Ninth Letter

To the Reverend Mother

My Reverend and Greatly Honoured Mother, — You tell me nothing new: you are not the only one that is troubled with wandering thoughts. Our mind is extremely roving, but as the will is mistress of all our faculties, she must recall it, and carry it to God, as its last End.

When the mind, for lack of discipline when first we engaged in devotion, has contracted bad habits of wandering and dissipation, such habits are difficult to overcome, and commonly draw us, even against our will, to things of earth.

I believe that one remedy for this is to confess our faults, and to humble ourselves before God. I do not advise you to use multiplicity of words in prayer; discursive forms are often the occasion of wandering. Hold yourself in prayer before God, like a poor, dumb, paralytic beggar at a rich man’s gate. Let it be your business to keep your mind in the Presence of the Lord: if it sometimes wanders and withdraws itself from Him, do not much disquiet yourself for that; trouble and disquiet serve rather to distract than to recall the mind; the will must bring it back in tranquillity: if you persevere with your whole strength, God will have pity on you.

One way to recall easily the mind in time of prayer, and to preserve it more in rest, is not to let it wander too far at other times. You should;keep it strictly in the Presence of God, and being accustomed to think of Him often from time to time, you will find it easy to keep your mind calm in the time of prayer, or at least to recall it from its wanderings.

I have told you already at large in my other letters of the benefits we may draw from this practice of the Presence of God. Let us set about it seriously, and pray for one another. I commend myself to the prayers of Sister, and of the Reverend Mother

, and am, — Yours in Our Lord, etc.