Letter 49 ofSaint-Cyran

Those who take care of you and desire to conserve your health for the good of your religious community have proposed to me with charity certain things that they have noted in your actions in order to know what I think about them. I answered in substance that, in order that all our actions be actions of virtue, they must have something of mediocrity about them without which there is no virtue at all. This excludes both activity and idleness from the life of a religious Christian.

   I try to live this way and when I fail I am repentant and I accuse myself before God of a fault. We must bear witness to him that our charity which is our virtue is well ordered and that we prevent that there be an emptiness in us by distancing ourselves just as much from a multiplicity of actions as from negligence and bad omissions. Without this there is neither peace nor joy in our occupations whose fruits should be charity.

   This advice is totally different from that I gave you in order not to wound your health doing more than your weakness permitted. We must admire God in all good people who are able to serve him otherwise than we and not always imitate them. A weak man who would like to do more than he can is speaking to you in this way.

  I will not tell you anything about what happened to me except to say that all of life is full of risks and adventures that we are unable to foresee. All of piety consists in taking them well as effects of the order of God for whom nothing is purposeless and accidental. We should pray to God that he deliver us from the bad effects which depend on our choices and that he give us patience in the face of other effects which depend on him alone and that he himself has placed in those that proceed from our freedom.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill
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