Letter 4 of Saint-Cyran

The short-lived preparations that last for only a time are not of any great importance before God for no matter what and especially for the priesthood which is the most holy state in religion. Since it is eternal and unchangeable, it ought to be established in a stable and permanent disposition which may not be measured by time but passes all the way into eternity. This disposition does not consist of a few good works or in a few religious and saintly exercises but in a stable state of virtue printed on the bottom of the soul which partakes of its immortality and is more inward than all the actions and all the movements that it could possibly produce. This is a matter that cannot be explained to men and that cannot be conceived except by divine light alone. The virtue of a priest ought to be solid and invariable and so engraved in his heart that it is for him as though natural and produces all its movements and all its desires according to God almost without him thinking about them. Acquiring this virtue is the true preparation for the priesthood and it can be called essential since it is sufficient in and by itself. It is not dependent on some short period of time or even on a period of years but on the whole life of a man who cannot reach this state without extraordinary grace from God and after a long exercise of Christian and Evangelical virtues. One particular disposition for the priesthood may be acquired by asking God in prayers and by actions for true humility. It does not consist of visible humbling but in the invisible renunciation of one’s will and one’s spirit to depend completely on the spirit and will of God. It is the disposition by which Jesus Christ entered into his glorious priesthood. He offered divinely to his father in heaven the same host that he offered him in a human manner on the cross. For he was raised up to this state only because he humiliated himself, obeying his father by his humiliation having come into the world to do his father’s will and not his own. He gave up his own will to follow the will of his father up to death and since this humiliation, this obedience, this dispossession of his own will and of his own spirit was the way by which he was raised to the glory of his priesthood, it should not seem astonishing that it is the way by which men can also participate in the priesthood.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
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Letter 3 of Saint-Cyran

We can leave the path we take to follow God by a single word, by a momentary silence, by a desire of the soul or by a step taken by our body. Christian virtue is made up of  exact understanding. If we begin to walk just a little unsteadily on our path, we run the risk of soon abandoning it. Try to keep yourself separated from the world and say to yourself often: listen, look, be silent. If you can maintain a continual separation from the world, you will grow in the grace of the son of God day and night, without even thinking about it, even among the necessary distractions outside yourself that you cannot avoid. Be devoted to God even during your regular occupation without ever forgetting that even the best exterior work is not by any means free of sin unless it is done for God.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill
The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
amazon.com/author/graceisall

Letter 2 of Saint-Cyran

The effects of prayer are not just those that result from the prayer itself. For God hides the grace and the light that he causes because of prayer to keep men always humble and dependent on him. A farmer does not expect that seeds produce something at the time he puts them in the earth. When we pray, we sow seeds in Heaven but full absolution does not grow at once from interior actions alone. They should be accompanied by exterior actions of penitence and of good works to reach their full effect.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill
The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
amazon.com/author/graceisall

Letter 1 of Saint-Cyran

    It is difficult to have true contrition after a mortal sin, and all the more difficult after a large number of mortal sins. But when God wishes to save a soul and convert it, he begins within by a change of heart. And when what is within, that is, the heart, has been changed there is nothing that the soul  be not ready to do. A sinner who experiences God’s love by a sincere repentance is really changed, converted, regenerated. When he returns to God by a humble confession of his sin, he receives not only a perfect remission of the sin but a perfect resurrection and a completely new life as a member of the body of Jesus Christ.

   The judgments of God are terrible. From a countless number of sinners, there are few who receive the baptism by which original sin is set aside. And there are still less who having lost the grace of baptism because of some mortal sin return to God by a true repentance. It is difficult to convert anyone who has violated just once his baptism. One of the greatest ignorances of Christians is precisely this truth and we should not be astonished by it. Who would ever have believed that the old law of the Old Testament was of no use for the salvation of the Jews but had the contrary effect only making them dishonest although the average Jew believed the opposite? There is a parallel ignorance among Christians regarding the easy nature of conversion after committing a mortal sin. Grace falls only very rarely and with great difficulty on Christians who have trampled down by their sins the blood of Jesus Christ by which they were redeemed and who have extinguished in themselves the Holy Spirit.

   Sins are not cured as easily as is normally imagined.  You can not obtain their remission except by a solid repentance followed by a change of heart that God has reserved for himself alone. We must assume that almost all sinners live in great ignorance and that they do not know that true remission of sin can not happen without true penitence. Among the few souls who save themselves, we must include just as many among the rich as the poor but the more a person is rich, the more his conversion is difficult even at the time of the first attempt but much more the second and much more again the third. The difficulty grows with the new sins committed. And it is difficult also with the wise and the well educated and with those who are virtuous according to moral and civil standards of behavior. It is more difficult to convert such people than the depraved. There is nothing so difficult as real conversion. And if if someone has been converted and wishes to live the style of life he lived before, he deceives himself. Jesus Christ said that sinners will not enter into heaven unless they become like little children. This is done with great difficulty by the rich, the wise, the well educated, the curious and those who put their trust in their virtue. For they do not have at all the necessary meekness and they have even less the submission to God’s will necessary to die completely to sin and receive God’s grace in their souls.

   A sinner without the knowledge of how to cure himself must find one leader whom he obeys without any reservation and who has in full measure these three qualities: love of God, expertness and prudence. A  leader’s expertness and his love of God will not allow him to be ignorant either of the magnitude of the sin or of the difficulty that must be overcome. His prudence will govern him admirably to adapt himself appropriately when he will see the person in his charge truly changed within. But when he will see him not truly changed, he will  urge him to prayer and to other good works in order to attract the spirit of God to him, which can not be attracted otherwise.  The sinner will find a true director if he searches.  The church of Christ is never without them and they have been found within it throughout all the centuries. Otherwise the gospel would deceive us. Whoever has a good guide does not need to know the road. It is enough if he has a good will to follow the one who leads him in order to walk on God’s path.This man will be a man of the church and he will take the place for him of the whole church.  For this reason he will not be able to mislead him and he will no doubt know all the practices  necessary for the salvation of sinners. They can not lose their way in the church because in the church they are in the succession of its truth and of its teaching, without which the church would not be the church of Jesus Christ.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill.
The Theater of the Impossible, The End of All Beginnings, The United States of the World, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
amazon.com/author/graceisall

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