Letter XIII. To a Religious Sister

A monastery is a spiritual hospital, where we must suffer what is necessary for the healing of the soul: remedy against the fear of spirits.

gth September 1619.

MY DEAR DAUGHTER — Since I have seen your heart I have loved it, and recommend it to God with all my heart, and beseech you to have care of it. Try, my dear daughter, to keep it in peace by equality of its emotions. I do not say: keep it in peace, but: try to do so; let this be your principal solicitude. And carefully beware of making an occasion of troubling yourself out of this, that you cannot all at once subdue the variety of the movements of your feelings.

Do you know what a monastery is? It is an academy of exact correction, where each soul should learn to let itself be treated, worked and polished, in order that being well smoothed and planed, it may become able to be joined, fixed and glued more exactly to the will of God. To be willing to be corrected is the evident sign of its perfection; for it is the principal fruit of humility, which makes us know that we have need of it.

The monastery is a hospital of spiritual sick who want to be cured, and who to be cured offer themselves to suffer cupping, the lancet, the razor, the syringe, the steel, the fire, and all the bitterness of medicines. And in the beginning of the Church, Religious were called by a name which means healers.* 0 my daughter! let us be truly that, and take no account of all that self-love will tell you to the contrary; but sweetly, graciously, and lovingly, take this resolution: either to die or to be healed, and as I do not will to die spiritually I will to be healed; and to be healed I will to suffer cure and correction, and to beseech the doctors not to keep back what I ought to suffer in order to be healed.

As to other matters, my dear daughter, I am told that you are afraid of spirits. The sovereign Spirit of our God is everywhere, without whose will and leave no spirit stirs. He who has the fear of this divine Spirit, should fear no other spirit. You are under his wings like a little chicken; what fear you? I, when young, was affected with this imagination, and to free

• Therapeuts.

myself from it I forced myself little by little to go alone, my heart armed with confidence in God, to the places in which my imagination threatened me with fear: and at last I strengthened myself so much that the darkness and solitude of night are delightful to me, on account of this all-presence of God, which we enjoy better in this solitude.

The good Angels are around you like a company of soldiers on guard. The truth of God shall compass thce with a shield; thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night* This assurance will be gained little by little, in proportion as the grace of God will grow in you; for grace brings forth confidence, and confidence is not confounded.

May God be for ever in the midst of your heart, my dear daughter, to reign therein eternally. I am in him your most humble brother and servant.