Letter 35. To a Lady

ON THE DISTRACTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.

May X9, 1609.

I REMEMBER that you told me how heavily your various affairs pressed upon you; and I told you that it was a good way of acquiring real and substantial virtue. A multiplicity of business is a real martyrdom; just as sometimes travellers in summer suffer more from the teasing flies which buzz around than from the joume/s toil, so a multitude of disconnected affairs is more wearing than troubles which might be really heavier.

You greatly need patience; and I hope God will grant it you if you diligently ask it of Him, and strive to cultivate it faithfully. Make special application of some point in your daily meditation to this subject, and then be persistent in summoning up your patience all through the day, as often as you feel that it is wavering. Never let slip any occasion, however trifling, of practising the grace of gentleness towards those around.... Do not trust to your own industry for success, but lean wholly on God's Help; rest in Him, believing that He will do whatever is best for you so long as you, on your part, are quietly in earnest and gently diligent I say this because impetuous activity hurts both our business and our soul, and is really a hindrance.

Dear madam, we shall soon be in Eternity, and then we shall see how trifling all the things of this world are, and how little it mattered what became of them 1 Yet now we are as eager over them as if they were all-important 1 When we were children, we used to be eager in collecting bits of wood and tile and mud, to build our play-houses; and if they were knocked down, we were sorely grieved, even to tears; now we know that this was all child’s play. Even so, when we reach Heaven, we shall see that all these earthly interests were but child’s play too

I do not want to set aside our care for the trifling details of this world; God gives them to us to train us during our earthly life; I would only moderate the eagerness of such care. Let us pursue our child’s play while we are children, but do not let us be engrossed by it, and if our baby houses and castles fall to pieces, do not let us grieve over-much. When the evening comes, and we must needs seek shelter, we shall not be able to find it in any such makebelieve dwellings, but only in our Father’s

Home Be diligent in your business, but bear in mind that the most serious business of all is your salvation, and your progress in true devotion.

Be patient with every one, but above all with yourself. I mean, do not be disturbed because of your imperfections, and always rise up bravely from a fall I am glad that you make a daily new beginning; there is no better means of progress in the spiritual life than to be continually beginning afiresh, and never to think that we have done enough.

Commend me to God’s Mercy, as I pray Him that you may abound in His Holy Love. Amen.

Yours, &C.

[X90.3. XXXVII.