Letter 75 of Saint-Cyran

Sister Mary,

I will speak again a little about your devotions. Saint Luke was a familiar of the Virgin and the most eloquent of the canonical authors of the New Testament. But he said nothing about the Virgin in the Acts and he spoke about her in the Gospel with an admirable brevity. Saint John who knew her as his mother and who has such an elevated perspective in his writings said nothing about the Virgin. The best way to praise the Virgin is to employ towards her the hymn of silence that we can even employ towards God according to Saint Jerome. We spoil the virtues of the saints by our words. Only the piety of our thoughts, our actions of charity and the imitation of their virtues can praise them well. As for me who am nothing, if someone praises me even so little, I feel something within me that turns sour and feel a sort of disgust for praise. On the other hand, when someone agrees with me in the same sentiment about truth and virtue, I am delighted. I feel united with another spirit in my soul in a way that is impossible to express and that moves me even as far as wishing to give my life for this man who loves God as the Gospel orders us to love him. Let’s imitate the saints. That’s how we will praise them. If we do not imitate them at all, they scorn our praise as God rejected with disgust the sacrifices of the Jews.

   I learned by a recent visitor here in prison with joy that God has given you back your health to use it for the embellishment of your soul so that falling sick again it will be still more prepared to leave your body. God has given it to you only for this purpose, that is, to be an instrument for the purification of your soul. It can not embellish itself and purify itself in this world by itself. For that the soul has necessarily the need of the body, like its own organ, and without that it would not be possible to increase what it has in it of beauty and grace. That is indeed what happens in baptism since the body then is washed in order to pass this mysterious good to the soul.
Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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