Letter XXIV. To Mother de Cliantal

On the gifts of understanding and of counsel, which had fallen respectively to the two saints at the annual drawing of lots.

Whitsuntide 1621.^

OH that I might, my dearest mother, receive and employ well the gift of holy Understanding, to penetrate more deeply into the holy mysteries of our faith! For this penetration marvellously subjects the will to the service of him whom Understanding so admirably acknowledges to be all good, within whom it is all absorbed and occu pied; in so far that as it no longer thinks anything can be good compared with this goodness, so it cannot will to love any good in comparison: like as an eye which should be planted deep within the sun could behold no other brightness.

• That is, do not anxiously want to see yourself so perfect. [Tr.]

t Rom. xii. 3.

J The French haa "29th May 1621." [Tr.]

But because while we are in the world we can only love in well-doing, because our love here must be active, as I shall say to-morrow in the sermon, God helping, we have need of Counsel in order to discern what we ought to practise and do for this love which urges us; for there is nothing which so much urges us to the practice of good as heavenly love. And in order that we may know how we should do good, what good ought to be preferred, to what we should apply the activity of love, the Holy Spirit gives us his gift of Counsel.

So then, here is our soul well dowered with a good portion of the sacred gifts of heaven. May the Holy Spirit who favours us be for ever your consolation. My soul and my spirit adore him eternally. I beseech him ever to be our wisdom and our understanding, our counsel and our fortitude, our knowledge and our piety, and to fill us with the spirit of the fear of the eternal Father. It was not without you that we celebrated this feast of Pentecost, for I well remember the holy devotion which you have for this solemnity.