Letter XIV. To the Same. on the Ascension of Our Lord

I GIVE you joy, for that Our Saviour has ascended into heaven, where he lives and reigns, and where he wills that one day we should live and reign with him. What triumph in heaven, and what sweetness on earth! Let our hearts be where their treasure is* and let us live in heaven, since our life is in heaven. 0 my daughter, how lovely that heaven is, now that Our Saviour shines as its sun, and his bosom is a fount of love, at which the Blessed drink as they will! Each one goes to look into it, and there he sees his name written, in a character of love that love alone can read, and love alone has graven.

0 my God, shall not our names, my dear daughter, be there? They shall undoubtedly; for although our heart has not love, yet it has the desire of love and the beginning of love; and is not the sacred name of Jesus written in our hearts? — it seems to me that nothing

LET. xiv.] Letters for Various Festivals. 421 can efface it. And so we must hope that ours will reciprocally be written in the mind of God. What a joy, when we shall see these divine characters which signify our eternal happiness! For my part, I have been able to think of nothing this morning except this eternity of goods which awaits us, but in which all would seem to me little or nothing but for this unchanging and ever actual love of that great God who ever reigns there.

Oh! my dear mother, how I marvel at the contra diction that is in me, in having sentiments so pure and actions so impure! For truly it seems to me that Paradise would be amidst all the pains of hell if the love of God could be there, and if the fire of hell were a fire of love, it seems that its torments would be desirable. I saw this morning that all the joys of heaven are truly nothing compared with this royal love. But whence is it that I do not love properly, since from this moment I can love properly? O my daughter, let us pray, strive, humble ourselves, invoke upon ourselves this love.

Never did the earth see eternity on its orb till this holy feast, when Our Lord, glorifying his body, gave, as I think, a desire to the Angels to have a like body, with whose beauty the heavens and the sun are not to be compared. Ah! how happy are our hearts to be expecting one day a share in so much glory, provided that they serve the Spirit well during this mortal life.