Letters 85–94

Letter 85. In Sickness and Trial

I HEAR that your health has been very much deranged, and I am somewhat alarmed. You know that sickness is a precious grace of God, given that we may realise our spiritual through our bodily weakness. We flattered ourselves that we held this life in contempt, and aspired only after the heavenly home; but when age and sickness bring the end near, self revives and takes fright; and then we find no real longing for the kingdom of Christ within us, nought save indolence and cowardice, lukewarmness, dissipation, a cleaving to everything we fancied we had renounced. Such a humiliating experience is often more useful than the most fervid feelings, on which we were disposed to rely overmuch. The great thing is to give ourselves up to the Spirit of Grace, and let Him loosen our hold on everything earthly.

Remember your exceeding delicacy, and accept all the indulgence which your kind and wise superior suggests; you must not run any risks with such shattered health. Recollection, quietness, obedience, offering up ant) £rtal 153 your life, patience in sickness, are quite enough in the way of mortification.

I sympathise fully with your grief. You have lost a very dear sister, who most thoroughly deserved your love; God has in her taken away one of your greatest comforts, but it is in the jealousy of His Love. Even in the purest, most lawful friendships, He sees the roots of self-love, which He wills to cut out to the last fibre. Leave Him to work His Will. Adore that severity which is all love, and strive to enter into His designs. Why should we weep for those who will never weep more, whose tears God has for ever wiped away? We are in fact only weeping for ourselves, and poor humanity may be excused some such self-compassion. But faith certifies us that we shall soon be reunited to those whom in our earthliness we call lost Do you live by faith, regardless of flesh and blood. You will find her again in our common Centre, the Bosom of God. Take care of your health under this sharp trial; tranquillise your mind before God, and do not hesitate to solace yourself with the society of some congenial, pious friends. We ought not to be ashamed to deal with ourselves as children when it is needfuli i54 jppiritttal JLettens

Letter 86. Lukewarmness

WHAT a relief it would be only to see those who are really friends in God's Sight, and to be sheltered from all others! I could often sigh amid my many engagements after the freedom of solitude, but one must hold on one's way and work on without heeding inclination. Shun ennui, and let your natural activity find some outlet. See a few persons whose society is not exciting, but who bring you relaxation. One does not want a great deal of society, and it is well to learn not to be too fastidious, — enough if we can find some peaceable and tolerably reasonable people. You should read, work, walk when it is fine, and so vary your occupations as not to grow weary of any.

As to your lukewarmness and lack of conscious inward life, I am not surprised at this trial depressing you. Nothing is harder to bear. But it seems to me yon have only two things to do, one of which is to avoid whatever excites and dissipates you, whereby you cut off the source of dangerous distractions, which dry up prayer. You cannot expect to find interior nourishment if you live only for what is exterior. Strict watchfulness in giving up whatever makes you too eager and impetuous in conversation is an absolute necessity if you would win the spirit of

I)oro to |3car uritl) ©then; 155 recollection and prayer. No one can have a relish for both God and the world simultaneously, and whatever spirit you have carried about with you through the day's occupations you will carry to your appointed hours of prayer.

Then, after retrenching whatever superfluities dissipate your mind, you must try very often to renew the Presence of God, even amid those occupations which are right and necessary, guarding against your self-will. Try continually to act by the leadings of grace and in the spirit of self-renunciation. By degrees you will come to it, by frequently checking the rapidity of your lively disposition, and hearkening to God's Voice within, and letting Him possess you wholly.

Letter 87. How to Bear With Others

... IN order to be satisfied even with the best people, we need to be content with little, and to bear a great deal. Even the most perfect people have many imperfections, and we ourselves have no fewer. Our faults combined with theirs make mutual toleration a difficult matter, but we can only "fulfil the law of Christ" by "bearing one another's burdens."1 There must be a

156 £pxrittral fitter* mutual, loving forbearance. Frequent silence, habitual recollection, prayer, self-detachment, giving up all critical tendencies, watchfulness to put aside all the idle imaginations of jealous, fastidious self-love, — all these will go far to maintain peace and unity. How many troubles we might save ourselves thereby! Happy he who neither gives ear to himself nor to the idle talk of others!

Be content to lead a quiet life where God has placed you. Be obedient, bear your little daily crosses, — you need them, and it is out of pure mercy God lays them on you. The great thing is thoroughly to despise yourself, and to be willing that others should despise you, if God so will. Feed wholly on Him. S. Augustine says that his mother lived only on prayer. Do you the like, and die to all else. But we can only live to God by continual dying to self.

Letter 88. The Impressions Caused By the Prospect of Death

I AM nowise surprised to hear that death makes a livelier impression on you as age and infirmity gradually bring it nearer. 1 feel the same myself. There is a period when death forces itself oftener and more forcibly upon our thoughts than before. Moreover, in times of tetirement

}3ro.spcct of Peat I) 157 one has fewer distractions to divert them from this weighty matter. God uses this sharp trial in order to disabusp us as to our own courage, to make us feel how weak we are, and keep us humble beneath His Hand.

Nothing can be more humbling than a disturbed imagination, which prevents our realising our wonted confidence in God. It is the very furnace of affliction, wherein the heart is purified by experience of its own weakness and worthlessness. "In Thy Sight shall no man living be justified;"1 and again, "The heavens are not clean in His Sight; " a and assuredly " in many things we offend all." 3 We perceive our faults, we do not see our virtues; indeed it would be very dangerous for us to perceive them if they be veritable.

The thing to be done is to go on straight forward and unremittingly with this anxiety as we tried to go on in God's ways before we felt it. Should our anxiety bring to light anything needing correction, we ought to be faithful to that light, but with the help of some safe advice for fear of falling into scruples. Then we should abide in peace, not hearkening to self-love when it grows pathetic at the thought of death, but loosening our hold on life, offering it to God, and giving one's self up to Him trustfully. As S. Ambrose lay dying, those around asked him it he were not troubled with fear of God's 1 Ps. cxliii. 1. 2 Job xv. 15. 3 James iii 2.

judgments. He only answered, " We have a good Master." And this is what we should reply to ourselves. We must die surrounded by impenetrable uncertainty, not only as to God's judgments concerning us, but also as to our own real dispositions. It is needful, as S. Augustine says, that we be reduced to the point of having nothing to offer God save our misery and His Mercy. Our misery is the very cause of His Mercy, and that Mercy is our strength. When you are depressed, read whatever is best suited to foster trust, and to comfort youi heart. " Truly God is loving unto Israel: even unto such as are of a clean heart." ' Ask Him to give you that clean heart which He so greatly prizes, and which makes Him so compassionate to our infirmities.

Letter 89. To a Religious in Illness

WE must learn to sit loose to life. Suffering and sickness are our apprenticeship for death. Let us cheerfully offer our brief, frail, troublesome life to God — it is service rendered to Him by the renunciation of what is really worthless.

Yield to the care bestowed on you by your superior and your community. Real simplicity lies in yielding 1 Ps. Ixxiii. I.

in ptootion 159 to those set over us, after duly telling them one's own mind, and in doing what one would tell others similarly placed to do.

Be at peace in your solitude, without hearkening to the disputes of the day; be content to hearken to the Church without arguing. They are happy who are willing to be poor in spirit, — such inward poverty is our best treasure. Even the wisest know nothing unless they are content to be as babes. Tell God your anxieties for the Church's peace, but do not talk to men, — a humble, docile silence will be your strength. Bear patiently your cross of sickness. Your present vocation is to be silent, to obey, to suffer, to give yourself up to God for life or death, — this is your daily bread. It is hard and dry, but it is better than all else, and the most real sustenance of the life of faith, which is a continual selfdenial.

Letter 90. Ox Dryness in Devotiox

I HAVE observed that you reckon rather overmuch upon your fervour and recollection: God has withdrawn these visible gifts to teach you detachment, that you may leam how weak you are of yourself, and to accustom you to serve Him without the conscious satisfaction which makes all service easy. We do Him a far more real service when the very same things are done without satisfaction and against the grain. It is a small service I render my friend, if, being fond of walking and possessing strong legs, I go to see him on foot; but if I am gouty and every step pains me, then those visits, on which heretofore my friend set no store, begin to have a new value; they become tokens of a very real and lively friendship: the more difficulty I have in paying them the more he will appreciate them, since one step is worth more than a mile once was! I do not say this to flatter you and fill you with self-confidence; God forbid! but only to prevent your yielding to a very dangerous temptation, that of anxiety and depression. When you are full of warmth and fervour, think nothing of your good works, which do but flow spontaneously from the source. But, on the contrary, when you feel dry, dull, cold, almost helpless, then abide in patient faith under God's Hand; confess your weakness, turn to His neverfailing Love, and, above all, never mistrust His Help. Be sure it is very profitable to the soul to feel stripped of all visible stay, and reduced to cry out, " In Thy Sight shall no man living be justified."

Persevere in your onward path, in God's Name, though you may feel as if you had not strength or courage to put one foot before the other. If human courage fails in penotiott 161 you, all the better; resignation to God will not fail you in your helplessness. S. Paul said, " When I am weak then am I strong." And when he besought deliverance from his infirmity, God answered, " My strength is made perfect in weakness." Let yourself be perfected by the experience of your imperfection, and by humble recourse to Him Who is the strength of the weak. Try quietly in your meditation to seek whatever will promote recollection; do not harass yourself. Soothe your imagination, which is one while excitable, the next exhausted; make use of whatever will tend to calm you and to promote a familiar loving communion with God. Whatever is most comforting to you in this way will be most profitable. " Where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty." ' Such liberty is to be found in simply following such leadings as draw you closest to the Beloved One. Your inner poverty will often recall the consciousness of your misery: God in His Goodness will not suffer you to lose sight of your own unworthiness, and that will speedily bring you back to His Feet. Be of good cheer, — God's Work can only be done through self-renunciation. I pray that He would uphold, comfort, impoverish you, and teach you the full meaning of His Own words, " Blessed are the poor in spirit."

Letter 91. How to Use Seasons of Spiritual Peace

I AM very glad that your retreat has been so satisfactory, and that God gives you so much inward as well as outward peace. I pray that He Who has begun this good work in you may fulfil it to the day of the coming of Christ. It only needs now that you should make use of these peaceful days to grow in recollection. You ought to sing with your whole heart the Amen and Alleluia which re-echo in the Heavenly Jerusalem, — this is a token of continual acquiescence in God's Will, and unreserved sacrifice of yours to His. At the same time you should hearken inwardly to God, with a heart free from all the flattering prejudices of self-love, so that you may faithfully receive His Light as to the veriest trifles which need correction. Directly that He points these out, we must yield without argument or excuse, and give up whatever touches the jealous love of the Bridegroom without reserve. Those who yield in this manner to the Spirit of Grace will see imperfection in their purest deeds, and an inexhaustible fund of refined evil in their hearts. All this leads them in self-abhorrence to cry out that God Alone is good. They strive to correct themselves calmly and simply, but continuously, stedfastly, prospect of peat!) 163 and that all the more because their heart is undivided and peaceful They reckon on nothing as of themselves, and hope only in God; they give way neither to self-delusion nor laxity. They know that God never fails us, though we so often fail Him. They yield themselves wholly to grace, and above all things dread any resistance thereof. They blame themselves without being discouraged, they bear with themselves while striving to amend.

Letter 92. Ox the Prospect of Death Ix Old Age

I FL'LLV understand that age and infirmity make you look at death from a much more serious point of view than when you only contemplated it as an afar off thing. The vague, distant prospect which comes from time to time during a busy life, amid many distractions, is but as a dream; but death becomes a very different and far more real matter when you contemplate it in solitude and old age. It costs one little to accept it from afar and generally, but to give one's self up deliberately, with a calm gaze on approaching death, is a much greater struggle.

One must face one's end, notwithstanding the repugnance nature has to so doing. M. Olier during his last days used to take up his own hand and say, " Body of sin, thou wilt soon go to corruption. O Eternity, thou art indeed very near me! " It is not a question of rejoicing at the prospect of death; such joy does not depend on ourselves; many great Saints have not experienced it. Let us be satisfied with what does depend upon our own free will upheld and strengthened by grace. And this is, not to hearken to the promptings of nature, but to accept heartily that in which we are unable to rejoice. Nature must shrink from the bitter cup, but let the inner being say with our Dear Lord: " Nevertheless not what I will, but what Thou wilt." S. Francis de Sales distinguishes between consent and feeling (consentir et sentir). We are not masters of our own feeling, but we are by God's Grace masters of our consent.

Wait patiently till death comes, without letting yourself dwell sadly upon it. We are waiting for death when we try to be detached from everything; when we humble ourselves quietly over all our smallest faults with an earnest longing to correct them; when we live in God's Presence; when we are simple, docile, patient in sickness; when we give ourselves up to the Spirit of Grace to be guided solely thereby; in short, when we strive to die wholly to self, before actual death itself comes. Use your faults to your own humiliation, bear

Difficulties 165 with your neighbour, ignore the forgetfulness of man, — the One True Friend, the Spouse of your'.heart, will never forget you.

Letter 93. Ox Some Difficulties of Temperament

You are good; you want to be better, and you are making great efforts in the details of life; but I am afraid that you are encroaching rather too much upon the inner life in order to adapt it to the demands of society, and that you are not sufficiently denying the very inmost self. When we fail thoroughly to attack the internal stronghold of self-will concerning those things we love best, and most jealously, I will tell you what ensues: on the one side, great impetuosity, sharpness, and hardness of that same self-will; on the other hand, a scrupulous notion of symmetrical rule, which resolves itself into a mere observance of les bienseances. Thus externally comes great restraint, and internally a very lively state of rebellion — an altogether intolerable struggle.

• Try, then, to work a little less from outside, and a little more from within. Take the most keen affections which hold sway in your heart, and place them without condition or reserve in God's Hands, to be crushed and slain by Him. Resign to Him your natural haughtiness, your

1 66 ^Spiritual |>tter<5 worldly wisdom, your pride in the greatness of your house, your dread of disrespect or want of consideration in the world, your sharp severity towards whatever is unseemly. I am less afraid of your temper than of other things: you know and mistrust it; in spite of good resolutions it carries you away, and in consequence it involves humiliation; and thus it will tend to counteract other and more dangerous faults. I should be less grieved to see you pettish, cross, brusque, wanting in self-command, and as a result thoroughly ashamed of yourself, than strictly correct and irreprehensible in all externals, but fastidious, haughty, harsh, hard, ready to take offence, self-sufficient. Seek your real strength in prayer. This kind of human strength and rigid observance of detail in which you delight will never cure you. But accustom yourself in God's Sight, and through experience of your incurable weakness, to compassion and forbearance towards the imperfections of others. Real prayer will soften your heart and make it gentle, pliable, accessible, kindly. Would you like God to be as critical and hard towards you as you often are towards your neighbour? You are very strict in externals, and very lax inwardly; and while so jealously watchful over exterior graces, you have no scruple in letting things inward languish, or in secret resistance to God. You fear God more than you love Him. You want to pay Him with acts, for which you

Qiffieultie* 167 expect a receipt, instead of giving Him your all unreservedly. They who give all unreservedly need no accounts. You indulge in certain half-concealed clingings to your grandeur, your reputation, your comforts. If you really look into the state of things between God and your soul, you will find that there are certain limits beyond which you refuse to go in offering yourself to Him. People often hover around such reservations, making believe not to see them, for fear of self-reproach, — guarding them as the apple of the eye. If one were to break down one of these reservations, you would be touched to the quick, and inexhaustible in your reasons for self-justification, — a very sure proof of the life of the evil. The more you shrink from giving up any such reserved point, the more certain it is that it needs to be given up. If you were not fast bound by it, you would not make so many efforts to convince yourself that you are free.

It is but too true that these and the like frailties hinder God's work in us. We move continually in a vicious circle round self, only thinking of God in connection with ourselves, and making no progress in self-renunciation, lowering of pride, or attaining simplicity. Why is it that the vessel does not make way? Is the wind wanting? Nowise; the Spirit of Grace breathes on it, but the vessel is bound by invisible anchors in the depths of the sea.

The fault is not God's; it is wholly ours. If we will search thoroughly, we shall soon see the hidden bonds which detain us. That point in which we least mistrust ourselves is precisely that which needs most mistrust.

Do not bargain with God with a vie\f to what will cost you least and bring you in most comfort. Seek only self-denial and the Cross. Love, and live by love alone. Let Love do whatsoever He will to root out self-love. Do not be content to pray morning and evening, but live in prayer all day long; and just as through the day you digest your meals, so all day long, amid your varying occupations, digest the sustenance of love and truth which you have imbibed in prayer. Let that continual prayer, that life of love, which means death to self, spread out from your fixed seasons of prayer as from a centre over whatever you do. All should become prayer, that is, a loving consciousness of God's Presence, whether it be social intercourse or business. Such a course as this will insure you real, lasting peace.

Letter 94. To a Lady Recovering From Sickness

. . . GOD grant that country air, gentle exercise, and thorough mental rest may restore you perfectly. As to myself, I am merely a walking, talking skeleton, which flecouerj) from ^kknegs 169 can eat and sleep but little; my occupations overwhelm me, and I never go to bed without leaving a large arrear of work undone. A vast diocese is a crushing burden when one is sixty-three! I have too much to do, and you perhaps have not quite enough; but your wisdom is to know how to occupy yourself. Delude yourself, Madame, — invent occupations to rouse yourself. Days are long, even when years are short, and you must shorten your days by dealing with yourself as with a child; such childishness is real wisdom. Remember that if you were now mixing in the best society, you would be doing no more real good than in the dulness and flatness of your present solitude; you would hear a great deal of evil talk; you would see a great many very contemptible, worthless people who bear distinguished names; you would be surrounded by snares and bad examples; you would feel the shafts of malignant envy, as well as your own frailty; you would have many faults with which to reproach yourself. It is true that you would seem to be in greater abundance, but it would really be only a perilous superfluity, with which vanity would deal; and you would not think seriously either of God, or of yourself, or of death or eternity; you would be as others are, enslaved, intoxicated, hardened. Is it not better to abide, albeit in dulness, a while away from the world and under God's Hand, learning to appreciate the hopes of religion, and j&ptrttttal ^Letter* detachment from the false prosperity from which you are torn? Of a truth, Madame, the counsel I give you is what I very heartily apply to myself. The world's pleasures are but vanity. It is full of thorns, of troubles, of cowardly, deceitful, detestable doings, and one must be very much spoilt by it all if we find it so hard to be kept at a distance from it. As to expenditure, I should feel rich if I had only the two thousand francs yearly which I had in my early days. Throw off the bondage of superfluity, be rich without money, and be thankful to esteem lightly whatever is lacking for the Love of God.

COMBINED EXACTITUDE AND FREEDOM.

IT seems to me desirable that you should combine great exactitude with great liberty. The first will cause you to be faithful, the latter courageous. If you aim at being exact without freedom, you will fall into scruples and bondage; if, on the other hand, you affect freedom without exactness in duty, you will soon yield to negligence and laxity. Mere exactness in the fulfilment of duty narrows heart and mind; mere liberty stretches them too widely. They who have no experience in God's ways do not believe it possible to combine the two virtues. By being exact they understand living in a state of constraint and harass,

Cxactitnbe ant) /rceiiom 171 in a restless, scrupulous timidity which deprives the soul of all rest, causes it to see sin lurking everywhere, and so narrows its horizon that it never can shake off a perpetual cavilling about every trifle, and scarcely ventures to breathe. By freedom they mean having a very lax conscience, ready to pass over detail; being content to avoid serious faults, and calling serious nothing save gross crimes; indulging freely in whatever is acceptable to self-love, and taking comfort under very considerable license as to the passions in the thought that they meant no great harm. It was not this which S. Paul contemplated when he wrote to his children in grace, whom he was trying to train up to Christian perfection: " Ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh,1'1

It seems to me that real liberty consists in obeying God in all things, and in following the light which points out our duty, and the grace which guides us; taking as our rule of life the intention to please God in all things; not only always to do what is acceptable to Him, but if possible what is most acceptable; not trifling with petty distinctions between sins great and small, imperfections and faults, — for although it may be very true that there are such distinctions, they should have no weight with a soul which is determined to refuse nothing it possesses to 1 Gal. v. 13.

God. It is in this sense that the Apostle says, " The law is not made for a righteous man:"' — a burdensome, hard, threatening law, one might almost say a tyrannical, enslaving law; but there is a higher law which rises above all this, and which leads him into the true " liberty of sons," — the law which makes him always strive to do that which is most pleasing to his Heavenly Father, in the spirit of those beautiful words of S. Augustine: " Love, and then do what you will."

And if, beyond merely this sincere desire always to do that which is best in God's Sight, you further do it cheerfully, are not depressed when you fail, but begin again a hundred times over, hope to the end for success, bear with yourself in your involuntary frailties as God bears, wait patiently for His appointed time of complete deliverance; and meanwhile go on quietly and according to your strength in the path before you without losing time in looking back; always " reaching forth unto those things which are before,"2 not dwelling unprofitably upon depressing falls and hindrances; sorrowing over them, indeed, with humility, but putting them aside to press onwards; not putting a harsh, judicial interpretation on all surrounding you; not looking upon God as a spy watching to surprise you, or an enemy laying snares for you, but as a Father Who loves and would fain save you; ' I Tim. i. 9. " rhil. iii. 13.

CiartitniJe aru) /rce&cm 173 full of trust in His Goodness, continually invoking His Mercy, and perfectly free from any hollow confidence in yourself or any other creature; — such you will find to be the path towards, possibly, the fulfilment of perfect liberty. I earnestly advise you to tend thither.

Exactness and liberty ought to keep abreast, and if one halts with you rather than the other, I think it is liberty, although I freely confess that your exactitude has not yet reached the point I could desire; still, on the whole, I believe that you need more thrown into the side of confidence in God and enlargement of heart. Therefore I do not hesitate to say that you ought to yield wholly to the grace with which God sometimes draws you closer to Him. Do not be afraid to lose sight of self, to fix your gaze solely and as closely upon Him as He will permit, and to plunge wholly into the ocean of His Love — too happy if you could do it so entirely as never to come forth again. Nevertheless it is well, whenever God gives you such a happy disposition, to accept it with an act of humility and of loving, childlike fear, so as to make ready for fresh gifts. This is the counsel S. Teresa gives, and I think it may safely be given to you.

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