Letter 52 of Saint-Cyran

   I am pleased that you speak only of a cold and a headache for N. It is a sign that she will not die from her sickness. What remains for her now is just penitence since what penitence death gave her was too rude. You have needs to use her for which are penitential only for her, although on the other hand her works and taking care of her health are good for her and for others.

   I wish that Sister N and I were poor in spirit: we would be overly rich before God. For when poverty is extreme and resembles the Sacraments, which are exterior and interior, it is truly Christian and makes us equal to the men made new by Jesus Christ. Otherwise she is either angelic or Hebraic and neither the one nor the other condition belongs to us because the time of one has past and the time of the other has not yet come.

   Saint Cyprien does not want Christians to believe they have lost anything when their vines freeze and their harvests fail. If we were good Christians, we would believe we had not lost anything as the result of our law suits. We should know how to anticipate them in order not to begin them and if they are forced on us to support their loss. Just one suit can become a source of passions. A good of this world is such a small thing before God and a great cause of disorder among men. We cannot say whether we win or lose, in view of the judgement of God, by losing a legal action.

   We must suffer with patience the disorders that we cannot prevent. It seems to me that God has a reason for everything and that he gives us excessive amounts of grace because he does not want to put us to a test in everything. For he is the one who puts men in prison and troubles their businesses. I saw this again yesterday in four or five examples from Scripture.

   Please tell Mademoiselle N that I beg her to trust herself to God so that he may humiliate her by his grace in her heart to the point of making her equal to simple and small people. It is to them alone that he promised the intelligence of his truths and the infusion of his love, without which the plan she has will not succeed for her very well.

I will ask this also from God for her and I would like to be agreable enough to God to obtain from him this grace.

   I recommend to you this new widow that God has made fall into your hands so that she may share in your charity. I beg you also that you be more diligent than you have been up till now towards my sister N. You should visit with her more than the others even if it will only be from time to time. We have to pray a great deal for her and have great pity for those whom God seems to favor less.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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