Letter 72 of Saint-Cyran

Sister Mary,

I prefer to answer your letter in two words rather than not answer it at all. I have you as present in my heart as if I wrote you every day. I beg you only to not remember at all past things, and to never speak about them but to make die in silence all these infidelities and all these fears, all these miseries and these errors that you speak about. There is absolutely no greater penitence than the humility and the simplicity that we show to God and to men, and even to our spiritual directors, by never speaking about ourselves, neither anything good nor bad except as much as is necessary. God will accomplish in his eternity everything he decided to do with us before we were created. But we should do nothing other during the course of our lives except to be simple in our words and in our thoughts, saying little, and doing everything we can in order to obey him and to serve him during the rest of our lives. It’s in that that consists the thanks we owe him for the extraordinary graces he has given us. I pray him to put me in this condition when I will be on my deathbed, that men hear nothing from me, and that he alone sees that all my bones are humbled by the feelings I have from his grace in my heart. It is not only for Saint Agatha to triumph by expressing words of love both during her life and while dying. Innocence praises and sings, penitence humbles itself and is silent.

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 71 of Saint-Cyran

Madame Arnaud,

I am writing you with darkness within me because of the bitter feeling I have about your distress which has deprived me of the usual means to do what I do. I can only tell you in order to console you firmly that you are certainly among those  whom sufferings permit to go sooner to paradise. Having given you previously signs that you are among his chosen, your state is certainly a grace that God has given you which includes your love for him and his love for you while he keeps you here to suffer a little. I speak of God’s love for you because being what you are in relation to him it is an advantage that purifies you and joins you more readily to him. If you were suffering other than with patience, I would have difficulty consoling you with such a benefit. But since those who have informed me of your sickness, have also informed me about your patience, I can only beg you to thank God that he deigns to afflict you here where his justice is joined to his mercy; this is not the case elsewhere where the justice which purifies the just and the chosen will be completely pure. As a result you owe it to yourself to rejoice in your bed with the joy that faith gives (which surpasses every feeling, like the peace that Saint Paul speaks about), you owe it to yourself, I say, to rejoice for three reasons. First, for the grace God gave you in your marriage, which expresses itself in you and your children, having exchanged worldly fortune, which ought to be viewed as a mere semblance, for divine fortune, which ought to be without any semblance. For it rarely happens that excellent persons of this world succeed well as far as God is concerned in their families, especially when those on whom the hope of a worldly fortune is founded seem to be entirely secular, and what is more, speaking of your sons, the brothers of the one who is deceased, they are more than just secular persons before God. Second, after having become a religious woman at Port-Royal with your daughters and under your daughters, God is making you see what is going well in their religious community which directly nourishes your soul. Your sickness is perhaps one of the greatest results of the religious life you chose after your marriage which heaps blessings over the others because God now makes you suffer in the community in order to purify you and exempt you from a more rigorous  purification even though full of love from God and also from his creatures. What you are suffering is an affliction of charity as the patience God gives you proves. You must thank him for it as a grace perfectly pure that he gives you, a grace in which consists, as Saint Paul says, the perfection of the work. You have only to await after it that he do with you whatever will please him as much in this world as in the other. I tell you with certainty what I would not dare tell others, that you have a place there and no doubt a place better than mine. It is in your submission to the will of God and in your patience which makes up all of your present devotion and all of the devotion of the most perfect. I exempt you because of it from any other prayers. For the prayer of the heart takes the place of all other prayers. It is the prayer of the blessed who do not speak at all while praying. If they should suffer, you would be like them as you are now like the souls in purgatory who pray and suffer with joy in their grief like you.

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