I am pleased that you opened your heart to me in your letter so frankly. It lets me know what is within you that can help me a great deal in giving you advice that you need to conduct yourself well. I wish to imitate your frankness by opening my heart to you although there is this difference between you and me that I am old and you young. Even if you have all the ordinary advantages of nature and grace that a man of your age can have, you cannot pretend to have double the experience of the business of the world or of the church that someone like I acquires by living a long time. Enlightenment can anticipate advanced age but no man of no matter what natural excellence, of no matter what knowledge or of no matter what degree of grace can anticipate the enlightenment born of experience of someone who has lived long and had a hand directly in the business of the world or of the church or of the two of them together. Without this type of enlightenment it is impossible to give good advice to another although it is possible that someone of your age may conduct themselves well towards the salvation of their soul by a particular grace granted by God.
I hope and pray that God will never abandon you to passions with bad ends. It would be very difficult for me to free you from them. In your letter it appears that you have great warmth towards your sister whom it is permissible that you love. But that does not prevent me from saying that your affection for her you speak about is a sin not only against the gospel and regular theology but even against your baptism where you gave up love for all the attractive things of the world and especially for love of family members which is the most attractive and the most dangerous of all if it is not controlled by the prudence of God and his grace. Grace is nothing more than the love and charity we owe God to the detriment of all our inclinations.
When God caused me to set my eyes upon you, he gave me a strong will to contribute to the advancement of your salvation by showing you the path you must follow of true charity without which no one reaches salvation. Think of charity as not a human kindheartedness but as a kindheartedness, or better still a lovingkindness, that comes to our hearts from God. If I did not succeed in making you experience this true charity, It would be for me just as if I had done nothing if I would have given you all the property in the world. I beg you to believe that the plan I have for you I also have for your sister. You commit a kind of faithlessness towards me if you believe your sister is closer to you than to me. Just the opposite is true since I can say that she belongs more to me than to you if you are willing to follow the rules of the gospel which are the same for both of us. They teach us that since we have the advantage by the grace of baptism of being children of God, we ought to count for nothing all natural relationships. After I chose you, I chose your sister in order to make her religious and I love her as I love you for her eternal salvation. But I know that what follows after God selects us to receive his charity depends on God and I always wait with trembling and fear what he will be pleased to give in the future. For we bring about our salvation and that of those nearest us in a humble manner that is completely dependent on the will of God. The greatest displeasure that I have about your passions is that they are so strong and so human in the matters of God as men of the world are accustomed to have passions in their matters. For loving you as I love you, that is, more than as if you were my brother or father or mother, and knowing that God has given you inclinations towards good, it troubles me greatly to see them darkened and obscured by these clouds of passion that you must get rid of to arrive at a great charity. This great divine lovingkindness is the only thing I want for you and without it all the love we have for family members is only a sin.
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:
No comments:
Post a Comment