Letter 85 of Saint-Cyran (part one)

     

                                 DRYNESS IN PRAYERS

    Since it’s the first day of a new year, you had good reason to use a time so favorable to write to me. For there is a particular blessing on this day that is the feast of the name of Jesus (and it’s also the feast of the holy Circumcision of the lord which I’ll write about in another letter). On this day you ought to remember that there is an exceptional attribute to the name of Jesus which is that the simple pronunciation of his name causes a veritable movement of faith that brings about, according to Saint Paul, the same salvation of our souls that his passion and suffering on the cross brought about for all. Jesus says that his body does not put life in our souls except by means of his spirit. We have only to put our soul in possession of God’s grace which is the same thing as his spirit, and the least of things can be of as much service to us as the greatest. The name of Jesus which is nothing but two syllables that pass by quickly can produce his life in us like his holy body when we consume it in the sacrament of holy communion.

    Don’t give way in your spirit to a lot of questions about this. Be simple in spirit as you read what I say and admire the abundance of the grace of God in souls which are his by the participation of his spirit.

    I say that now in order to prepare you for the answer I will give to what you wrote me about dryness in your prayers. For if one word, Jesus, that the tongue forms has so great an effect on a soul that it increases divine life and grace and the sense of being saved, what will a prayer even more interior bring about formed in the bottom of the soul?

   If the dryness was consent to bad thoughts or to a design to do evil it would in reality prevent the effect and the efficacy of the prayer because it would chase from the soul the spirit of God. But while his spirit is there it is not in the power of dryness and all interior sufferings to cause you any hurt or to turn away the influence of God in the soul in the middle of the prayer. On the contrary, because there is nothing that God considers so greatly as sufferings, and all the more those of the spirit than those of the body, when the soul embraces them with humility and accepts them while renouncing every feeling of pleasure, prayers are so much better to the degree that they are dryer and more painful. For then they approach more closely those of Jesus Christ who never prayed except with an interior sorrow like that he had on the day of his passion.  Work only to do nothing voluntarily which may grieve the spirit of God in you. 

    Don’t do anything except with the precise obedience as did the Son of God in the least thing he did during the thirty years that he obeyed his father. His father had ruled him precisely right up to the least blink of an eye before he was born and counted his actions as exactly as he counted the hairs on his head. You must hope that God’s spirit will remain as unchangeable in you as it remained in him. If you possess the spirit of God in that way, it follows that your prayers made with dryness, even if this dryness might last throughout your prayers, are as agreeable to God and as useful to your soul as if they were made otherwise. It even follows  that the smallest interior remarks that you speak to God coming from your heart united to him, and because of his desire, although you do not feel it at all, that you implore him sincerely, faithfully, humbly, carefully are as effective as all the movements that you could have had in your prayers full of spiritual taste and pleasure. 

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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

In this book, two Christian religious thinkers and one Jewish

religious thinker  reveal the authentic path to God and freedom.

Letter 84 of Saint-Cyran

     You did well to not think extensively about my letter. All the thoughts that you would have been able to have would have been beyond mine. For I thought only to make you give me back a legitimate excuse for the silence I maintained towards you. My silence seemed all the more reasonable because you wrote me two letters before which seemed to me more than enough writing to soothe all the remorse you had about things in your past. But it turned out that your two letters were not enough to get the result that I was after and that is why I was silent. When in these matters I can’t make those that I instruct keep silent, my habit is to be silent myself first for their benefit. You see, if you are always bringing up things from the past it means you want to make it as though the things that have happened had not happened. Even God would not do that. The only way to destroy them in our soul and before God and to make them live in oblivion as if they had never been is to live as Christians practicing Christian virtues. It is only by virtue of the most excellent penitences that we destroy the remains of sin and restore the soul to innocence. Without them I would be troubled and speak about my sins as do you. But I protect myself well from thinking of my sins once I have confessed them.  I don’t want them to have even a small part of my spirit in God’s presence. I know that he does not like that we remember our sins once we have confessed them according to his commands and have tried by means of virtue and penitence to destroy them. All  your life in your religious community is a penance. It is what should give you joy by not letting a moment pass that you do not use for the destruction of sin, although I know of course that you do not do it as perfectly as is necessary. What Christians do only during Lent in the world you do always in your religious community. That is why you wear a veil and love the vows you have made. Thank God for his grace and pray that he give me the grace to love the truth right up to my death.

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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

In this book, two Christian religious thinkers and one Jewish

religious thinker  reveal the authentic path to God and freedom.

Letter 83 of Saint-Cyran

     The same day that you wrote me I was thinking of you, and I can truthfully say that you were in my thoughts often at other times. For I know well what God has given me and I take care not to give it up ever, since the Son of God said that he takes care of those whom his father gave him and that he will not lose any of them ever. You have been well for a long time. You have only to walk and advance always along the path where God has put you, which is that of penitence and religion, without remembering even once the past and without turning your head back. In Saint Luke, the Son of God forbids looking back to those in particular who have put their hand on the plow to work the land. You would never have believed that  the only reason for the silence that I maintained towards you was that you may judge by it that the confessions of sins which are made at an inappropriate time and well after the time when they were committed probably don’t please God since they diverge so far from the prompt actions of those who try to live punctually by his rules. We must close our eyes to sins by one single confession and open them for the rest of our lives to penance and to the practice of virtues. By means of these exercises, we must not remember any longer what we were before. Apart from that, we should acknowledge that God led you to remember me and to write me at the time of the death of the little child, my niece. Your letter was very agreeable and consoled me. For although I praised God for such an extraordinary grace, the experience of sadness at her death doesn’t merit being called sad except at the very moment when she passed from this world to the other, where she is full of life and of admiration for having escaped such great dangers. 

Translated from the French by Daniel McNeill

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

In this book, two Christian religious thinkers and one Jewish

religious thinker  reveal the authentic path to God and freedom.