Letter IX. To a Sister of the Visitation. on the Circumcision : Wishes for the New Year

MY DEAR DAUGHTER — When Holy Scripture wishes to speak of a person who is good, gentle, innocent and devoted to God, it says: he or she is a son or daughter of one year. 0 my daughter, if we have not hitherto corresponded with the love of this gracious Saviour, by a holy and inseparable union of our affections with his holy will, let us now so act that at the end of this year we may be able to be called children of one year.

I was saying yesterday, my dear daughter (for I wish to share our preachings with you), that when God desired to take under his protection the children of the Israelites, in order that the exterminating Angel should not slay them as he slew those of the Egyptians, he ordained that their doors should be sprinkled and marked with the blood of the Paschal lamb, and that so his divine Majesty marked for us with the blood of his Circumcision the gate and entrance of this year, in order that in it the exterminator of our children might have no power over them. Now you know who are our children; for I speak of those of the heart, our good purposes, our good desires, the fruits of our divine love.

I hope, my dear daughter, that we shall be of inviolable fidelity to this Saviour, and that these following years will be like the fertile years of Joseph, who by the way in which he employed them made himself viceroy of Egypt: for we will so employ our years, our months, our weeks, our days, our hours, our moments, that the whole will be used for God's ser vice, and will be profitable to eternal life, to reign with the Saints. But, my daughter, will we not be no longer those old ourselves that we were formerly, but be other ourselves, who will be without exception, without reserve, without condition, sacrificed for ever to God and to his love? Like the phoenix we will be renewed in this fire of divine love, for which we have, with an unalterable divorce, for ever given up and rejected the world and every kind of vanity.

LET. x.] Letters for Various Festivals. 4.15

Our little fits of anger, of sadness, these little shiverings of the heart, are remains of our maladies, which the sovereign Physician leaves in us in order that we may fear a relapse, and may remain in an entire submission. We will all the same continue to restore our strength day by day, and these little movements of the passions will grow weak, with God's help. Have courage, my daughter, for this little Jesus loves you much. I am in him all yours.