Letter VIII. To a Superioress of the Visitation

Founders of a house must act according to the spirit of the Order: wit at the spirit of the Visitation is: blessed are poor communities.

22nd April 1612.*

MY dear daughter, in a few words I say to you that those souls who are so fortunate as to desire to employ for God's glory the means which he has given them ought to accommodate themselves to the designs which they form, and to resolve to put them into effect accordingly. If they are inspired to found a convent of Carthusians, they must not want to have schools there, as with Jesuits; if they want to found a college of Jesuits, they must not desire to have entire solitude and silence observed therein.

If this good lady, whom you do not name, desires to found a monastery of sisters of the Visitation, she must not burden them with long vocal prayers, nor with many exterior exercises; for this is not to desire sisters of the Visitation. It should suffice, in my opinion, that the whole interior and exterior of the

• The French has this date. The letter, however, seems to belong to a much later time, say 1615 or 1 6 16. [Tr.]

LET. ix.] Earlier Letters to Visitation. 105 daughters of the Visitation is consecrated to God; that they are victims of sacrifice, and living holo causts; that all their actions and resignations are so many outward or inward prayers; that all their hours are dedicated to God, yes, even those of sleep or recreation, and are fruits of charity. All this being employed for her soul, and the glory which accrues to God from the retired lives of so many daughters being applied to the increase of the charity of that heart, there results an almost infinite sum of spiritual riches.

Such are my sentiments. To charge the monas teries of the Visitation with practices which lead off from the end for which God has established them, I consider not a good thing to do. To seek to gather olives from a fig-tree, or figs from an olive, is unreason able. Let him who wants figs plant fig-trees, and him who wants olives plant olive-trees.

My dear daughter, you are entirely of my way of thinking: in receiving subjects I far prefer the meek and humble, although poor, to the rich who are less humble and less meek, although they be rich. But it is useless to say: Messed are the poor in spirit; * human prudence will not cease saying: Blessed are the monasteries, chapters, houses, which are rich. Even in this we must cultivate the poverty which we esteem, that we lovingly suffer it to be disesteemed.

You have received two new, yet old, daughters of your house: the return is always more agreeable to mothers than the departure of their children. I am with all my heart, my dear daughter, most entirely your very humble father and servant, &c.

• Matt. v. 3.