Letter 31 of Saint-Cyran.

My Reverend Mother, I ask your pardon for the delay I took in answering you. It was the result of different reasons which all exempt me from any blame with respect to a good religious woman such as yourself because they originated all from the occupation where God has placed me. And you do not wish that I fail God when, because of the order that his charity has prescribed for us, he wishes that I forget you superficially for a time.  In fact, that did not happen since I had you as present in me together with the Spirit of God as if I had  given some more obvious proof of your relationship with God before men. This is how God makes me know by my own experience and by my ways of acting that those he deals with in the most obvious manner and with visible signs of his benevolence are not those he loves the most. For several religious women to whom I wrote after receiving your letter are not more in my memory than you although it may seem that I forgot you.

   This comparison should be enough to assure you that I estimate you among the Elect of God and that it will never be by negligence nor by forgetfulness that I will miss giving you what I owe you by my letters. I greatly distinguish writing them from other duties which consist in services and actions of charity that are more solid. For those kinds of things, I make a profession of bringing to them all the diligence of mine that is possible and to never put off until tomorrow what I can do today.  This means that you can certainly also employ my diligence to whatever end you will judge to be within my power since I am always ready to serve you with the same spirit that I serve God.

   If you are his as his chosen are his and if you have looked to him in the course of time with respect and tried to imitate the eternal love he has for his elect, you are protected from all the apprehensions that natural weakness can give to the strongest in the condition that you find yourself. For the surprise of sickness or death should not be dreadful except for those who do not have anything to do with the eternal attention of God. Everything should be indifferent to you since you were chosen by God, you profess  being a Christian, and you are a religious woman living in a Christian community. These are incomparable favors that God has shown you which he has not shown to three quarters of humanity who are without faith. Neither has he shown it to a great number of souls who live in the church a life that is completely pagan hidden under the veil and name of Christianity. You must never lose the remembrance of these great graces since they stand for the pledges of love that God has granted you eternally.

   There are on earth creatures afflicted by the memory of their offenses who would be willing to die a hundred times to give to God some evidence equivalent to the grief they feel from not having served him with the purity that they owed him. They consider happy the souls who do not have similar deep regrets which are the spiritual sufferings that the need for charity causes penitents and are as unknown as sin even to those who have lived in innocence.

   Rest humbly on this grace that God has given you and for everything else just let it happen. The very favorable treatment he has shown you in the past should give you confidence for the future.

  I wish to warn you about one thing by answering the last point of your letter. To preserve these favors from God and to keep yourself always well prepared for death, you should not have any care for the way men treat you nor for the opposition the enemy instigates against the advancement of your good plans.

  I know that it is the secret passion of all Superiors that the community where they are sent grows visibly in piety and that those who have chosen them for this employment may know that God has blessed their choice and that they see its fruits. But it is enough for me that you have acquired new charity in the judgement of God in the exercise of your responsibilities. Say only with me that while God lives a soul that is his can not become unhappy.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, Baseball Metaphysics, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
amazon.com/author/graceisall
Baseball Metaphysics shows that there are Christian themes hidden in baseball games.