Letter XIX. To a Religious Sister

On the Feast of St. John Baptist.

WELL, my dear daughter, if you cannot easily communicate often really, you can communicate as often as you like spiritually. And so you ask me for a good thought on St. John. This one is extremely sweet to me. On many occasions he had recognised our Lord: from the womb of his mother, rejoicing with joy at his presence and at the voice of his Mother, he already bore witness to the pleasure which he would have in seeing him, hearing him, conversing with him: yet he was deprived of it all. And for all that the Scripture witnesses, he never spoke with him as much as a full twice; but knowing that this divine Saviour was preaching and was communicating himself to all the world in Judaea, he remained solitary in a desert close

LET. xix.] Letters for Various Festivals. 429 by, not venturing to go to see him really, though he ever saw him spiritually.

Was there ever a like mortification, to be so close to his sole and sovereign love, and, for love of him, to re main without seeing him, hearing him, listening to him? Well, my dear daughter, you will do the same close to the Sacrament in which Jesus is; for you will only enjoy him in spirit, like St. John.

Yes, one could not say whether it was a heavenly man or an earthly Angel. His coat of armour, made of camel's hair, represented his humility, which covered him all over; his girdle of tanned skin (peau morte) about his loins signified the mortification with which he restrained and bound up all concupiscence. He ate locusts, to show that whereas he was on earth, still he was perpetually elevating himself unto God. Wild honey served him for condiment, because the love of God sweetened all his austerities; but this love was wild or not from cultivation, because he had not learnt it from masters, but from the trees and rocks, as St. Bernard says.

Ah! my daughter, let us eat of both the wild and the hive- honey; let us amass that holy love at every opportunity, both by the example of our sisters, and by the consideration of other creatures; for all cries out to the ears of our heart: love, love. 0 holy love, come then, wholly and solely possess our hearts.

Truly, our good ladies of the Visitation are doing wonders, and those who see them are quite delighted with them. Vive J^sus! I am in him entirely yours, my dear daughter.

CHAPTER XX. To MOTHER DE CHANTAL (?). On the Feast of St. John Baptist.

MY MOST DEAR MOTHER — I should indeed like to have some beautiful bouquet from the desert of our glorious St. John, to present it to your dear soul; but mine, more sterile than the desert, has not been able to find one to day, although indeed it has had this morning, and still has, a certain insensible little sense of willing no longer to live according to nature, but as far as possible according to Christian faith, hope, and charity, in imitation of that angelic man whom we see in those desert depths contemplating nought but God and himself.

Oh how blessed is the spirit of him who sees but these two objects, the one of which carries him up to the sovereign love, and the other lowers him to extreme abjection! For what could that great hermit say, in a place where there was only God and self, save: " Who art thou, Lord, and who am I? " I beseech Our Lord, who is the Lamb whom our great St. John pointed to us, to clothe you entirely with the most holy wool of his merits, my dear mother, my daughter.

Oh! what admirable purity of heart, what indifference to all things in this admirable human angel or angelic man, who seems almost not to love his Master in order to love him better and more purely! I do not know how he had the strength of heart to remain in his desert after he had seen Our Saviour, and had seen him go away from the place. Yet he continues his preaching, and with a holy hardness he does not

LET. XXL] Letters for Various Festivals. 431 permit himself to be overcome by the tenderness and sweetness of the love of the presence of his sovereign good, but for his love serves him in his absence with a love austere, constant, and strong. May God and the great St. John deign to visit you in the sweetness of their consolations, with all our daughters.

As to your grating, I think that for the present you had better make it of wood, while you are in a hired house, and have a door on it so that it need not all be opened. For at a profession, the revised Pontifical printed by order of the Pope directs the sister to go outside in order to come and take the vows. And as to getting the altar ready, one must see if one can continue to go outside for this; I see no difficulty, but we must go by the ideas of others.

Certainly, if my dear sister Anastase is to be professed on the day of the Visitation, I shall be very glad to officiate. One of these Prelates (Seigneurs) can be asked for another day, using the Sunday within the Octave.