Letter XLI. To a Lady

Merit of the services which we pay God in desolations and drynesses.

20th September 9 162 1. It has been a very sweet consolation to have news of your soul, my dearest daughter; of your soul, I say, which in all truth mine cherishes very singularly.

The trouble you have to put yourself in prayer will not lessen the value of it before God, who prefers the services we pay him amid interior or exterior contradictions to those we give him amid sweetnesses; since he himself, to make us agreeable to his Eternal Father, has reconciled us to his Majesty in his blood, in his labours, in his death.

And be not astonished if you do not yet see in yourself much progress, either in your spiritual or your temporal affairs: all trees, my dearest daughter, do not produce their fruit in the same season; yea, those which have the best are also longest in bringing them forth, and the palm-tree, it is said, takes one hundred years.

God has hidden in the secret of his Providence the mark of the time when he means to hear you, and the way in which he will hear you; and perhaps he will hear you excellently, not according to your thoughts, but his own. So repose in peace, my dearest daughter, in the paternal arms of the most loving care which the sovereign Heavenly Father has and will have of you, since you are his, and no longer your own.

For in this I have my chiefest sweetness, in remembering the day in which, prostrate at the feet of his mercy, after your confession, you dedicated to him your person and your life, to remain, in everything and everywhere, humbly and filially submissive to his most holy will. So be it, my dearest daughter; I am universally your, &c.

P.S. — O my God, dearest child, how many different ways has this eternal Providence of gratifying his own! Oh! what a great favour is it when he preserves and keeps his gratifications for eternal life! I have said this word to finish and fill up the page. May God ever be our all. Amen.