Letter 64 of Saint-Cyran

   What is spoken in the freedom of grace is never bad and we should never be sorry for it. It has its free words and its angers that we should love as much as its silences and its gentleness. You were right to say what you said about those who calmed themselves down. I am a common friend. I can condemn neither these ones nor those others.

   It is certain that solitude embitters the spirit if we we do not keep watch over it, just as also fasting and other mortifications. That is why we must excuse and bear with many souls to whom God has given his main graces.

   It is with grace as it is with nature. We take birth in it first as animals, then reasonably and spiritually. I hope everything will be good next for the person you say is going a little quickly. I no longer count speeds when they take place beyond the world and the annoyances of others cause them. My first thought was to take full responsibility for all of it. It came to me that the Son of God took upon himself responsibility for all of our sins and that in exchange we should take responsibility of everything that can be the cause of any dispute between those of our acquaintance. It is an excellent invention of Jesus Christ and one that seems to me that if I were not in prison I could carry out better than I can by letter.

   We must not do anything which offends the order of divine wisdom. God will  give you the means to accommodate N. and perhaps she will be more content. I keep her in my spirit and I hope that God will be able to make her turn out well, without speaking of others whom we must hope will benefit from his providence. You must unstitch the knot that ties you to N. and not cut it. Charity obliges you.

   I beg you not to become troubled anymore about yourself, that what I told you aids you always. If you fall into the same things, confess them humbly, with a sentiment of your weakness. It is the unique remedy along with seclusion.

   We must act like Christ at the time of the Resurrection. He appears to finish his work and retires instantly.

   If the one who is in such great trouble was not in the place where God ordered her to be to say her office, she would be at peace. This trouble of the spirit is a pure temptation that we must break by believing and not speaking about it more. For me, I am well since I am in prison in the place where God desires me. I am assured by the  very men who hold me here. I leave all the consequences to God. If I had more health, I would perhaps be weaker.

   We must think of bodily debts as of spiritual ones without troubling ourselves. The first are the images of the the second almost in all the circumstances that accompany them in their birth, in their subsistence and in their abolition. I desire greatly that you be able to do without the  world and to teach by your example other religious women how me must make of little value worldly goods. In the necessities of creditors we can have recourse to God although I see by the Gospel that he does not want us to wake him when he is sleeping. But we have faith assuring ourselves that he sees everything and thinks about everything, particularly about the affairs of those who are his and of whom he speaks as Abraham, I am the God of such a man and of such a woman. For me, I feel that those I love have no need to have recourse to me in their necessities when I have been informed beforehand about them. I would have difficulty to prevent myself from believing that they warn me by weakness and by fear. It will be enough on such occasions to have prayers made to God by your religious community which is never proof of weakness when creditors have necessity. For then it it is a double prayer made for the poor. Poverty joined to the obligation we have to a person makes our prayer double before God.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill
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