TO A YOUNG FRIEND.
You are very dear to me, my child. Do not think I have forgotten you. God alone can render you happy. Give yourself wholly to him, never more to take yourself back. Love him with all your heart. Retire often within the closet of your heart to commune with God. Do not pray to him in a constrained and formal manner, but all simple and natural. God loves better the affectionate language of the heart, than, the cold and discursive thoughts of the intellect. The prayer of love softens the heart.
Do not shrink from your ordinary duties. We are often more united to God, in our daily avocations, than in retirement. The reason is, our good Father holds us more closely, when we are most exposed to temptations. Endeavor to maintain, at all times, harmony and oneness with God. You have only to abandon yourself wholly to divine love, and perform all the duties that devolve upon you. Do not be restive, and thus mar God's beautiful design and operation upon your soul. Place in his bosom of rest, all your inquietudes, and allow him to carry you, as a little child is borne by its mother. This little one has only to regard, lovingly, the smiles of its tender mother.
God will give you a wise discernment as to food and drink, and all the pleasures of life. He calls us to a temperate life, but not to a life too austere. We should avoid the too much and the too little in eating and drinking.
I pray our divine Lord, to enlighten, strengthen and comfort your heart.
LETTER TO HER SPIRITUAL GUIDE.
The state in which I find myself, my Father, takes away from me entirely, the liberty to address you any longer as my Spiritual Guide. I realize so great a detachment from all things, that there remains in me only a triumphant, dominant love, which acknowledges no master but Love. It is my experience, that the closer the union of the soul with God, the more it is separated from all dependence on the creature. I find also, that the secret operations of divine love upon the soul, cannot be expressed. These operations do not consist in sweet and flattering expressions, neither in consolations, in the ordinary way, but in the discovery of mysterious truths; truths, which give so profound a knowledge of God, that the soul can find no language to give expression to these views.
To speak, and to act, is the same thing with God. "He spake, and it was done." When the divine Word operates in the soul, without any obstruction, the soul becomes what this Word wills it should become. When Mary Magdalene was made whole, it was no more Mary Magdalene, but Jesus Christ, who lived in her. St. Paul says, "I live, yet not I, Christ liveth in me." In the same manner, the Word is incorporated into my soul.
Some time since, there was given me a view of the States of Mary, the mother of our Lord. I was alone in my chamber, and my soul was completely filled with divine love. The divine Word seemed to say within me, "I will show thee the chief work of my hands,—a perfect nothing in itself,—the heart of Mary." In this manner was conveyed to me, the inexpressible love of God for men—his operation in pure souls. It was shown me, that her silence and acquiescence in the will of God; her entire self-crucifixion and hidden life were worthy of imitation; and that this same love which had operated so powerfully upon this soul, emptied of self, desired to draw other souls also to her states, and to make an effusion of the same grace and love in them, as in her. O divine love! how great are thy wonders, how marvellous thy operations on human hearts! My soul is lost in the depths of thy secret wonders! Silence, silence—only silence!