Letter 37 of Saint-Cyran

It was not by forgetfulness or hardness of heart that I passed over writing to you until now. God knows I wanted to and there are just causes that prevented me. I hope I will be later in a position to make you yourself a judge of these causes.  But when I learned through public talk the extent of your affliction and found myself freed by it of the causes of my silence, I would have believed I was offending the general charity that God obliges me to express to everyone, and the particular charity I have for you, if I did not assure you of the deep feeling that knowledge of your affliction has caused me.

   I do not want to exaggerate it by the magnitude of the circumstances which surround the evil because I would not be doing what I mean to do which is first of all to console you by the part I take in your pain and then by the prayer I make that you return as soon as possible to the regularity of the double profession you make to be a Christian and a woman devoted to religion.

   Never, my reverend Mother, will you happen upon such an occasion to be able to be of such great worth in a short space of time than as in the rest of your life.

   You have in Scripture admirable examples of patience and in your misfortune, if one can so name it, I consider you happy to have a means so great and so unusual to bear witness to Jesus Christ that you love him more than the whole world.

   It is a grace from God that he puts in our hands the means to bear witness to him that during the greatest afflictions he holds the first place in our hearts and that he rules both as a husband and a master submitting to his sovereign power every other affection that is not in sympathy with his.

   I know very well that you have not forgotten what I told you when we used to have conversations about the state of your soul. That compels me to say that I can only admire that it pleased God to afflict you in this way and to add suffering to the happy conduct of your past life. Evils, my Mother, are goods in this world for persons chosen by God. You are judging yourself facing suffering with patience and you are yourself experiencing the judgement of God on you by the inclination now and forever of your heart towards him.

  I do not doubt at all that Jesus Christ demands this inclination from all his spouses. He has promised to each his Kingdom provided that each will despise the greatness of all the kingdoms of this world. We are not far from the enjoyment of those external goods that should be the end of our aspirations and will extinguish in us every memory and every affection born from the flesh, the blood and the sight of his creatures.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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