Letter 19 of Saint-Cyran

Mother Agnes, the meetings I have had one after the other prevented me from expressing to you as greatly as I would have desired the joy I felt because of your convalescence. I was expecting it from God for several reasons, but particularly at this time to console me, not for the continuation of my life in prison which is for me a good thing, but because it pleased him to accomplish his gospel by leaving you still in this world and taking in your place our sister. He has given her no doubt his paradise whether he may be still purifying her or has accomplished her purification. The beautiful and saintly words she said while dying (She said with a cross in her hands, “May I never glory in anything except in the cross of our lord and savior Jesus Christ in whom is our salvation, life and resurrection, by whom we have been saved and freed.” ) were able, in my opinion, to be a substitute for purgatory if they are considered together with the good life she led after God had completely converted her to himself. It is the condition of men of the world that we must pity when they are not thoughtful of God as you and she. They are truly dead souls in living bodies instead of being like those who die in God. Saint John says, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. Such remain living not only in their souls but even in some measure in their bodies and in a way which approaches that according to which the Body of the Son of God was living in the tomb by the union hypostatic that he had with the divinity. For you know that the dead bodies of such souls are still the temple of the Holy Spirit in the tomb. According to the fathers of the church, even Jesus Christ lives there by virtue of his Body which stays sown in them, so to speak, in an earth that belongs to him. From the earth one day he will form a better body than the Adam he created from clay, a body that will be more glorious and more immortal than was that of Adam. Do not forget, my mother, to give thanks to God with us for such great mercy even though you are now withdrawn in your religious community. For it is not the location that saves, as Saint Bernard said, since the first angel did not save himself in heaven, the first man in paradise, nor Judas in the house of the Savior. Our joy at your recovery can serve as a consolation to our sorrow at the death of our sister, which I am wrong to describe with this word if it is true, which I do not doubt at all, that the temporary death of the body has been the cause of the eternal salvation of a soul and that this same body has been consecrated in eternal glory in its tomb. I beg all those to whom I can write to take part in this common consolation which should be yours since it is mine and since it has pleased God to give us a sensible consolation in the hope that it gives us of your perfect cure. I will not fear praying for it since it has pleased him to involve me by the extraordinary grace he has made to the Abbey of Port-Royal Des Champs which had more need than you of the continuation of your life.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill.

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