Letter 8 of Saint-Cyran

When you travel, avoid young women and places where talk is at a low level. Read the gospel every day and pray for the souls of people you know who have died. Do not pay any attention to talk about the world or news of the day. Instead sleep or read a book about a devout life to converse with yourself. When you arrive at a hotel, go out at once and find some church somewhere where you can kneel down and bow to the Son of God. If you can not enter a church, kneel down at the door. When you are given a room, leave it if any girls enter it and do not ever spend any time with licentious men. Avoid them like girls by pretending you have somewhere to go and stay out in the street before dinner. But the best thing would be to keep yourself shut up in your room and to pray to God for an hour. Your travel can provide you with an excellent solitude  and God will give you his attention just as if you were at home. Get up early in the morning to do your regular prayers and readings. Do them in public if you can while kneeling for there is no better way to free yourself from the temptations of men and women than showing  yourself a servant of God. Nothing chases away the devil and his turmoil so greatly as your public protest that you belong to God and not to the world. Respond to the insolence of others by some religious exercise or by leaving their company or by being silent when you can not avoid them. God will suggest to you other ways to keep yourself aloof. The true servants of God are never without inventions to flee those who are not. If you travel to a location near your parents, dine with them as infrequently as you can and show them with great reserve the civility that you  owe them. It is impossible to defend yourself from them in any other way. The softness of kinship is too attractive and the devil does not have any stronger machine. Remember what Saint Luke wrote about it. If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  These words apply to all Christians. Follow the true path of penitence by abstaining from things that are not forbidden in punishment for not having abstained from things forbidden. You should practice penitence by not greeting any woman, even your sisters. Tell them that mourning is the cause of your unusual conduct which will be true of the mourning you carry in your heart for your own death as regards the world. Do not let them get away from you however without telling them that you do not love them any less because you act as you do and perhaps do them some little favor. Only the first meeting with them is difficult when you must be stiff with them since it serves as a rule for all the rest. Look for every occasion to satisfy God.  You only need a firm resolution which God will give you if you ask him for it. See if you have the strength to love him in little as well as in big matters. When you are firm on occasions that seem small they become great in God’s eyes because we have to overcome opposite natural inclinations and raise ourselves above the opinions of men who condemn our conduct. If we must flee men, start with your parents. It is a good means to free yourself from all other people who are not parents. Get whatever business you need to do done in a few days and the less you have to do the better. The people you deal with will try to gain power over you by amusing you. Be instead their master and do not let them dominate you. It is only necessary to spend a little time with them to recognize what lies at the bottom of their hearts.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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