Letter 47 of Saint-Cyran

I say nothing here to the Mother Abbess. If it were possible, I would write her every day.

I ask for her prayers more than ever and those of that sister who does penance being blind.  I do not dare to say that I envy her that she is blind because we must flee from evils and only deal with them in a spirit of Christian humility. But it seems to me that being blind is for her a great grace. Sister N. is not less in my memory she being only one heart made up from all the hearts of the community. If I wrote to her and to all your religious community, I would not be able to subtract my heart which lives first and last for all those who belong to God. Just as the heart is in the body, I pass without thinking about it from the affection I owe your religious community to the affection I have for the whole church.

   I am touched by the continuation of the sickness of Sister Anne of the Nativity. But tell her that I send her from the bottom of my heart the thought that if I were in the good disposition that she is in towards God, I would like to die instead of her but like her. There is nothing to fear in this final passage for those whom God has given the grace to live as she has lived. She should not cause herself grief because of her faults but hope that she will be purified of them by the sacrifice of the Mass which cleans and whitens souls that belong to God. I prescribe for her nothing else but her submission to the will of God and that she bear witness of her submission to him by silence, by rest and by humbly suffering from the evils that accompany sickness. However she will suffer with all of us praying for her. According to our faith, peaceful suffering accompanied by silence and waiting for God is the greatest of all prayers. The apostle Saint Paul and Jesus Christ in the gospel prescribe for the faithful nothing more when they are healthy except to do good works and live waiting for the coming of Christ. When we are sick and we have no longer any way to do good works, we must put in their place patience and suffering from our sickness and join to them the same waiting for Christ which is common to the sick and healthy and is inseparable from the faith and charity of a  Christian. That is what I would like someone to tell me often if I were in her place for in that consists our whole consolation, that by sickness we go to Jesus Christ and that Jesus Christ comes to us. I say it with great confidence to all sick persons as I say it to her. I pray that she live at this time more than at any other time in the great hope of Christ. Let her say in her heart to God that she is in her bed for the hope of Israel which is the name which consoled the apostle Saint Paul when he was in chains and uncertain what would happen to him but very certain that the greatest evil that happened to him would be his greatest good.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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