Vive ✠ Jésus!
Annecy,
December, 1637.
My very dear Mother,
May Our Lord fill our souls with the consolations and with the merits of His most holy Nativity.
It is about a month since I received your letter of November 9th in which I read your true goodness and loving care of me in my never-ending trials. However, by the grace of God they are somewhat less acute than when I last wrote. At that time Our Lord had sent me a great sorrow in the death of the virtuous Mother (de Châtel), who is a serious loss to me. It seems as if God wishes to deprive me of all help both of nature and of grace. This our Blessed Father prophecied to me before I was a Religious. With all my heart I adore the most holy will of God, and the only good I desire is its complete fulfilment. May I have the grace never to resist it. If it is perfectly wrought out in me how happy I shall be. Pray for this, dearest Mother, I beg of you. Strange to say, when writing to you I can never altogether keep back my tears, though otherwise I rarely weep, unless perchance when I reflect upon those precious virtues[A] of which I feel deprived, and thoughts against them rise up within me that are like daggers to my heart. Yet I am conscious that these divine treasures exist, but where I know not, and it seems to me that I do at least desire them and would willingly suffer anything in order to have the enjoyment of them. My mind pictures untold delights for souls who possess them: were I to dwell on this thought I should be parched up with sorrow, because I care for nothing in comparison with them. Could I be so fortunate as to die for Holy Church, nay, even for the least article of our Faith, how happy I should be; for, thank God, there is no point that I doubt about, though it seems to me that I am destitute of all faith.
To tell you further, dearest Mother, shortly after my last letter to you it pleased the divine Goodness somewhat to relieve me of the great oppression and desolation from which I was then suffering, by giving me a sensible feeling of the divine presence. I have already told you that I have never been altogether without some slight and almost imperceptible feeling of the presence of God, by which in the midst of a storm of troubles and temptations my spirit never wholly loses its tranquility, and as long as I maintain myself in that presence my soul is calm notwithstanding the piteous struggle. When it first pleased our Lord to give me some relief in the terrible temptations under which I laboured for so many years after I made my Vow,[B] I received the grace of a simple consciousness of His presence at prayer, and remaining in it I used to surrender myself up to Him and become absorbed and at rest in Him. This favour has not been withdrawn from me, notwithstanding that by my infidelities I have often hindered it; yielding to apprehensions that I should be useless in this state, and, wanting to do something on my own part, I used to spoil all. I am still often subject to this same fear, not, however, when at prayer, but at other exercises; I am always wanting to make acts, or to do something, and yet I feel that by so doing I am taking myself from my centre—that this looking straight at God alone is the only remedy for me, the sole relief in all the troubles, temptations, and accidents of life. If I followed my attraction, I should certainly never seek any other way than this, for when I think to fortify my soul by reflections and discourses, or by acts of resignation, for all of which I have to do violence to self, I only succeed in exposing myself to fresh troubles and temptations, and finding therein nought but dryness and dissatisfaction, I have perforce to return to this simple surrender to God. Apparently He wishes thus to show me that He desires on this subject a total cutting off of the activities and workings of my mind, so that His activity and not mine should undertake the care of all. Mayhap He requires this of me not only on the subject of Faith but on all others as well, for in every trouble and in every spiritual exercise to look at Him is all that He seems to want of me, and the more unwaveringly I do so the better I find myself, and the quicker my troubles pass. But the activity of my mind is such that I am always in need of comfort and encouragement. Alas! my dearest Father often spoke to me of this. Yet recalling the past, I see that my sufferings at that time were not the troubles I now endure. Then it was only my distracted prayers and such-like trifles that troubled and sometimes deceived me, for which I am not sorry, as there was no real danger; God was there, and I had only to keep myself steadfast to Him. But in my present trials I am as one always on the edge of a precipice.
Our late Mother (Péronne de Châtel) was an immense help to me, for she taught me to walk with simplicity, firmly and fearlessly in the presence of God, and that sufficed for all. The more completely I am stript of all sentiment, all relish, all repose in God, the more do I seem to gain strength and peace of soul, and the more clearly do I see that there is nothing to lean upon but God alone, purely, and simply. One of our Sisters[C] is drawn by this absolute detachment to a degree that it is almost impossible to surpass, and our good Mother (de Châtel) told me that God gave this Sister to me as an example to follow. She wrote at the request of our late Mother an account of her interior state to which I have added in detail. She is a soul of great virtue and her detachment is marvellous. Speaking of this, some days ago, Our Lord gave me a light so vivid and set it before me in a manner so luminous that I saw without a shadow of doubt that I must no longer cast my eyes upon myself about anything whatsoever, nor even question my Beloved, but in all simplicity and repose become absorbed in Him. Now since this day of alleviation it seems to me that I have kept myself more continuously in God's presence, and I have but seldom had those violent temptations—only two or three times.
This is, I think, all that I can give myself time to say at present. If I have not expressed myself well to this distinguished servant of God you will not fail to understand me and will tell me what he says.
Yours, etc.