Letter XIV. To the Abbess of Port Royal

Encouragement to trust in God: she must moderate her vivacity and quickness of temper: trials are to be expected in the service of God, and to be borne patiently.

PARIS, i2th September 1619.

I START at last, to-morrow morning, my dear daughter, since such is the will of him whose we are, to whom we live and shall die. Oh may he be praised, this great eternal God, for the mercies which he exercises towards

• Ps. xc. 5.

us! Your consolation consoles my heart, which is so closely united with yours that nothing will ever be received in the one but the other will therein have its part, yea the whole, since in truth they are, as seems to me, in perfect community, and I seem able to use the language of the primitive Church, one heart and one soul.*

This was written when I received your second letter, but I continue answering the first.

I hope that God will strengthen you more and more: and to the thought or rather the temptation of sadness from the fear that your present fervour and attention will not last, answer once for all that those who trust in God are never confounded, and that as much for the spirit as for the body and for temporals you have cast your care upon the Lord, and he will nourish you. f Let us then serve God well to-day; as to the morrow God will provide for it. Each day should bear its own burden. Have no solicitude for to-morrow, for God who reigns to-day will reign to-morrow. If his goodness had thought, or rather known, that you would have had need of a more present assistance than that which I can render you from such a distance, he would have given it you, and he will always give it you, when required to supply the deficiency of mine. Remain in peace, my dear daughter; God works from afar and from close by, and calls distant things to the service of those who serve him, without bringing them near — absent in body present in spirit, says the Apostle. J

I hope that I shall understand clearly what you will tell me of your prayer, in which, however, I do not * Acts iv. 32. f Ps. liv. 23. £ I Cor. v. 3.

want you to curiously regard your process and method of making it; for it is enough that you quite simply acquaint me with any important change in it according as you remember after having made it. I approve your writing down things as they occur to send me afterwards as you may think well, not fearing that you will weary me; for you will never weary me.

Beware, my dear daughter, of that word fool, and remember the saying of our Lord *: He who shall say to his brother Eaca (which is a word that means nothing, but only manifests some indignation) shall ~be guilty of the council; that is, there will be deliberation as to how he must be punished. Gradually tame down the vivacity of your spirit to patience, sweetness, and affability, amid the littleness, childishness, and feminine imperfections of the sisters who are tender with themselves, and inclined to be always teasing a mother's ears. Do not glory in the affection of fathers who are on earth and earthly, but in that of the heavenly Father, who has loved you and given his life for you.

Sleep well: little by little you shall return to the six hours, since you desire it. To eat little, work hard, have much worry of mind, and refuse sleep to the body, is to try to get much work out of a horse which is in poor condition without feeding him up.

As to the second letter — ought you not to have been tried in this beginning of higher aims? Well then, there is nothing in this but effects of the Providence of God, who has abandoned this poor creature in order to effect that her sins may be more severely punished, and that by this means she may return to herself and to God from whom it is so long since she

• Matt. v. 22. IV. U departed. T should have wished you not to treat those persons with ridicule or sarcasm, but by a modest simplicity to have edified them by the compassion of which they are worthy, according as our Lord has taught us in his Passion: still, God be praised that the affair has passed with so much edification of other neighbours, according as the good M. du V. writes me.

My dear daughter, I say adieu to you, and conjure your heart to believe that never will mine separate from it: 'tis impossible; what God unites cannot be separated. Keep your heart high uplifted in that eternal Providence, which has named you by your name, and bears you graven in his paternally maternal bosom; and in this greatness of confidence and of courage faithfully practise humility and mildness: Amen. I am yours beyond compare, my dear daughter. Rest in God: Amen. I am starting in some little haste, because the R* desires that I give her an answer before my return. That which is not God ought to be little in our estimation. May God be your protection: Amen.