Twelfth Letter

To The Reverend Mother

My Reverend and Greatly Honoured MOTHER, — I do not pray that you may be delivered from your troubles, but I pray God earnestly that he would give you strength and patience to bear them as long as He pleases. Comfort yourself with Him, Who holds you fastened to the cross; He will S*

loose you when He thinks fit Happy those who suffer with Him; accustom yourself to suffer in that manner, and seek from Him the strength to endure as much and as long as He shall judge to be needful for you. They who love the world do not comprehend these truths, nor do I wonder at it; for they suffer as lovers of the world, and not as lovers of Christ They consider sickness as a pain of nature and not as a favour from God; and seeing it only in that light, they find nothing in it but grief and distress. But they who trust in sickness as coming from the hand of God, as the effect of His mercy, and the means which He employs for their salvation, commonly find in it great sweetness and sensible consolation.

I wish you could convince yourself that God is often nearer to us and more effectually present with us, in sickness than in health. Rely upon no other Physician, for according to my apprehension, He reserves your cure to Himself. Place all your trust in Him and you will soon find the effects, which we often retard by putting greater confidence in physic than in God.

Whatever remedies you make use of, they will prove beneficial only so far as He permits. When pains come from God, He alone can cure them. Often He sends diseases of the body to cure those of the soul Comfort 5 *

yourself with the sovereign Physician both of soul and body.

I foresee that you will tell me that I am very much at my ease, that I eat and drink at the table of the Lord. You are right: but think you that it would be a small pain to the greatest criminal in the world to eat at his king’s table and to be served by his king’s hands, without however being assured of pardon? I believe that he would feel exceeding great uneasiness, and such as nothing could moderate, save only his trust in the goodness of his sovereign. So I can assure you that whatever pleasures I taste at the table of my King, my sins ever present before my eyes, as well as the uncertainty of my pardon, torment me: though in truth, that torment itself is pleasing.

Be satisfied with the state wherein God has placed you: however happy you may think me, I envy you. Pains and sufferings would be a paradise to me, while I should suffer with my God; and the greatest pleasures would be to me a hell, if I could relish them without Him: all my joy would be to suffer something for His sake.

In a little time I shall be going to God, I mean going to render my account to Him.

In this life, what comforts me is, that I see God by faith, and indeed in such a manner 53 as might make me say at times, N§ longer 1 believe — I see. I feel what faith teaches us, and in that assurance, and that practice of faith I will live and die with Him.

Continue then always with God; it is the only support and comfort for your affliction. I shall beseech Him to company with you. I present my service to the Reverend Mother Superior, and commend myself to your prayers, and am, in Our Lord, — Yours, etc.

November 17th, 1690.