Letter 26 of Saint-Cyran

I am content to look to God in the situation you write about and to adore him as the author of life and death. For there is nothing we should think about more than our continual dependence as Christians on grace from God, which does not allow us to do anything without looking to him and letting our conduct be guided by him. Everything is his work and he rules more over sickness, if I can so speak, than health because the sick are closer to the judgement he must make on us when we appear before him, either favorable or terrible according as we will  have deserved it. I do not dare to tell you how greatly the way we serve him now is so little worthy of him. He is completely invisible and hidden and our devotion to him is completely visible and exterior where we establish the ruling principle of our piety. Yet he tells us himself several times in his gospel that he demands from us only a good will. Happy the soul that has it for it carries the Kingdom of God with it. Such a soul becomes a sacrament as marvelous as the eucharist and perhaps even more when it contains the same Jesus Christ enclosed by a more excellent veil. That is a consolation to me in the affliction I feel to see the soul of the sick religious woman you write about approach her judgement. Either the Scriptures are false or else God’s judgement must be dreadful for everyone living. The aids that have been given to her from the treasures of the church will serve her in proportion to the care she took before her sickness to think about her judgement. For a Christian life should be like an admirable chain of good actions which suppose that the last hour of days of sickness should be connected to the hours of good actions during our days of health, without which they are hours spent uselessly  no matter what appearance they may have of goodness.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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