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
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