To Sister Marie-Thérèse de Vioménil.
Another fresh motive for abandoning ourselves to God. His fatherly providence
I do not understand your uneasiness, my dear Sister, nor why
you take pleasure in tormenting yourself as you do about the
future, when your faith teaches you that the future is in the hands
of an infinitely good Father Who loves you more than you love
yourself, and who understands what is necessary for you much
better than you. Have you forgotten that everything that
happens is ordained by divine Providence? And if we recognise
this truth how is it that we are not humbly submissive in every
event both great and small to all that God wills or permits?
Oh! how blind we are when we desire anything other than what
God wills! He alone knows the dangers that threaten us in
the future, and the helps we shall require. I am strongly persuaded that we should all be lost if God were to grant us all that
we asked for, and this is why, says St. Augustine, God out of
compassion for our blindness, does not always hear our prayers,
and often gives us the exact contrary to what we asked Him, as
being in truth better for us. Truly it seems to me that in this
world nearly all of us are like people who in madness, or delirium,
ask for exactly what will cause their death, and to whom it is
refused out of charity, or in pity. Oh my God! if this truth
were but understood, with what blind abandonment would we
not submit to all the decrees of Your divine Providence! What
peace and tranquillity of heart should we enjoy about all things
and in all things, not only as to outward events but also about the
interior state of our souls. Even if the painful vicissitudes
through which God makes us pass should be in punishment
for our unfaithfulness, we ought to say to ourselves, "God wills
it by permitting it," and humbly submit. We must then
detest the offence and accept the painful and humiliating consequences, as St. Francis of Sales so often recommends. Would
that this principle, thoroughly grasped, could put an end to
the troubles and anxieties that are so useless and so destructive
of our peace of mind and spiritual progress. Shall I never be
able even with the help of grace to introduce into your soul this great principle of faith, so sweet, so consoling, so tranquillising?
"Oh my God!" we ought to repeat, "may Your will be accomplished in me and never my own. May Yours be accomplished
because it is infinitely just and also infinitely advantageous to
me. I acknowledge that You can will nothing that is not for
the greatest benefit to Your creatures as long as they are
"Whatever happens," said St. Francis of Sales, "I shall always side with divine Providence, even if human wisdom tears her hair out with spite." If you were more enlightened you would judge very differently from the ordinary run of human beings; then, too, what a source of peace and strength this way of looking at things would prove to you. How happy are saints! and how peacefully they live! and how blind and stupid we are in not accustoming ourselves to think and act as they do, but to prefer living shut up in thick darkness which makes us wretched as well as blind and guilty. Let us then make it our study, aim, and purpose to conform ourselves in all things to the holy will of God, in spite of interior rebellion. Even about this rebellion we must acquiesce in the will of God, for it compels us to remain always before Him in a state of sacrifice as to all things; in an interior silence of respect, adoration, self-effacement, submission, love, and an entire abandonment full of confidence to His divine will.