Letter 57 of Saint-Cyran

It is not in my power to be involved right now in anything, still less in preaching or in anything else, because I have a continual distraction. I learned today that it is not enough to have power: if I should have it, I would still need a new grace to produce the effect. The Son of God was born from the tomb with glory and with the power to give glory to all bodies by his Body. But he will produce the effect of his glory only at the day of Judgement. This makes us see that moments of grace are now in his hand. He said himself that such moments were in the hand of his Father who gave them to him with everything else as payment for his cross. If he wishes to relieve me on Holy Friday of my other business and allows me to come to see you, I will see what I will have to give and I will try to find it in a source which I can draw from by being with you. Naturally, you can draw from that source without any need that I speak to you. So there is all I can promise you, which is nothing, as being nothing myself, and having need of you yourself in order to be able to give you anything. I am writing en route to go to say Mass where I will offer to God your house and your desire that he make you daughters of the Passion. For you have such a great devotion to the Holy Sacrament which is an invisible Passion in the same Body that suffered visibly for our salvation. The difference is that there his blood was spread upon the earth and here it is spread in our souls which ought to be for that reason similar to heaven which received the Body of God on the day of the Ascension.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill
The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:
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Letter 56 of Saint-Cyran

Reverend Mother, I find myself today with some willingness to come to you to speak about the Cross (Note: It is the third of May, the day of the Discovery of the Holy Cross). I leave it to God to determine for me on the spot or at some time if it will be in public or before the group that I spoke to last time. The reverence that I owe God keeps me in a state of suspension when it is a question of speaking about him and I am also affected by the opinion I have of myself and of those who listen to my words. For the preaching of the word of God is all the more a sacrament  different from other sacraments because its effect is less infallible. Since It depends more on us and on our dispositions than on others, we ought to take great care to prepare for it humbly and to have present no other discernments than those we have about other sacraments when we receive them or have received them.

I ask from your charity particular prayers for that business that we now know a great success. We must pray that God direct it not with the providence which takes place in the evils that he permits but the providence which directs and produces the effects that he has divinely ordained. For it is not believable how few actions there are even in the souls who serve God that we may say are done by his will. It is a subject that should humble us.  

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, Baseball Metaphysics, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:

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Letter 55 of Saint-Cyran

   I think I received your letter a little later than you intended and since that time I have been very busy. For that reason I was not able to go to Port-Royal to have a closer share in the sickness of my Sister C. de la Misericorde. But I behaved towards her as the spirits of heaven behave towards us when they remember us even though distant from us. Today saying the mass, I had a particular attention to it not desiring for her that her present life detract her from the other which alone deserves the name of life. In heaven it is not so much that we are free from the death of the body as from that of the soul, a death that we always risk sinking into while we live here. She must however still never weaken but keep herself continually in the practice of hope which is the virtue of those who are afflicted. Urge that she abandon herself to God in an interior silence which excludes even thoughts and closes off everything except the vigil of the heart. She is very fortunate to be sick in a religious house like Port-Royal which is as separated from the world as the earthly paradise of Adam, although he was in the world. It is the best augur she can have to assure her with humility of the other paradise for nothing equals those persons at Port-Royal living and dying in the world. She should suffer pain honoring Jesus Christ suffering the pains of the final sickness by which he succeeded in redeeming us. It is not reasonable that having exempted us from the torture of the cross, which we owed, that we be exempt from another sort of death which makes us by it similar to him. We can imitate him and return to him love for love by dying for him as he died for us.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

The United States of the World, The End of All Beginnings, The Theater of the Impossible, books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at:

amazon.com/author/graceisall