Letter 12. To Mother Mary of Jesus

Prioress of the Bare Footed Carmelites of Cordova

Containing useful lessons for religious engaged in the foundation of a new convent, of which they are to be the first stones

JESUS

Be in your soul. You are bound to correspond to the grace of our Lord in proportion to the welcome which you have received, the tidings of which have rejoiced my heart. It was His will that you should enter so poor a dwelling, under the heat of such a burning sun, that you might give edification, and manifest your profession, which is the imitation of Christ in detachment, in order that those who come to you hereafter may learn in what spirit they must come. I send you all necessary faculties. Be very careful whom you receive at first, because such will be those who follow; and strive to preserve the spirit of poverty and contempt of all earthly things, being content with God alone : otherwise be assured that you will fall into a thousand temporal and spiritual necessities, you will never, and can never, experience greater necessities than those to which you voluntarily subject your heart : for the poor in spirit is more content and joyful when in want ; having made very nothingness his all, and having found therein fulness and freedom in all things.

O blessed nothingness, and blessed hiddenness of heart, which is of such surpassing virtue as to render all things subject to the soul that will have nothing subject to itself, and casting away all care to burn more and more intensely with love !

Salute all the sisters in our Lord. Tell them that as our Lord has chosen them for the first stones of this building, they must consider well what they ought to be, for upon them, as on a strong foundation, those who follow after them are to be built. Let them profit by the first fruits of the spirit which God gives in the be ginning to make a new start on the way of perfection, in all humility and detachment, inward and outward, not in a childish mind, but with a strong will in mortification and penance. Let them see that Christ costs them something, and not be like those who seek their own ease, and look for consolation either in God or out of Him. But let them suffer either in Him or out of Him, by silence, hope, and loving remembrance. Make this known to Gabriela and the sisters at Malaga. To the others I have already written. The grace of God be with you. Amen.

FR. JOHN OF THE CROSS.

From SEGOVIA : the 28th of July, 1589.