Letter 23 of Saint-Cyran.

My mother, it is no great trouble writing you. I take pleasure writing since my words are my feelings. That is why I forget what I write you because not drawing it from my memory and doing it quickly nothing remains except what is in my heart which fills itself up as it expands. That is a clear sign that it is charity alone, God’s lovingkindness within me, that makes me write what I write, to which alone belongs an inexhaustible abundance. God’s love can always give itself to us. It does not take any special care to restrain what it gives and so it forgets itself in the very act of giving itself.

   That is the way I believe I should answer what I just read in your letter. Your humility makes you write that you are astonished at the way I speak to you. I assure you in good conscience that I do not remember at all what I write to you and that confirms what I just said, that I draw my words from the truth that lives in my heart and also that I forget it after having written it. For what we write from the heart is not always printed in our spirit or in our memory.

   But it is not enough to tell you that what I wrote you during your sickness came from the sincerity of my heart. It is necessary to add to it abundance. Abundance always goes with sincerity but sincerity is not always a part of abundance. As far as I know myself and I am aware of what I feel, everything I have authorized you to do has come from the superabundance of my heart.  God has given me the grace that makes me see  by our relationship that there is not at all any other nearness and relationship in the church of God when we do God’s will than that of a sister or a brother, as Matthew writes, of Jesus Christ.

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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