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
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