Letter 78 of Saint-Cyran

I received your letter where you provide me by the question you ask a subject for extensive writing. It is enough here to tell you in respect to absolution that everything is invisible and insensible in the sacraments and that we must have regard for nothing except good works which must be what we keep at continually. It is in heaven that we will have evidence, assurance and the experience of the good that we will take possession of there. As for the other point, the church on earth and that in heaven are but one communion. They join in spirit during the solemnity of All Saints Day. I chose that day by design for your first communion, because those who come from penitence are in that similar to non believers, for they come in again from the outside and as if from the space before the doors of the church to the inside. This circumstance regarding your communion will leave a mark forever on your soul and will emphasize the double obligation you have to the Son of God who made you enter two times into the unity of the saints. I beg him with all my heart that he do it himself by the entry of his Body in you in such a way that you may never be reduced to aspire to an equal grace which would suppose that the greatest disgrace in the world would have happened to you. I do not fear that any longer in you on condition that you continue to love separation from the world, that is, from men who live ruled by their reason or their senses. You include yourself among their company whenever your life, although solitary, holds you yourself under the power of these two faculties. In that case, you would do nothing by physically separating yourself, for the most excellent philosophers have achieved this, unless you go from the world to God in order to maintain yourself with him ceaselessly by prayers and good works. With that I dispense you from everything else except the obligation you have to love me, relating to me in the sight of God and as a part of the Body of Jesus Christ his Son. Never separate yourself from someone that God has made, as I hope he has by his infinite mercy, a selfsame spirit with him in order to be a selfsame spirit forever with you both on earth and in heaven.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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Letter 77 of Saint-Cyran

   There is nothing as dangerous as to weaken ourselves by too great consideration of our troubles and of the different means of entry to ourselves from the outside world which happen to us from time to time and which we ourselves often cause ourselves by our own conversation. We must forget ourselves ourselves in order to advance and we must make for this end some effort by listening to God so that his grace may make us do it. We should thus go from occupation to occupation in order to avoid the emptiness that our enemy fills up by playing with us in endless ways during a sluggishness that he throws at us. He wants to persuade us without our realizing it or thinking about it that our listlessness and our troubles are similar to those of several souls who suffered for God. We should admire their troubles and not imitate them and we should not believe when they happen to us that ours are similar to theirs. I could not give you better advice in order to go beyond the stumbling blocks which can arise from the trickery of our enemy than that you continue to take note of all their varieties. For we know his thoughts, as Saint Paul says, in a similar occasion when he feared that a too great sadness might make penitence more harmful than useful to a penitent. That is why I dispense that man from the continuation and wish that he be put back in the common course of other believers to erase the remains of his sin by a charity in common and by the society of other Christians. I beg you therefore to distance yourself from all the views you could have about yourself and about others and no longer think anything except about the works of the Community. Participate in the joy of those who will seem to you more simple and more sincere in their ways of acting in order to deserve by this to enter into the joy of all the church at the feast of Easter. We must celebrate Easter as a banquet which is an image of that in heaven celebrated with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth as Saint Paul says. Every other type of devotion is blamable in you. The more you will be gay before God and mixed with the whole group of your sisters with a face sereen and anointed, as says the Son of God in the Gospel, marking the joy and the unction of the grace that is interior, the more you will be agreeable to your Spouse and fearsome to your enemy.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

The United States of the World, The Theater of the Impossible, The End of All Beginnings,Baseball Metaphysics, books and e-books by Daniel McNeill, are for sale at: amazon.com/author/graceisall
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Letter 76 of Saint-Cyran

Sister Mary,

I would like all my omissions to be like those of God which often are only evidence of the affection he has for those he seems to have forgotten. But I can tell you without lying that I have not forgotten you and that I have not omitted answering you by lack of remembrance or affection. Don’t make me tell you about other causes like the distractions and powerlessness of my condition in prison that prevent me from doing what I would like the most to do. This opportunity I take to write is all the better as it will help you fill the emptiness caused to the house at Port-Royal by the departure of Monsieur Singlin. His absence affects you particularly because of the weaknesses resulting from your sickness giving you cause to fear being without him when you need him. The first good news I announce to you is that you are no longer by the grace of God in the company of those for whom the assistance of a man however pious he may be is necessary. You have returned to God so well that you will never lack anything when there is only you and he to give you the assistance of his grace which you will need during your health or your sickness if it returns.

   I was pleased to hear in today's gospel reading what the Son of God said, that he is not alone since his Father is with him. He does not give any other proof of this company that his Father gives him except the care he has to be pleasing to him in everything and to do all the things his Father wishes. Everything he says of himself, every member of his being can say it about themselves when they feel that they are his and that they would not wish for anything in the world to belong to another and that everything in the past is an object of aversion that they avoid thinking about because it is not in harmony with the heart of God. I would not want a better disposition in the greatest troubles of the spirit, nor in  anguish facing death, than to receive with a good heart such a favorable answer which establishes in my heart the presence of God with a full measure of his grace. I care nothing for the help of men if it pleases him to maintain that in me. In whatever dejection I may fall, I am happy from now on if it pleases him to give me such a good disposition compared to which all the others must be less. For they are nothing if they do not produce in our soul that excellent fruit which puts there peace and joy. If men in the past were of profit to us by their encouragements and their help, that was to put us in that condition where once having placed us we have no longer any need of them. They should go away quick to assist other souls who have not reached where we have arrived. We have reason to hope that we will live and die well without them observing only what they have left us as a token of their charity. This virtue even operates sometimes better in souls in the absence of the person who was their spiritual director. For the good priest must say to those he has directed what Jesus Christ said before his death to his apostles: it is expedient that I go away because if I do not go away the Holy Spirit will not come to you and you will remain always in the childhood of grace without being able ever to act like strong men who have reached the perfect age of Christ. God has urged me to tell you this truth so that you may be attached only to him expecting everything from him without the intervention of any one, whatever excellence or integrity they seem to have.  

Faith teaches you that neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything and that everything comes from the invisible operation of God, who gives growth to the sowings and waterings of men. Consequently,  It is truly necessary that we begin already in this world to familiarize ourselves with God alone and to look only to him alone, since we hope to enter into eternity in order to live there only from him and from his look. It was the great service of Jesus Christ in this world; which he declares by those words of the Gospel which is to be read on Monday where he says that he is always in the company of his Father. For being in the company of men he did not believe to be there considering only the company of God. I will pray him to give us that grace to both of us to detach us from all other company and to make us live as we would like to die with him alone. May he represent Jesus to us on his cross where he receives consolation from no one, no one having spoken to him except to persecute him. Even his Father, in a manner of speaking, abandoned him which did not prevent him from being with him. For without that he could not have died as the redeemer of men and as the victor over demons. Do this favor for Monsieur Singlin to believe he is just as much with you even though absent. For me, I don’t ask anything more except that you practice with pleasure what I am telling 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:

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