Letters 51–69

Letter 51. Perseverance

. . . ONE day of perseverance under trouble is more acceptable to God, and does more for the soul's progress, io8 than many years spent in the intoxication of spiritual sweetness, in which we say like S. Peter, " It is good for us to be here." * Your friend needs you, and you see that you are helping her. . . . But while you are doing good to others, be sure you do not harm yourself. Give no heed to your own voice, hearken only to Him Who at once destroys and gives life. Above all, mistrust your fastidiousness, which is a most dangerous temptation. May God be in you, and fill you, so that there shall be no room for yourself.

Letter 52. Not to Foster Scruples

SAINT- GHISLAIN, May 19, 1702.

YOUR over warmth, Madame, really only consists in your fear of having been too warm. Never be afraid, I beg, of being too free with me. When I perceive any excess, I shall not wait for you to question me, I shall tell you very freely. As to your confessions, do as little that is wrong as you can till I return. I cannot give you any precise rule, for any rule runs a chance of feeding constraint and scruple with you. All must depend upon your confessor. Certainly the less often you go to confession the better.

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Letter 53. Of Some Social Perils

I AM very sorry for your trouble. The things with which you reproach yourself are a mere nothing; it is not God's Spirit, but your fancy which recalls them. God never excites these self-consuming retrospections. Even when He points out our faults. He does it gently, condemning and comforting us simultaneously. He humbles without crushing, and makes us take His part against ourselves, so that in spite of shame at our weakness we are thoroughly at peace. " The Lord is not in the earthquake." ' I will suppose that your love of conversation led you away somewhat, that you gave too much liberty to your wit, that self-conceit overpowered you; in short, I will suppose whatever your keen and exaggerated sensitiveness imagines. What then? Are you to renounce all society? can you close your door to your best friends who need you, to those whom you yourself know set forward your own nearness to God! Would you reject all those consolations without which you cannot reasonably hope restoration of health to your feeble, depressed system? Do you want to put an end 1 I Kings xix. u.

no Spiritual to yourself by a solitary life which would undermine your constitution, and leave you helpless? It is told of S. Bernard that once, while preaching with great success, he felt the flutterings of self-complacency within him, and was on the point of leaving the pulpit. But the Spirit of God gave him to understand that it was a subtle temptation, a scruple which thus alarmed him, and he pursued his sermon, saying to himself, " It was not vanity which brought me hither, and in spite of its flattery it shall not drive me hence."

Even if you committed real faults in this intercourse you could not give it up. It is not a question of great or mortal sin, but only of those venial sins which selflove is for ever renewing, and which we can never wholly avoid in this life. The occasions you would give up are providentially ordered as a necessary part of your calling in life; by cutting them off you would make yourself responsible for the faults of others, and for your own spiritual injury; you would close and wither your own heart.

Moreover, after such conversations do not fancy that God is punishing you by withdrawing from you, or depriving you of the spirit of prayer. On the contrary, it is merely your own scruples which disturb you and engross your attention with your imagined faults, thus making you resist the movements of simplicity and

£elf=peceit 1 1 1 peace, leading you away from God's Presence, and stopping your inward supplies of grace. Do not listen to these useless scruples; try to be calm, learn to ignore whatever is unworthy to distract you from God. Never give way to any regret over such faults, save that which a quiet abiding in God's Presence may rouse in you. You will soon learn that all that loss of sweetness in prayer comes, not from God, but from your self-consuming habit of resisting His Spirit of Grace.

Letter 54. Self-Deceit

THERE are two things which do you an infinity of harm. One is the tendency to scruples, rooted in your heart from childhood, and driven to an extreme point for so many years; the other is your persistency in always attempting to see and realise the good you do. Scruples often deprive you of all comfort and consciousness of love, by reason of the agitation they produce; while on the other hand the loss of that consciousness redoubles your scruples, for you fancy you are doing nothing, that you have lost God, and are under illusion, the moment you do not feel the conscious warmth of love. These two things ought to convince you of the extent of your self-love.

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You have spent all your life in the belief that you are wholly devoted to others, and never self-seeking. Nothing so feeds self-conceit as this sort of internal testimony that one is quite free from self-love, and always generously devoted to one's neighbours. But all this devotion which seems to be for others is really to yourself. Your self-love reaches the point of perpetual selfcongratulation that you are free from it; all your sensitiveness is lest you might no*, be fully satisfied with self: this is at the root of all your scruples. You may prove it by your indifference to the faults of others: if you thought of nothing save God and His Glory, you would be as keen and sensitive to others' losses as to your own. But it is the "I" which makes you so keen and sensitive. You want God as well as man to be always satisfied with you, and you want to be satisfied with yourself in all your dealings with God.

Besides, you are not accustomed to be content with a simple good-will — your self-love wants a lively emotion, a reassuring pleasure, some kind of charm or excitement. You are too much used to be guided by imagination, and to suppose that your mind and will are inactive unless you are conscious of their workings. And thus you are dependent upon a kind of excitement similar to that which the passions arouse, or theatrical representations. By dint of refinement you fall into the opposite extreme — a real coarseness of imagination. Nothing is more opposed, not only to the life of faith, but also to true wisdom. There is no more dangerous opening to illusion than the fancies by which people try to avoid illusion. It is imagination which leads us astray; and the certainty which we seek through imagination, feeling, and taste, is one of the most dangerous sources whence fanaticism springs. . . . This is the gulf of vanity and corruption which God would make you discover in your heart; you must look upon it with the calm and simplicity belonging to true humility. It is mere self-love to be inconsolable at seeing one's own imperfections; but to stand face to face with them, neither flattering nor tolerating them, seeking to correct one's self without becoming pettish, — this is to desire what is good for its own sake, and for God's, rather than merely treating it as a self-satisfying decoration.

So pray turn your scruples upon this useless search after self-satisfaction in doing right

. . . Ought you to be so sensitive, even if I had formed an unjust opinion of you? Many holy souls have submitted to be unjustly condemned by prejudiced directors; why are you so alive to a far slighter prejudice, which, moreover, I altogether deny? . . . Mistrust your imagination and your intellect: I shall pray continually for you.

Letter 55. On the Privation of Sensible Sweetness

IT is long since anything has pleased me more than your letter of yesterday. . . . You must accustom yourself to privation: the great trouble it causes shows how much it is needed. It is only because we appropriate light, sweetness, and enjoyment, that it is so necessary that we should be stripped of all these things. So long as the soul clings to any consolation, it needs to be stripped thereof. Undoubtedly the God we feel to be beneficent and indulgent is still God, but it is God with His Gifts: God surrounded with darkness, privation, and desolation is God only. When a mother wants to attract her little one, she comes to him, her hands full of toys and sugarplums; but the father approaches his grown-up son without any presents. God goes still further; He veils His Face, He hides His Presence, and often only visits those He seeks to perfect through the utter darkness of simple faith. You are like a baby crying because you have missed your bonbons: God gives them to you now and then, and these ups and downs comfort the soul when it begins to be discouraged, while accustoming it at the same time to privation.

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God does not intend either to spoil or discourage you; give yourself up then to these vicissitudes which so upset your soul, which, however, by accustoming it to have no abiding condition, make it supple and plastic to receive whatever impression God wills. It is so to say a heartfoundry: by dint of melting all the outlines of self are lost. Pure water has neither colour or form, it always takes the form ana colour of the vessel containing it. Let this be your case with God.

As to painful or humiliating thoughts, whether concerning your faults or your temporal affairs, treat them as the sensitiveness of self-love: our pain at all these things is more humiliating than the things themselves. Put all together, the trouble and your perplexity at it, and carry the cross without trying to alter it one way or another. Directly that you bear it thus, in simple trust of God, you will be at rest, and your cross will become light.

Letter 56. The Struggles of Self-Will

You see, my dear daughter, that all your troubles come from jealousy, or the sensitive self-love, or from some deep-down scruple which is closely allied to self-love.

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And such troubles always carry disturbance with them. Both cause and effect prove that they are real temptations. The Spirit of God never inspires us with selfconceit; and so far from creating disturbance, it always fills the heart with peace. What could be a more certain proof of temptation than to see you in a kind of despair, rebelling against everything which God gives to lead you to Hims'elf? Such rebellion is not natural, but God suffers temptation to drive you to such an extremity in order that you may more easily recognise that it is temptation. In the same way He suffers you to fall into certain faults in the presence of others, which are altogether contrary to your excessive delicacy and discretion, in order to mortify that delicacy and discretion which you cherish so jealously. He causes the ground to give under you, in order that you may not find any conscious stay either in yourself or your neighbour; and further, He suffers you to fancy that your neighbour judges you quite other than he really does, in order that your selfconceit may lose any flattering prop in that direction. The remedy is severe, but it needed nothing less to free you from yourself, and to force the entrenchment of your pride. You want to die, but to die without any pain, and in full health. You want to be tried, but only while looking on with conscious superiority at the trial. It is a saying of the old lawyers with respect to donations,

" Donner et retenir ne vaut," i.e. you cannot give and hold. You must give all or nothing when God asks it. If you have not courage to give, at least let Him take.

LVIL THE CROSS EVERYWHERE.

. . . THE cross is everywhere. I can taste nothing save bitterness; but we must bear the heaviest cross quietly, and not only carry or drag it, but abide crushed and buried beneath it. I hope that God will spare you sufficiently to give you material for suffering — that is our daily bread. God only knows the right proportion, and we must live by faith in order to believe without seeing that God adapts our trials to our means of succour with an absolute and merciful certainty. This life of faith is the deepest of all death to self.

Letter 58. A New Year's Wish

Jan. I, 1704.

How heartily I wish you a happy new year, in all simplicity and truth! Feeling does not depend upon ourselves — only will; and even our will cannot be n8 Spiritual measured: we cannot take it up like a glove and say, Here it is. You love your son without perpetually worrying yourself to feel your love, as you worry yourself to feel your love of God. It is enough that we will to love, and act as best we can accordingly in the spirit of such love. God has no touchy sensitiveness as we have. Let us go straight to Him, and that will do.

Letter 59. On Being Kept Back From a Sermon

A SUBMISSIVE will which yields to others is better than any number of sermons! It was doubtless out of exceeding care for your health, or some other good reason, that M. de Montberon refused you this little indulgence, — it is a mere trifle. You must adapt yourself to his wishes, and a sermon is but a small thing to sacrifice to them. He is one of the kindest men I know. The sermon was not suitable to you, and you may be consoled for not having heard it. A few words spoken after long silence by your own fireside are worth far more. Do enlarge your poor heart; God is ill at ease in straitened hearts. True love is too simple to be straitened. " Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." ' 1 2 Cor. iii. 17.

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Letter 60. The Danger of Self-Chosen Plans

RESUME prayer and communion, my daughter, at whatever cost. You have withered your heart by so eagerly pressing your own wishes regardless of God's Will: this is the cause of all you are suffering. You have spent a great deal of time in making plans which were mere cobwebs, and a breath of wind has blown them away. You withdrew gradually 'from God, and He has withdrawn from you. You must return to Him, and give yourself up unreservedly to Him: there is no other way by which you can regain peace. Let go all your plans; God will do as He pleases with them. Even if they were to succeed through earthly means, He would not bless them. But if you offer them unreservedly to Him. He wall turn everything to His Own merciful purposes, whether He does what you wish or not The important thing is to resume meditation and prayer, whatever dryness, distraction, or weariness you may find in it. You deserve to be rejected of God after having rejected Him for the creature so long, — your patience will win Him again. But meanwhile persevere in your communions to strengthen your weakness. The weak need to be fed above all with bread. Do not argue, or give heed to your fancies, but communicate as soon as you can. ... As to your friend, do not cut him off, but only see him in moderation. You will do him great injury, and a world of harm to yourself, if you do not observe such moderation. Tell him the truth gently as occasion offers. Speak only in a spirit of grace and self-abnegation; and as to the rest, do not adhere to your fancies about an absolute separation. We will talk all this over when I see you next.

Letter 61. To the Marquise de Risbourg. on Self- Seeking in Friendship

You are but seeking self, my dear daughter, in your search after human friendship, but you will not find what you look for. Your sensitiveness in friendship is only a refined self-love, but other people have self-love as well as you: everybody wants it all his own way! Moreover, you will never find peace or comfort in a selfish greediness of love; it will bear nought save thorns and prickles. What else do you deserve, when Infinite Goodness does not suffice you, and you do not feel God to be enough, without the addition of utterly frivolous amusements. Try to recover your recollection, and that without delay. Prayer must be your penance, until it once more becomes your nourishment

Letter 62. Ox Slackness in Religious Life

I CAN find no words better suited to you, my dear child, than those of S. John to.the Bishop of Ephesus (supposed to be S. Timothy) : " I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place." i It is thus that God's Holy Spirit loves men without flattering them. He loves, yet threatens, but His very threats are love. He holds forth a penalty, so that men may not force Him to inflict it.

See how easily the best people fall gradually away without noticing it Here is Timothy, whom S. Paul addresses as a " man of God," 2 the angel of one of the holiest Churches of the East in those early days of religious prosperity; yet this angel falls, he " leaves his first love," his recollection, his prayer, his good works; he grows lax and careless. At first he does not perceive 1 Rev. ii. 4, 5. * i Tim. vi u.

his wanderings or his fall. He says to himself, " What harm am I doing? Is not my conduct upright and regular in the world's eyes? Must one not have some pleasure? it is scarce worth living without anything to cheer and amuse one! " It is thus that people ingeniously deceive themselves, and disguise their backsliding. But the Holy Spirit bids them hasten to open their eyes, and see "from whence they are fallen."

How far you are below your former standard! Remember the fervency of your prayers, your love of solitude, your jealous watch over recollection, and the strictness with which you shunned whatever could interfere with it. If you do not remember, others have not forgotten, and do not fail to ask, "What has become of all that fervour? There is nothing to be seen now but the love of amusement and pleasure, and restless ennui when there is a pause in these. It is not the same person. Can she be by way of being devout? "

Thus people fall by insensible degrees, and under fair pretences, from a state of sincere self-denial into a laxity which revives all the worst forms of selfishness. At least you should try to "remember whence you are fallen," and mourn over that " first love " which fostered you. You must try to resume those " first works " which you have exchanged in such a slothful way for mere vanities. You must gaze from afar on the desert in

Ijearkening to ©oi 123 which you dwelt at peace with the True Comforter. You must say with the Prodigal Son, " I will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and against Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son." If at first He seems cold or hard, accept it humbly as a penance of which you stand greatly in need. If you fail in returning speedily to His Fatherly Breast, you hear what He would do: "I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place." He would take away the light which you do not use, and leave you in darkness; He would transfer His Precious Gifts which you have trodden under foot to some truer, more obedient, more faithful soul. You must resume your reading, your meditations, your silence, your former simplicity and lowliness.

Letter 63. To a Lady.1 Hearkening to God

You let your taste and imagination have too much play. Strive to hearken more to God in meditation, and less to yourself. Self-conceit has less to say when it finds that it is not hearkened to. God's utterances to the soul are simple, calm, sustaining, even when they seem over- 1 The following letters, to No. LXX., are written to the same person.

whelming; but self always speaks with an uncertain, disturbed, excited tone, even when its words are soothing. He who listens to God without making any plans for himself is really renouncing his own will.

Letter 64. How to Meet Sickness

Do not be disturbed because of your malady; you are in God's Hands. The thing is to live as if you expected daily to die; then everything will be ready, since preparation for death consists in detachment from the world, and attachment to God. While you are so feeble, do not let yourself be fretted about the regularity of your meditation. Exactitude and exertion of the brain may hurt your weak health. It is enough in your languid state if you renew the Presence of God quietly as often as you find that you are forgetting it. A natural, familiar intercourse with God, in which you tell Him all your troubles in full confidence, and in which you ask Him to help you, will not exhaust, while it will nourish your spiritual life.

Letter 65. On Giving Way to the Imagination

I THINK you ought to abstain wholly from your imaginary dialogues. Although some may tend to kindle pious feelings, I think it is a dangerous habit for you. From such as those you will unconsciously pass on to others, which will foster your excitement, or encourage your love of the world. Better far suppress them all, I do not mean that you should stop them forcibly, — you might as well try to stop a torrent; enough if you do not voluntarily harbour them. When you perceive that your imagination is beginning to work, be satisfied with turning to God, without directly combatting these fancies. Let them drop, occupying yourself in some useful way. If it be a time of meditation or prayer, treat all such idle thoughts as distractions, and return quietly to God as soon as you are conscious of them, but do so without anxiety, scruples, or agitation. If, on the other hand, such imaginations trouble you when engaged in external work, the work will help you to resist such castle building. It would even be well at first to find some companion, or to set about some difficult task, with a view to breaking the thread of such thoughts, and getting rid of the habit i26 Spiritual $Detter$

THE SAME SUBJECT.

You must positively suppress this trifling of the imagination, it is pure waste of time, a very dangerous occupation, and a temptation voluntarily incurred. It is a duty never to yield to it voluntarily. Perhaps, owing to habit, your imagination will still beset you with fancies in spite of yourself; but at all events do not yield to them, and try quietly to get rid of them whenever you become aware that they are occupying you. The best means of getting rid of them is to occupy yourself in meditation, or in some active work if meditation does not quiet your excited imagination.

Letter 67. On Meditation

IT is well always to place some simple, solid, practical subject before your mind in meditation. If you do not find matter for it in such a subject, but are rather drawn to general union with God, keep to that as long as you feel so drawn; but do not make a habit of it: always be stedfast in taking a subject, and try to occupy and feed your mind with it. Accept freely all lights and emotions of ^rioation.s 127 which are given you in meditation, but do not trust to any of those things which may flatter your vanity and fill you with idle self-complacency.

It is better to be very humble and ashamed of the faults one has committed, than satisfied with one's meditation, and puffed up with a notion that one is very advanced, because one has had a flow of fine feelings and aspirations in prayer. Accept whatever may come from God's helping Hands, but be sure that these gifts will turn to most dangerous illusions if you drop into self-complacency through their means.

The great thing is to mortify self, to obey God, to mistrust self, to bear the Cross. All the same I am very glad that you can meditate now without that forced effort which hampered you so greatly. Your meditation is calmer, and you are more helpful to your neighbours, but you must take care that this holy freedom never turns to laxity or dissipation.

Letter 68. The Value of Privations

I AM truly sorry for the contre-temps which have hindered my seeing you; meanwhile strive diligently to follow the light God gives you with a view to mortifying your selfconsciousness and sensitiveness. Those who give themselves up entirely to God's designs are as ready to be deprived of consolations as to enjoy them; indeed often a privation which humbles and upsets our own plans is more useful than the greatest plenty of sensible sweetness.

If it is often very wholesome to be deprived of the conscious Presence of God and His Comfort, why may it not be very good for you to be deprived of my presence and my poor counsels? God is ever near, even when He seems afar off from us, provided we bear His seeming absence in a spirit of love to Him, and self-mortification. Accustom yourself to bear some weariness. Children, as they grow, learn to give up their mother's milk, to walk alone, and to eat dry bread.

Letter 69. How to Use Eager Aspirations

I AM well pleased with your condition, — you are quite right to tell me what you think in all truthfulness. Do not hesitate to write and tell me what you believe God ' requires of you.

It is not to be wondered at that you should have a sort of jealous eagerness and ambition to advance in the spiritual life, and to be in the confidence of noteworthy servants of God. Self-love naturally seeks successes of

(Eager £i<spirattonj5 129 this kind, which are flattering to it. But the real thing that matters is, not to satisfy your ambition by some brilliant advance in virtue, or by being taken into the confidence of distinguished persons, but to mortify the flattering tendencies of self-love, to humble yourself, to love obscurity and contempt, and to seek God only.

People cannot become perfect by dint of hearing or reading about perfection. The chief thing is not to listen to yourself, but silently to give ear to God; to renounce all vanity, and apply yourself to real virtue. Talk little, and do much, without caring to be seen. God will teach you more than all the most experienced persons or the most spiritual books can do. What is it you want so much to know? What do you need to learn, save to be poor in spirit and to find all wisdom in Christ crucified. " Knowledge puffeth up; " it is only "charity which edifies." ' Do you be content to aim at charity. Do you need any such great knowledge in order to love God and deny yourself for His love? You already know a great deal more than you practise. You do not need the acquirement of fresh knowledge half so much as to put in practice that which you already possess. How people delude themselves, when they expect to advance by means of argument and inquisitive-

1 I Cor. viii. I. Ffn. Sp. L.—II.\ I ness! Be lowly, and never expect to find gifts which are God's only in man.