Letter VIII. To Madame de Chantal

We are to carry Jesus Christ in our soul.

1 6th November, 1605. My dear Child, — I find a particular consolation in speaking to you in this dumb language (of letters), after speaking all day to so many others in the language of the tongue. So, then, I needs must tell you what I am doing, for I know almost nothing besides; and I hardly know properly what I am doing.

I come from prayer, in which asking myself for what cause we are in this world, I have learnt that we are in it only to receive and carry the sweet Jesus, on our tongue by announcing him, in our arms by doing good works, on our shoulders by bearing his yoke, his drynesses and sterilities, and thus in our interior and exterior senses. O how blessed are they that carry him sweetly and constantly!

I have in truth carried him all these days on my tongue, and I have carried him into Egypt, it seems to me, since in the Sacrament of Confession I have heard a great number of penitents, who have, with an extreme confidence, addressed themselves to me, to receive him into their sinful souls. God grant that he may stay there!

I have also in prayer learnt a practice of the presence of God, which, for the moment, I have locked up in a corner of my memory, to communicate it to you as soon as I have read the treatise which Father Arias has made upon it.

Have a large heart, my dear child, and ever larger under the will of our God. Do you know what I said when spreading your corporal? Thus, said I, may the heart of her who sent it me be spread out, under the sacred influences of our Saviour's will! Courage, my daughter, keep yourself close to your holy Abbess (the Blessed Virgin), and beg her without ceasing that we may live, die, and live again in the love of her dear child. Vive Jesus, who has made me all yours, and more so than I can express! May the peace of the sweet Jesus reign in your heart!