To Sister Marie-Thérèse de Vioménil (1731), on the same subject. Rules, etc.
My dear Sister and very dear daughter in our Lord, may the peace of Jesus Christ be always with you.
1st. I thank God for all the good thoughts with which He inspires you. As long as you keep, this good intention of belonging to God without reserve, resigning yourself entirely to His good pleasure, and fearing neither dryness, darkness, temptation, nor destitution, all will turn to your spiritual profit.
2nd. The fear of being mistaken about being at peace in the midst of interior troubles is very useless. What you unwittingly disclose to me proves that this peace is very real; it is the foundation of all else and a great grace which you must preserve at all costs. All the attacks and stratagems of the devil are aimed to make you lose it, or to diminish or, disturb it; but keep firm in faith and confidence through abandonment. Take care not to pledge yourself by vow to anything whatever.
3rd. To be completely severed from creatures in the intention and the affections is a great favour which infallibly leads to pure love and divine union.
4th. The secret presentiment of approaching death may come either from God or from the devil. If it detaches you more completely from all things, without disturbing you or creating discouragement and distrust, it comes from God; if not, it must be rejected, because all that comes from God has a good effect, and it is entirely from the effects that the spirit it proceeds from is discerned. All the repugnance that you feel is intended to detach you more completely from all human support, so that you may have none but God alone; your interior practices about this are very good. But I am surprised that you have not yet learnt that when God permits this darkness all feeling for good disappears like the sun during the night. All that can be done then is to remain firm and peaceful, waiting for the return of the sun and the dawn of day when all will be as usual. I give you permission to write one, two, three, or four letters during the year, and whenever, after imploring the help of God, you deem it recessary, and if I should think the same, I shall be very particular to reply to you.
To Sister Marie-Anne-Thérèse de Rosen. Excellent advice on prayer, to souls called to a life of abandonment.
1st. Apply yourself to prayer by a simple glance at the subject, that is to say by a single apprehension of its object, by faith without any reasoning.
2nd. I advise you to pause longer on that which is most likely to humiliate you, and to destroy self-love. The more distressed you feel, and penetrated with a sense of your misery, the more disposed you will be to receive the gifts of God.
3rd. Do not be uneasy about distractions, but when you perceive them, collect your mind and, above all, your heart by an act of faith in the presence of God, and in a holy repose. If that does not succeed you can only resign yourself. The state of distraction is often a cross more meritorious than the prayer itself, for it unites our will with the will of God Who is all our good.
4th. The result of the prayer will prove its efficacy. Solid faith is incomparably better than faith that is sensibly felt, under its guidance the soul makes more rapid progress, and proceeds with greater certainty.
5th. Hear Holy Mass with great recollection, and give yourself up to a boundless confidence in the divine goodness, while relying on the merits of the divine victim, Jesus Christ.
6th. The way of dryness and aridity is greatly preferable to that of consolations, although it is painful. It is only in this way that solid virtue can be acquired; in the other way, the most apparently, perfect dispositions are subject to failure at the slightest breath of aridity or of temptation. God usually sends trials to those souls who have enjoyed for some time spiritual sweetness and consolation.
7th. When it pleases the divine goodness to make a soul
advance in the way of pure love, fear makes no impression on
it. As fear is the forerunner of love, perfect love casts out fear,
as St. Augustine says, following St. John. Those who are
charged with the guidance of such a soul should carry out the
designs of God by conducting it in the ways of love and confidence.
If the occasion arises where fear is necessary for the
avoidance of evil, God will certainly bestow it. Let this soul
continue then to love without troubling about other things, and
above all let it avoid all anxiety and perplexity, for this temptation
is more to be feared than any other by those who follow this way.
One must then always recommend them to keep, at all costs,
interior peace, and to reject as an envoy of hell everything