LVIII.
To the Rev. Father Dom John de Saint François, General of the Order of Feuillants.
On St. Francis de Sales.[A]
Vive ✠ Jésus!
1624.
Alas! my Rev. Father, you command me to do what is beyond my capacity. The intimate knowledge that God has permitted me to acquire of the interior life of my blessed Father and Lord, and especially that with which He has favoured me since this holy man's decease (for the object being present somewhat, it seems to me, obscured the light), is, I feel, altogether beyond my deserts: and I confess to you quite frankly that I have no facility whatever in expressing myself. Yet to obey your Reverence and for the love and respect which I owe to the authority by which you command, I will write what comes to my mind in all simplicity, in the presence of God.
First, then, I have always observed in him the perfect gift of faith accompanied with great clearness, certitude, perception, and extreme suavity. It was a subject upon which he spoke admirably, and he once told me that God had bestowed upon him much light and knowledge of the mysteries of our holy faith, and he thought that he had a good grasp of the correct interpretation of the Church's teachings to her children. To this his life and writings bear witness.
God had so fully illuminated this holy soul, or, as he put it, shed so clear a light in the highest point of his soul, that he had, so to say, but to open the eyes of his spirit and the excellencies of the truths of faith lay before him, and from this proceeded raptures, ecstacies, and celestial ardours. He submitted himself to the truths thus unveiled to him by a simple yielding up of his will, and the place wherein these illuminations were centred he called "The Sanctuary of God." It was his place of retreat, his every day abode, for notwithstanding continual exterior occupation he held his spirit in this interior solitude as much as was possible. The one longing, the sole aspiration and desire of this holy man, it always seemed to me, was to live by faith and according to the maxims of the Gospel. He used to say that the true way to serve God was to follow Him and walk in His footsteps by the pure light of grace, without the support of consolations, of feeling, of light, other than that of bare faith, and for this reason he valued derelictions, desolation, and dryness of spirit. He never stopped, he said, to think whether or no he had consolations, and that if Our Lord sent them he received them in simplicity; if they were not given him he made no reflections about their loss. But as a matter of fact he usually had great sensible sweetness, as was betrayed by his countenance, however slightly he withdrew into himself, which he was in the habit of doing. Thus did he draw good out of all things, turning all to the profit of his soul. The time of preparation for his sermons, which he usually spent walking about, was one of special illumination for him. Study, he said, provided him with prayer, and he came from it enlightened and full of holy affections.
Several years ago he told me that he had no sensible devotion in prayer, and that God operated in him without feeling, but by sentiments and illuminations, which were diffused in the intellectual part of his soul, the inferior part having no share therein. These were for the most part perceptions and sensibilities of simple unity and heavenly emotions which he did not try to fathom: for his practice was to hold himself in humility and lowliness before God with the trustful reverence of a loving child.