Letter IX. To the Same (The Abbess of Puits D'orbe)

Encouragement and consolation in lodily sufferings, and in the difficulties she finds in reforming her Alley.

i6th November 1605.

MY SISTER AND VERY DEAR DAUGHTER — Oppressed and overwhelmed with affairs in this Visitation of my diocese which I am making, I yet fail not to beseech our good God or to offer the Holy Sacrifice every day to the end that you may not be overwhelmed by the sufferings which your leg causes you, nor by the difficulties which our holy enterprises meet with, and must meet with, in these beginnings.

LET. x.] Previous to Founding of Visitation. 73

Our good respected father often writes me news of you: and nothing more desirable can reach me when it is good news, as it always is according to God — on whom I know your interior gaze is entirely fixed, into whose good pleasure all your designs and all your desires come to merge. Courage, my dear daughter; God will without doubt be propitious to you provided that you are faithful to him. What a happiness that his divine Majesty deigns to make use of you in his service, not only acting but suffering!

Take care to preserve the peace and tranquillity of your heart: let the waves growl and roar all round about your back, and fear not; for God is there, and by consequence, safety. I know, my dear sister, that little troubles are more distressing, on account of their multitude and their importunity, than great ones, and troubles at home than those abroad; but, at the same time, I know that victory over them is oftentimes more agreeable to God than over many others which in the eyes of the world seem to be of greater merit.

Adieu, my dear sister: they are seizing my letters to carry them off, and I have only time to sign myself, Your brother and servant, very affectionate and still more faithful, &c.