Letter XXVII. To a Superioress of the Visitation (Mother Claude Agnes Joly de la Roche)

God gives strength to effect all that he orders.

I KNOW you sufficiently, my very dear sister, my daughter, to cherish you with all my heart in the love of Our Lord, who, having disposed you for the charge in which you are, has consequently obliged himself to give you his most holy hand in all the actions of your office, provided that you correspond on your part by

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a holy and most humble, but most courageous, confidence in his goodness. God calls to his service the things that are not as the things that are* and uses nothingness for the glory of his name equally as abundance.

Remain in your abjection as in the robes of your superiorship, and be valiantly humble and humbly valiant in him who struck the master-stroke of his power in the humility of his cross.

A maiden or matron who is called to the government of a monastery is called to a great work and one of high importance, above all when it is to found or establish; but God extends his all-powerful arm in the measure of the work he gives us to do. Keep your eyes fixed on this great Saviour, and he will deliver you from pusillanimity of spirit and a stormA

The sisters who are with you are blessed to be serving there, by their good example and humble observance, as foundation to this spiritual edifice. I am for ever your most humble and affectionate servant in Our Lord, &c.