Letter II. To the Same

On Temptations and Drynesses. — Means to repel them, and guard ourselves against them.

2 1 st November, 1604. Madam, my dearest Sister, — May our glorious and holiest mistress and queen, the Virgin Mary, the feast of whose Presentation we celebrate to-day, present our hearts to her Son, and give us his. Your messenger reached me at the most troublesome and hardest place I can come across during the navigation which I make on the tempestuous sea of this diocese. It is incredible what consolation your letters brought me. I am only in pain as to whether I shall be able to draw from the press of my affairs the leisure required to answer you as soon as I desire, and as well as you expect. I will say in haste what I can, and if anything remains after that, I will write it in a very short time by an acquaintance, who goes to Dijon and returns.

I thank you for the trouble you have taken to detail me the history of your gate of St. Claude, and I pray this blessed saint, witness of the sincerity and # Keferrinor to some vestments she had made for him.

integrity of heart with which I cherish you in our Lord and common Master, to impetrate from his goodness the assistance of the Holy Spirit which is necessary to enter properly into the repose of the tabernacle of the Church. It is sufficiently said once for all: yes, God has given me to you, I say singularly, entirely, irrevocably.

I come to your cross, and know not whether God has quite opened my eyes to see all its four ends.

I extremely desire and beg of him, that I may be able to say to you something thoroughly appropriate. It is a certain powerlessness, you tell me, of the faculties or parts of your understanding, which hinders it from taking contentment in the consideration of what is good: and what grieves you the most is, when you wish to form a resolution, you feel not the accustomed solidity, but encounter a certain barrier, which brings you up short, and thence come the torments of temptations against the faith. It is properly described, my dear daughter; you express yourself well; I am not sure whether I understand you properly.

You add that yet the will by the grace of God intends nothing but simplicity and stability in the Church, and that you would willingly die for the faith thereof. Oh, God be blessed, my dear child! This sickness is not unto death, but that God may be glorified in it*

You have two peoples in the womb of your spirit, as was said to Rebecca: the one fights against the other, * John xi. 4.

but at last the younger will supplant the elder* Self-love never dies till we die; it has a thousand ways of entrenching itself in our soul, we cannot dislodge it; it is the eldest-born of our soul, for it is natural, or, at least, co-natural: it has a legion of carabineers with it, of movements, actions, passions; it is adroit, and knows a thousand subtle turns. On the other side, you have the love of God, which is conceived afterwards, and is second-born; it also has its movements, inclinations, passions, actions. These two children in one womb fight together like Esau and Jacob; whence Rebecca cried out: Was it not better to die than to conceive with such pains? From these convulsions follows a certain disgust, which causes you to relish not the best meats. But what imports it whether you relish or relish not, since you cease not to eat well?

If I had to lose one of my senses, I would choose that it should be the taste, as less necessary even than smell, it seems to me. Believe me, it is only taste which fails you, not sight: you see, but without satisfaction: you chew bread, but as if it were tow, without taste or relish. It seems to you that your resolutions are without force, because they are not gay nor joyous; but you mistake, for the Apostle St. Paul very often had only that kind.

You do not feel yourself firm, constant, or very resolute. There is something in me, thus say you, which has never been satisfied; but I cannot say

• Gen. xxv. 22, 23.

2 5 o Si. Francis de Sales.

what it is. I should very much like to know it, my dear child, to tell it you; but I hope that some day, hearing you at leisure, I shall learn it. Meanwhile,, might it not be a multitude of desires, which obstructs your spirit, — I have been ill with that complaint. The bird fastened to the perch only knows itself to be fastened, and feels the shocks of its detention and restraint, when it wants to fly; and in the same way,, before it has its wings, it knows its powerlessness only by the trial of flight.

For a remedy, then, my dear child, since you have not yet your wings for flight, and your own powerlessness puts a bar to your efforts, do not flutter, do. not make eager attempts to fly: have patience till you get your wings, like the doves. I greatly fear that you have a little too much ardour for the quarry, that you are over-eager, and multiply desires a little too thickly. You see the beauty of illuminations, the sweetness of resolutions, you seem almost to grasp them, and the vicinity of good excites your appetite for it, and this appetite agitates you, and makes you dart forth, but for nothing; for the master keeps you fastened on the perch, or perhaps you have not your wings as yet; and meanwhile you grow thin by this* constant movement of the heart, and continually lessen your strength. You must make trials, but moderate; ones, and without agitating yourself, and without putting yourself into heat.

Examine well your practice in this matter; perhaps you will see that you let your spirit cling too much to the desire of this sovereign sweetness which the sense of firmness, constancy, and resolution brings to the soul. You have firmness, for what else is firmness but to will rather to die than sin, or quit the faith? But you have not the sense of it; for if you had you would have a thousand joys from it. So, then, check yourself,, do not excite yourself; you will be all the better, and your wings will thus strengthen themselves more easily.

This eagerness then is a fault in you, and there is a something, I do not know what, which is not satisfied; for it is a fault against resignation. You resign yourself well, but it is with a but; for you would much like to have this or that, and you agitate yourself to get it. A simple desire is not contrary to resignation, but a panting of heart, a fluttering of wings, an agitation of will, a multiplying of dartings out, — this, undoubtedly, is a fault against resignation. Courage, my dear sister, since our will is God's, doubtless we ourselves are his. You have all that is needed, but have no sense of it; there is no great loss in that.

Do you know what you must do? You must be pleased not to fly, since you have not yet your wings. You make me think of Moses. That holy man, having arrived on Mount Pisgah, saw all the land of promise before his eyes, the land which for forty years he had aspired after and hoped for, amid the murmurs and seditions of his people, and amid the rigours of the deserts j he saw it and entered it not, but died while looking at it. He had your glass of water at his lips, and could not drink. O God, what sighs this soul must have fetched! He died there more happy than many did in the land of promise, since God did him the honour of burying him himself. And so, if you had to die without drinking of the water of the Samaritan woman, what would it matter, so that your soul was received to drink eternally in the source and fountain of life? Do not excite yourself to vain desires, and do not even excite yourself about not exciting yourself; go quietly on your way, for it is good.

Know, my dear sister, that I write these things to you with much distraction, and that if you find them confused it is no wonder, for I am so myself; but, thank God, without disquiet. Do you want to know whether I speak the truth, when I say that there is in you a defect of entire resignation? You are quite willing to have a cross, but you want to have the choice; you would have it common, corporal, and of such or such sort. How is this, my well-beloved daughter? Ah! no, I desire that your cross and mine be entirely crosses of Jesus Christ; and as to the imposition of them, and the choice, the good God knows what he does, and why he does it: for our good, no doubt. Our Lord gave to David the choice of the rod with which he would be scourged, and, blessed be God; but I think I would not have chosen: I would have let his Divine Majesty do all. The more a cross is from God the more we should love it.

Well now, my sister, my daughter, my soul (and this is not too much you well know), tell me, is not God better than man? is not man a true nothing in comparison with God? And yet here is a man, or rather the merest nothing of all nothings, the flower of all misery, who loves no less the confidence you have in him, though you may have lost the sense and taste of it, than if you had all the sentiments in the world; and will not God hold your good will agreeable, though without any feeling? / am, said David, like a bottle in the frost,* which is of no use. As many drynesses, as much barrenness as you like, provided we love God.

But, after all, you are not yet in the land in which there is no light, for you have the light sometimes, and God visits you. Is he not good, think you? It seems to me this vicissitude makes you very agreeable to God. Still, I approve your showing to our sweet Saviour, but lovingly and without excitement, your affliction; and, as you say, he at least lets your soul find him; for he is pleased that we should tell him the pain he gives us, and lament to him, provided it be amorously and humbly, and to himself, as little children do, when their mother has whipped them. Meanwhile, there must be a little suffering, with sweetness. I do not think there is any harm in saying to our Lord: Come into our souls. This Lord knows whether I have ever been to communion without you *ince my departure from your town.

No, that has no appearance of evil; God wishes * Ps. cxviii. 83.

that I should serve him in suffering dryness, anguish, temptations, like Job, like St. Paul, and not in preaching.

Serve God as he wishes, you will see that one day he will do all you wish, and more than you know how to wish.

The books which you read for half an hour are Granada, Gerson, the Life of Christ, turned into French from the Latin of Ludolph the Carthusian, Mother (St.) Teresa; the Treatise on Affliction* which I have mentioned in a former letter.

Ah! shall we not one day be all together in heaven to bless God eternally? I hope so and rejoice in it.

The promise which you made to our Lord never to refuse anything which might be asked you in his name, could not oblige you except to love him properly; I mean, that you might get to understand it in such a fashion that the practice of it would be vicious, as you might give more than you ought and indiscreetly. This then is understood with the condition of observing true discretion; and in this case, it is no more than to say that you will love God entirely, and will accommodate yourself to live, speak, act and give according to his pleasure.

I keep the books of psalms, and thank you for the music, of which I know nothing at all, though Hove it extremjely when applied to the praise of our Lord.

Truly, when you want me to hurry, and to find leisure without leisure to write to you, send me this * By F. Kibadaneira, S.J.

good man N,. for, to tell the truth, he has urged me so extremely that more could not be, and has not been willing to give me time, not even a day; and I tell you fairly I should not like to be judge in a cause in which he was counsel.

I cannot drop the word Madam: for I do not wish to think myself more affectionate than St. John the Evangelist, who still, in the sacred epistle which he wrote to the lady Electa, called her madam, nor wiser than St. Jerome, who calls his devout Eustochium, madam. I desire, however, to forbid you to call me Monseigneur, for though it is the custom on this side to call Bishops so, it is not the custom on your side, and I love simplicity.

The Mass of our Lady you may vow for every week, as you desire; but I want it to be only for a year, at the end of which you will vow again, if so be; and begin on the Conception of our Lady, the day of my consecration, on which I made the great and terrific vow to care for souls, and to die for them if needed. I ought to tremble in remembering it. I say the same of the Chaplet, and the Ave, maris stella.

I have observed neither order nor measure in answering you; but this bearer has taken away my chance.

I await, with quiet foot, a great tempest (as I wrote to you at the beginning) about my personal revenue. I await it joyously and looking at the Providence of God; I hope it will be for his greater glory and my repose, and many other good ends. I am not sure it will come, I am only threatened with it. But why do I tell you this? Eh! because I cannot help it: my heart must dilate itself with yours in this way; and since in this expectation I have consolation and hope of happiness, why should I not tell it you? But only for yourself, I beg you.

I pray earnestly for our Celse-Benigne, and all the little troop of girls. I also recommend myself to their prayers. Remember to pray for my Geneva, that God may convert it.

Also remember to behave with a great respect and honour in all that regards the good spiritual father you know of; and again, treating with his disciples and spiritual children, let them acknowledge only true sweetness and humility in you. If you receive some reproaches, keep yourself gentle, humble, patient, and with no word save of true humility: for this is necessary. May God be for ever your heart, your spirit, your repose; and I am, Madam, your very devoted servant in our Lord, &c. To God be honour and glory! — I add, this morning, St. Cecily's Day, that the proverb drawn from our St. Bernard, hell is full of good intentions, must not trouble you at all. There are two sorts of good wills. The one says: I would do well, but it gives me trouble, and I will not do it. The other: I wish to do well, but I have not as much power as will; it is this which holds me back. The first fills hell, the second, Paradise. The first only begins to will and desire, but it does not finish willing: its desires have not enough courage, they are only abortions of will:

that is why it fills hell. But the second produces entire and well-formed desires; it is for this that Daniel was called man of desires. May our Lord deign to give us the perpetual assistance of his Holy Spirit, my well-beloved daughter and sister!