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
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