Sister Mary,
It seems to me that I already told you that we must be moderate in everything and that it is God alone that we can and we ought to love without any moderation. However Job complains about his friends that they defend God too much and they pass beyond the limits in defense of his justice, not looking closely at the commands that such justice specifies for men. What happens to them with regards to his justice can easily happen to religious persons with regard to the charity we owe the saints and especially to the queen of saints and the mother of God. For she has been raised above all saints and all creatures, and so close to God, that it is easy because of this elevation she has among them, and this nearness she has with God, to deceive ourselves in our works and our words when we are ardent with her her and even with God. It is easy to transport the same affections we have for God which are without limits towards the Virgin who does not find them agreable because she considers herself a nothing even in heaven with respect to God. That is why you do not praise her by praising her as you do, you do not love her even while loving her, if you do not place some limits on your love, keeping only the love of God that we bring to God as the love which ought to be without limits. God has certainly given to his chosen his love in measured amounts but in spite of that he wished that we love him without limits. That is perhaps the sense of these words, In quem desiderant Angeli prospicere, which seem to say that the blessed angels desire always to look more and more at God without it causing them any uneasiness or violating their sabbath and rest. All the love we have for the saints, the angels and the virgin Mary should be with a certain measure to be distinguished from the love we have for God which has none at all. Otherwise it is an unregulated passion without knowledge and intelligence which is all the more to be feared because it is elevated and reaches to infinity creating an idol in the heart of the creature. All the virtues should possess moderation as though they are between two boundaries which are like two steep cliffs.
The soul easily loses itself if it is not well led and does not walk with discretion on a path so narrow that is like the one that leads to heaven which is not larger than an eye of a needle according to the Gospel. All the more reason that Christian piety which contains all the virtues must be moderated and conducted with discretion. It is enough that the virgin Mary be between God and the persons of the Holy Trinity on one hand and on the other hand all the creatures as if making a link between the angels and the blessed souls with God. Descending she finds that she is the first after the three divine persons; ascending she finds herself first before all the hierarchies of saints. What more do we want? - isn’t it a great enough marvel that God made a corruptible woman the mother of God and then afterwards he made her in the heavenly paradise what Adam was in the earthly one with respect to all the visible creatures, and to Eve even, having been the end, the principle and the center of everything. For me, I consider her greatness elevated above every idea even that the angels can have of where a creature can reach by the unlimited power of God that I admire that men might have been able to believe it. And it is certain that if God had not caused for them a sweet violence in the heart neither men nor angels ever would have been persuaded of it. Persuaded that a poor creature and especially a woman, and a woman created from Adam and by generation from Adam, who is tainted with filth might have been able to rise to this eminence incomprehensible to men’s senses, to their reason and even to their faith and which makes them only humble themselves before the vision of such an object even more extreme than every thought that God and the Church propose to them. You could not do better than imitate them in the devotion you have for the virgin Mary following your faith without using your reason and to not extend yourself in movements and words which are not in harmony with divine knowledge and are not pleasing to the virgin, being wasteful to your heart making it more vain without you yourself noticing it. For all excesses in devotion are different from deficiencies and flaws we encounter in it that we see and we notice. We easily believe these when we are warned about them but not the others and we often attach ourselves to them thinking we are doing well because of the excellence of the saintliness and of the grandeur of the object which we pretend to honor and respect with such effusions of the heart and of the tongue. That is why I could not give you better counsel than to remove from your spirit and your letters these words that perhaps it will be infinitely pardoned because the virgin Mary has loved infinitely. They belong only to Jesus Christ from whom you remove them by offering them to the virgin Mary who does not receive them in the sense that you give them. Nothing displeases more men of good sense who are well regulated in their souls than to hear the excessive praises that they are given and that they know do not belong to them. It’s like a false tone in music. Someone who understands it better is more offended. I would prefer to suffer an affront than false praise and it seems to me it embitters my spirit more. Be aware of what the virgin can do with those we give her when they are not regulated by our faith. You have only to follow it in all your actions and in all your words and say always the words of Saint Paul, Quid dicit Scriptura, and if you wish an additional support add, Quid dicit Ecclesia. For it is she that regulates us as much in the ways of expressing our faith as in faith itself which would be nothing if we did not receive it from the Church and from her teachings. We often spoil the virtue of the saints by our words. It is only the piety of our thoughts which can praise them well if they are accompanied by imitation of their virtues.
Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill
In this book, two Christian religious thinkers and one Jewish
religious thinker reveal the authentic path to God and
freedom.
