberly. There is a sort of self-will and self-seeking in rejecting the consolations God gives you, because they may involve certain temptations. It is like choosing for one's self, and rejecting a duty because of its responsibilities. 1 Matt. vi. 34. * Ps. xxx. 6.

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Letter 45. Discretion in Practice

July II, 1701.

THE words, '; he whom Thou lovest is sick," rise to my mind. You are indeed very dear to me, and I want to see you well. I am afraid that you have exhausted yourself for want of care; indeed I have heard of your practising certain austerities. If you have done so without advice it is self-will, and it is far more important to mortify your self-will than your already feeble body. I beg, you to husband your strength. . . .

I am very anxious about you. You are expending your strength in various ways, which are all unacceptable to God, inasmuch as they are acts of disobedience. You deprive yourself of consolation of which God would not deprive you; and it is as wrong to take away what He does not take away, as to appropriate what He denies. Moreover, you are eaten up with scruples, which leave you no peace or rest, no breathing time; and meanwhile they hamper you with a perpetual confession of trifles. enough to drive both yourself and your confessor wild. Only obedience can put an end to such a wrong state of

Ftn. Sp. £.—//.] G jsptrittwl things: this you will not practise, and I honestly tell you I am displeased with you. If you were more simplehearted you would obey without arguing or self-pleasing. Childlike hearts hold their tongue, and do as they are bid; real love does not know what it is to falter in obedience. The same thing which undermines your health will sap your interior life and leave you a prey to fancies, unrestrained by docility; and I suffer from seeing you suffering thus in defiance of God's Will. I will have nothing to do with your spiritual guidance unless you promise — ist, To do whatever you are bid as to taking more sleep and nourishment; znd, to follow P. R.'s rules as to your confession; and yd, to make use of such comforts and alleviations as are suitable in a spirit of simplicity. I must have a speedy, frank, and decided answer. God knows how much you grieve me.

Letter 46. Dangers of a Self-Tormenting Spirit

Aug. I to 25, 1701.

IF I speak harshly, you must remember what I have learnt by experience. Gentle words are not strong enough to repress your scruples, but you know that I am far from wishing to deal harshly with you. Am I to let you waste inwardly and outwardly through scruples? . . .

A.SdfsiTormenttng Spirit 99

Docility would be the remedy for all your ills, but selfwill makes all remedies useless. You seem to have a bandage over your eyes, so that you do not see how scrupulous you ought to be as to these useless scruples, instead of blinding yourself to a disobedience which is altogether opposed to God's Mind.

... I must beg you to stay in bed as long as formerly, and to try to recover the power of sleep which you have lost. It will return if you are patient and quiet, but giving way to imagination you banish it more and more. I shall not be satisfied as to your inward state until you possess your soul in patience, and sleep quietly. I only want calmness and docility. You will say that a calm imagination does not depend upon ourselves. Pardon me, it does to a great degree. When we have set aside all voluntary disturbances, we go a long way to diminish those which are involuntary. A little stone dropped into the water disturbs it for long, and it is not easy to stop the commotion; but leave it alone, and gradually the commotion will cease of itself. God will watch over your imagination, if you do not keep up disturbance by your scrupulous reflections.

... I would fain only comfort you, but I must begin with scolding; you really need it. ... If you go on following your own way, you will consume your heart and lose ground day by day; if you heed God's Voice ioo Spiritual speaking through those who are His representatives to you, peace will return. " Who hath hardened himself against God, and hath prospered? " ' You chose to take what God refused, and presumptuously to refuse what He did not refuse, because it was necessary to you. You were like a baby who should refuse its milk, and cry for dry bread before it has teeth to bite. Return to the pure milk of Divine Consolation: " Taste and see how gracious the Lord is."

. . . You are wasting your strength, bodily and mental. It is merely your restlessness which hinders your peace and inward sweetness. How can you hear God's gentle Voice pleading with your soul when you are making so much noise with your wayward imagination? Hush that, and God will make Himself heard. . . . Your husband seems to think that reading S. Teresa had revived your scruples — you see what harm your restless activity may do. You ask for consolation; why, you are standing on the fountain's edge, though you will not stoop to drink! Peace and comfort will only be found in obedience. You will receive according to your faith, — much if you believe fervently, nothing if you go on heeding your foolish fancies, which will multiply indefinitely. . . . You do dishonour to real love, making it seem to be always engrossed with trifles, whereas it really goes straight to God 1 Job ix. 4.

in the fullest simplicity. ... I pray God to teach you the truth of David's words, " I will run the way of Thy commandments, when Thou hast set my heart at liberty." '

Letter 47. Self-Will in Religious Exercises

I AM unwilling to agitate you in your present state, but I must put before you the fact that, as a matter of conscience, you ought to give up the comfort of going to church on week days. I hear that you go twice a day, and that at a time when M. Bourdon [the physician] does not hesitate to say that you are not fit to leave your room, or even your bed! I cannot doubt M. Bourdon's great skill, or his sincerely conscientious piety; he does not come to his conclusions from what you say, but from what he sees. . . . Even if he were mistaken you ought to abide by his decision. It is a matter which is not precept, and you would not be guilty even of the slightest venial sin in obeying him. . . . Even if you fancy you know best, you ought to mistrust yourself. Is it not better to obey your skilful doctor, your very pious husband, and your pastor, who knows you thoroughly? If you do not, you will be guilty of the greatest presumption, preferring 1 Ps. cxix. 32.

Spiritual your own opinion to God's providential ordering, and to the lawful authority of the superiors God has set over you. What can you answer if God were to say: " Your superiors decided, and you told them all your reasons; they weighed them, and thought them insufficient; but you persisted in disobedience, you preferred your scruples to obedience and submission; you have killed yourself by self-will?"

[The remainder of this letter is missing.]

Letter 48. God's Gifts to Be Welcomed, From Whatever Source

. . . You see what God requires of you: can you refuse? You see that your resistance is but a refinement of selflove: dare you oppose such refinements, such subtle self-seeking to His Mercy? You who indulge such scruples about some involuntary, and consequently innocent, thought, — you who constantly confess things which are no matter for confession, — can you entertain no scruple, see no need to confess a prolonged resistance to God's Holy Spirit through a mere fancy of selfwill, which rejects God's Gifts, unless they happen to come through the channel which pleases you? What matter indeed if you received the gifts of grace as hungry beggars receive bread? Those gifts would but be purer and more precious. Your heart would be more worthy of God, if its humility and self-abnegation won the help God sends. Is this how you put aside self? how you accept God's dealings in simple faith? how you die to self and pride? What good do all your books about pure love, all your frequent meditations, do you? how can you read what condemns you so utterly? Not merely self-will, but a refined spirit of pride overpowers you, and makes you reject God's Gift, because it does not come in a fashion pleasing to your fastidiousness. How can you pray? What does God whisper in the loving silence of the soul? does He not ask death to self, and you seek to make it live? Can you say to Him, "I will have nothing of Thy Goodness unless Thou wilt give it through some one who altogether satisfies the foolish fancies of my heart?" Dare you say, " I am jealous?" Will He not answer, " I too am jealous, but jealousy beseems Me only, and thine must be swallowed up of Mine? "

O my God, recall this wandering soul; show her the horrible danger of her temptation. Teach her to be jealous for Thee, not for herself; strip her of all this unworthy sensitiveness on her own account, and give her a keener sense of Thy Pure Love!

I thank God that we have found out the mischief; discovery is half the cure. Do not be fidgetty; be simple and lowly.

Letter 49. " I See Another Law.... Warring Against the Law of My Mind."

... I NEEDED your second letter to explain the first. No one could be more sorry for you than I am, or better appreciate your state; but I am not surprised at the duality which I perceive in you. Each person speaks after her own fashion, and one of the two must give way — of that there can be no doubt. The mind and utterance of the rebellious half are not your real self; the other is the reality, who means what she thinks and says. You mean it even when you do not know it; and you neither mean nor believe all that rushes through the imagination of that other person, who is so positive as to all she feels or fancies. Nothing can give the clue to this mystery but experience of such interior troubles. I repeat it, I feel deeply for you; but I am in no wise doubtful as to what God is doing for you. I will answer for your intentions, and am confident as to the persistent faithfulness of your heart under all these apparent wayward-

Reparation of nesses. ... I intreat you to take your own share, and unite yourself to my petitions that God's work may prosper in you.

SEPARATED FRIENDS MEET IX GOD.

... So M. Bourdon does not venture to let you move. . . . This is a positive decision of God's Providence, and we can only accept it in calm adoration. . . . Never mistrust the faithful Friend Who will never fail us, often as we fail Him. I will take for granted every conceivable act of faithlessness on your part; — well, what then? If you have been wanting towards God, all you have to do is to resist Him no longer. He is not like men, whose hollow selfishness turns to unchangeable indignation and wrath. Even if you have disappointed God hundreds of times, return sincerely to Him, cease to resist Him, and He will at once open His Arms to you. It is He Himself Who has prevented you by His Mercy, Who has inspired you with the wish to return. How can He fail to welcome the aspiration which He Himself has kindled in your heart?

"Wherefore do ye fear, O soul of little faith?" You will, it is true, be alone for some five or six weeks; but is it to be alone when you are with God? When He has joined us to one of His creatures, and subjects us to the conditions of such an union, we must cleave thereto, not for what we expect of man, but out of pure fidelity to God, Who is pleased to make use of that instrument. But all depends on not resisting the order of His Providence, but obeying it humbly. Wish what He wills, leave off any inward resistance, and all is done. God does not need our bodily presence to the fruition of unions He has formed, — our will is sufficient. Such union is maintained, although the sea separates us; — we meet familiarly in His Bosom Who knows neither time nor space, and Whose Immensity obliterates distance. We can communicate, understand, exchange intercourse and consolation, without seeing or hearing; God delights to supplement all. But if people are thrown together without such correspondence of heart, without being united through God, they are disturbed, excited, spent, dried up; for all peace leaves a heart which resists God. If such persons are a thousand miles apart, without hope of meeting or hearing from each other, they have no common ground in God, and nothing annihilates distance save the union of wills in Him. It is in Him as a Centre that we find each other, and that is so near a presence that tangible meeting is nothing as compared to it. Such intercourse is quite unlike that of conversation; not unfrequently souls thus knit together meet without being able to talk; they seem too near for words, too full of their common interest for external demonstrations. They are as one in God, and He is as one soul in their two separate bodies.

Remain peacefully, then, where God detains you, and when He summons you thence, go forth with your whole heart. Peace depends upon an unresisting will. Resume your former studies; renew your intercourse with your favourite and admirable friend S. Francis de Sales. Treat yourself like a convalescent who needs to be fed with dainties, and with but little at a time; it is a sort of infancy. Reading will gradually lead on to meditation, and that will expand your heart, and bring back your freedom with the Bridegroom. Let God work His Own Way, and join yourself to my intentions. Wherever I go I shall offer you to God, and you will be present with me in Him. How I long to see you again; but I am not impatient! God be with you.