Letter III. To the Same

On entire submission to God in spiritual trials.

z$th January 1611.

ST. PAUL, that glorious and marvellous Saint, has awakened us early, my dearest daughter, crying out thus loudly in the ears of my heart and of yours: Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? *

My most dear mother and all-dear daughter, when will it be that, dead before God, we shall live again to this new life in which we shall no more will to do any thing, but shall let God will all that we have to do, and shall let his will living act upon ours quite dead?

Well, my dear daughter, keep yourself close to God, consecrate to him your labours, await in patience the return of your fair sun. Ah! God has not shut us out from the enjoyment of his sweetness: he has only withdrawn it for a time, that we may live in him and for him, and not for this sweetness, that our afflicted sisters may find in us a compassionate assistance and a sweet and loving support, that from a heart denuded, dead, and immolated he may receive the agreeable odour of a holy holocaust.

0 Lord Jesus! by your incomparable sadness, by * Acts iz. 6.

LET. v.] Earlier Letters to Visitation. 97 the unequalled desolation which filled your divine heart on Mount Olivet and on the cross, and by the desolation of your dear Mother while deprived of your presence, be the joy, or at least the strength, of this daughter, while your cross and passion are most singularly united to her soul.

I send you this outburst of our heart, my dearest daughter, whom may the great St. Paul bless. I think you must be very good to the sister of Sister N.; for, after all, sweet charity is the virtue which spreads abroad the good odour of edification, and persons of lower position receive it with more profit.