Letter 44 of Saint-Cyran

Mother Superior, I rejoiced greatly from the confirmation of your convalescence and from your promise to look after yourself better than you have in the past, going from one penitence to another. Penitence must never decrease in this world but we should often substitute interior penitence for exterior which is only the effect of it.

   You have no reason to fear death nor to give yourself in these difficult circumstances so much grief about whether or not your tears come from concern only for yourself or from true love. The knowledge of this secret belongs only to God. It is an exercise of humility for you to shed tears without wishing to discern the origin of your tears. Only, when we find that we are tearful, we should cast our eyes upon Jesus Christ crucified if we fear too greatly the sight of our own sins. But, by the grace of God, you have no reason to fear that.

  The longing for death is a good thing provided it be also without any large discernment about the causes that produce it. It is enough to cast our eyes on the glory of heaven and on the little rest there is on earth where we are always sinning.

   The fear of an increase in a sickness is also superfluous because everything is in the hands of God. He uses great evils and great sufferings to purify us more here and less in the other world. Properly speaking, death is the great purgatory for those who have lived well in this world.

   The privation of the Mass is always painful for souls and it teaches us that by sickness we enter into a true penitence which separates a sick person for a time from the sacraments of God. God loves more the privation of them in a true penitent than their usage. Since I have not said Mass for some time, I would be truly someone who should be pitied if that were not true. If you are as discouraged as you say, I am as a result very unhappy since, not being as agreeable to God as you, I rely nonetheless greatly on his mercy without being discouraged as little as I can.

   I let him be the judge of what I am and of what I have committed and I keep myself close to the knowledge that I have at present a strong will to serve him. I raise myself up gently when I fall and I find a new courage from my own falls to better serve him. I pass my life each day waiting that he do with me what will please him being content with myself and hoping to die in his grace as little as it may be. For since grace is inseparable from him and his spirit, I will not be less content  because of my small condition in heaven if I reach it than I am because of the condition I have in the world, where I keep myself as happy as a prince although I am so far from this condition.

   This is my answer to your discouragements and to your words of penitence and weakness from a sick person scarcely up from her bed. They are good words in the mouth of someone innocent but they are perhaps wrong and produce weakness in a penitent. I do not condemn anything but it seems to me that there are certain silences that are more humble than certain words which seem perhaps to be more humble. But whoever expresses his sentiments with humility does well whether he is quiet before God or he speaks about himself to men.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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