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:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08H8XKZ52
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