Letter XIII. To Sister Anna Maria Trievi, a nun in Santa Lucia, Florence

Se gives her many spiritual maxims and especially on the subject of detachment, mortification, and charity.

Sister Anna, my dearest daughter in Christ, — Your letter has made me marvel much, that in the fifteen years you have worn the holy habit of religion, you have not yet given up self — a thing you ought already to have attained to when first you were clothed; for in leaving home, relations, and friends, and shutting yourself up, as dead to the world, within a tomb enclosed with four walls, in changing your name and laying aside your own will, your own opinions and understanding, in resigning yourself into the hands of God, and for the love of God into the hands of the prelate and the reverend mother, you should already have been dead and buried to all creatures and to self. Nevertheless, the first step that in our hearts we wish to make is the last to be put in practice : so strongly is this skin of self-love fastened over our heart, and so teasing and painful is it to strip it off ; and the nearer we get to the quick, the more sensitive to pain and difficult to remove it becomes. We read in Job, " Slcin for skin, and all that a man hath shall he give for his soul," and now let us explain this as follows, so as to suit our purpose : All skins, that is, all exterior things (for the skin is that which we see uppermost of the substance of our body, and which as a thin veil covers our flesh and bones), all things therefore of this world men must leave for the spiritual life; for the soul in this place means the corporal life, and let you and I understand by it a virtuous life, which a person spends in the mortification of vices, and sins, and bad thoughts, and wrong affections, and in exercising himself in the acquisition of holy virtues. Now consider, my daughter, how many wretched skins the soul has, which it is necessary to cut away from us by the roots with the knife of holy discipline. The mole is a blind animal, which always lives in the earth ; it eats earth and burrows in the earth. This is a true picture of an avaricious man or woman ; women are by nature avaricious. Avarice is indeed a most revolting thing. Man has had so much from God, who, besides his being, and all other created things from the angel downwards, has given him His own Son. The sweet Christ, the Word Incarnate, has given Himself to us to suffer all that was necessary for us, even to the cruel and shameful death on the cross, and afterwards left Himself to us in the B. Sacrament. First He left heaven, humbling Himself to become man for us ; He willed to be stripped on the cross ; He shed His Blood for us, and His soul was separated from His body. All created things are generous, and show the goodness of the Creator ; the sun sheds light, the fire heat, every tree extends its arms, which are its boughs, and yields us the fruit which it produces, and the water and the air, and all nature shows forth the liberality of the

Creator. It is because of avtrice, I say, that we who are His living image do not represent Him in our works, although with our mouth we confess Him. But if avarice is a monstrous thing in any man, what shall we think of it in a religious man or woman, who has made a vow of poverty, and deprived himself of all things for the love of God ? Now a person must strip himself of this filthy skin, painful though such a stripping may seem to be; and we shall not feel the pain, if we seriously consider, that so soon as we are stripped of the foul covering, we are clothed with a royal and imperial garment, namely with the virtue opposite to avarice, and which we call liberality, by which I not only mean that we are to despise gold, and silver, and pleasures, and all that is vainly and ignorantly prized by the blind and beguiled world, but that we are to give our life itself, which we love so much, for the honour of God, and for the salvation of our neighbours, keeping our hearts so prepared as to be able to make this sacrifice by the help of the Divine grace. For this end then we are to be constantly overcoming ourselves in our words, humbling ourselves in heart and body to all, and reputing ourselves vile, and like the rag with which are cleaned the muddy wooden shoes of the nuns, or a dirty kitchen cloth, and desiring to be thought and spoken of as such. Now this is just what I want of you : you, who are willing to give yourself up to God, whether for life or death, and who, while seeking after virtue with all your heart, and asking it unceasingly in prayer to God, and mortifying yourself day by day, and forcing yourself to serve every one with humility and subjection both of body and soul, have so lost the

38o LETTERS OF ST. PHILIP NERI

favour of all your sisters and your confessor, that you are considered the most useless, negligent, tepid, and vain sister in the convent. I will not say that the nuns and your superiors have made a show of thinking thus of you, in order to try and mortify you, but rather it has been permitted by God that you should be so esteemed, and that you should be driven from the society of the other nuns, like a diseased beast, and seized and kept in prison, as happened to your father St. Peter Martyr, who was considered an infamous person, and was driven away and banished, because he had been visited by the most holy Madonna in his room. Virgin, Saint, and modest youth as he was. Nevertheless God permitted the affair to be taken contrariwise, and that he should lose his reputation in consequence of it. Likewise it happened also to the holy mother the Blessed Catherine of Sienna, who was defamed by that sick woman whom she was attending, and who spread a scandalous story concerning her through the convent. It was, however, the will of God that she should pass over these hard rocks in order that she might mortify herself, and might appear, as she really was, indifferent to her honour and worldly reputation, because indeed the eye of her Spouse, whom she served, and the testimony of a good conscience were sufficient for her. Nevertheless in her prayers she complained to the Lord, and was reproved for it with those two crowns which her sweet Spouse showed her, the one of thorns and the other of gold, as you may read in her Life and Legend.

What I say of the skin of avarice, I say of all the others with which the heart is clothed and re-clothed for it has more skins of vices and evil habits and bad ways than a cat has skins, or I should rather say, though this is still very short of the mark, than an onion has coats; and do you know how these coats dry and harden ? Just in the same way that a skin is dried, which you expose to the air in the winter, and when the north wind and the mountain blast blow, you let it remain on the house-top, and in the draught of the window. Judge from this, whether in. order to leave oneself it is sufficient to do it with a transitory thought, which flies through our mind once a year ; or whether we need fire and sword, and to be severe against ourself, and to be constantly clipping with scissors, and cutting with a razor those subtle threads which spring from our flesh: because if we do not istand with diligence at the looking-glass of mental prayer, observing how they arise, and cut them away, and if without examination of conscience we pass negligently on, they will come to increase in length and breadth, and become an old tree with fangs and roots so deeply set, that it b no longer possible to pluck them up; but it is necessary to cut them, and then dig about them and remove the earth until we come down to the bottom where they had taken root and laid such fast hold of the ground ; whereas, if when they first sprang up and made their appearance they had been rooted up, you might have pulled them out of the ground with two finger& I should not wish to frighten you, and make you despair of the undertaking; but I was anxious to set everything before you, in order to point out to you that of yourself you will do nothing, because to conquer yourself you have need of greater strength than you can apply single-handed. You need the strength of God's grace, and the prayers of your spiritual father and the reverend mother, together 'with those of all the other sisters, you must recommend yourself from your heart in chapter to the prayers of all, that they may assist you. In confession recommend yourself heartily and very humbly to your confessor, that he may pray for you, and offer you in prayer to the Lord. Then, too, fall in love with holy obedience, and put it before everything else; and do not appropriate anything to yourself which has not been given to you signed and sealed with the blessing of the superior and superioress. Together with holy obedience love prayer, but remember with regard to prayer and communion that you are to desire them as much as it is possible to love and desire them, but to be prepared to give up both one and the other through obedience ; and preserve holy obedience by means of true prayer and holy communion as the Lord intends. We are not indeed to pray and go to communion or desire to do so, for the sake of that sweet affection and devotion, which you experience in it, for in this you will seek yourself and not God, but we are to frequent both one and the other in order to become humble and obedient, gentle and patient : and when you discover these things in yourself, then you will gather the fruit of prayer and communion, and above all, you will live in peace with all your sisters. For if the devil finds union and peace in a convent, he fears this ordinance more than all the other exercises of the spiritual life when apart from this bond, and separated from eternal love, which ought to guide and hold fast with charity the souls of the sisters of a good convent.

And this I will show you by an example : If there was a great army of many armed men, and they were to come and fight with another army of brave soldiers, and the first army was to be divided among themselves, and one soldier to fight with another of the same army — do you not see how easily they would be conquered by their enemies, whilst one fights against another, and disobeys his captain, and colonel, and general: but if they were at peace one with the other, and were to fight altogether against their adversaries, do you not perceive that they would then be much stronger, and a terror to their enemies, and likely to gain the victory ? The devil, therefore, our enemy, who is continually at war with us, and striving to overcome us, seeks to disunite us, and bring about strife, hatred and contentions, emulations and factions among us, and especially in convents ; because, while we are fighting one with another, he steps in securely to conquer us, to make us his prisoners, to kill us, to put us to flight : whilst on the other hand, union and peace are the strongest safeguard, and that which the enemy most fears, since God reigns in the midst of religious who are united and at peace ; and with such a Commander who can be lost ? Take delight in the community life, avoid all singularity, give heed to purity of heart ; for the Holy Spirit abides in candid and simple souls, and He is the master of prayer, and makes us dwell in constant peace and joy, which is a foretaste of Paradise; just as anger and discord continuing with a soul full of bitterness are the type of helL May God give you grace so to concentrate yourself in His Divine love, and so to enter by the wound of the Side into the living Fountain of the

Wisdom of God made Man, that you may deny yourself and your own love, and may never find a road by which you can go out from It: and from within that wound remember me, and pray for me, a wretched and unhappy sinner. — Your father in Christ, Philip Neri

Rome, August 30, 1585.