Letter XV. To the Same

Same Subject.

You will be the first, my dearest and best mother, who will receive a letter from me this new year. Certainly reason requires that after having done homage to the heavenly Father and Mother, I should do it also to the only mother whom Their Majesties have given me for this life. Good and most holy year to my dearest mother from her son, who wishes her the abundance of the grace of the Eternal Father, of the peace of the circumcised Son, and of the consolation of the Holy Spirit, dedicating with this same heart of my dearest mother mine also to the glory of the Divine goodness, and consecrating to it all the moments of this new year, to make an entire circumcision of this same heart, and to apply it to receive purely and perfectly the sacred love, which the heavenly and divine name of Jesus announces to us written in his blood, on the holy humanity of the Saviour.

I cannot promise myself to see you before Wednesday, unless with the continued sight with which my heart regards and guards yours dearly in the bottom of my heart. Ah! my God! dear mother, how I desire Divine love for this heart, what blessings T wish it! Let us kiss a thousand times the feet of this Saviour, and say to him: My heart, O my God, calls for you; my face longs for you: Ah! Lord, my face seeks for yours;* that is, my dearest mother, let us keep our eyes on Jesus Christ, to regard him, our mouth to praise him; and in fine, let all our face aspire only to become like that of our dear Jesus. It is Jesus, for whom we must humble ourselves, commence work, and suffer; becoming, as St. Paul says, sheep for the slaughter, when it shall please his Divine Majesty to make us dishonoured for his honour and glory.

So, then, a good and most holy year to my dearest mother, all perfumed with the name of Jesus, all steeped in his sacred blood. May no day of this year, and no day of many years which I pray God to grant to my dearest mother, pass without being watered by the virtue of this blood, and receiving the sweetness of this name which spreads abroad the perfection of all sweetness. Amen.

So may this sacred name fill with its agreeable sound all the congregation of our sisters, and the drops of blood of the little Saviour become a river of sanctity to rejoice and fertilize the hearts of this dear flock,

Ps. xxvi. 18.

and above all, that of my dearest mother, which mine loves as myself. Blessed be Jesus! Blessed be his blood! Blessed be Mary! Blessed be her womb, from which Jesus took this blood.