LXXII.
To Mother Marie-Adrienne Fichet, Superior at Rumilly.
Vive ✠ Jésus!
Annecy, 1627.
[The first lines are illegible.]
As to your temptations, divert your mind from them, and in this do violence to yourself, but let it be a gentle violence, and yet taking good hold. This firmness tempered with mildness is, my daughter, the course for you. God has hidden the prize of eternal glory in the conquest and mortification of ourselves, but a conquest and a mortification that are always accompanied with sweetness; otherwise, with your quick nature you will be the cause of suffering not only to yourself but likewise to others. Hence, gentleness is an important factor in government, and when allied to generosity, I daily see how much souls are helped and supported by it. You are aware of the very special love which I have for your soul, and your house is to me as one of our own dormitories here. They speak of your monastery as being unfortunate, and ask how it is that it is so afflicted. Such affliction should not be spoken of as a misfortune, as it is the means of bringing glory to God; for not one of your Sisters has died whose soul is not giving Him praise in Heaven. This is, dearest daughter, the language of the world. That of God is quite otherwise: for whenever a house is visited by such tribulation as does not offend Him it is a great mark of His benediction upon that community. Now continue to be on your guard lest there be any asperity in your corrections, for hardness is neither becoming nor fruitful. Those who have the charge of others are not usually able to say with St. Paul: "I am innocent of your blood,"[A] meaning of the faults which these people commit. On the contrary most commonly we are guilty not only of our own faults but likewise of those of others. For either we are too severe, or too lenient; we have either corrected with harshness, not seasoning our words with the sugar of holy charity, or have neglected to correct at all.
I have nothing more to say, dearest daughter, but that I forward the money for the new habit you have made for me, and I beseech you, on the first opportunity, to send me back the old one which the sisters have kept. There is nothing upsets me more than these exterior manifestations of imaginary sanctity in me; they are simply snares that the devil lays to make me tumble into the pitfall of pride. I am already a sufficient stumbling-block to myself without your adding to it. I implore of you, all of you, not to be the occasion to me of so dangerous a temptation, and if anyone has anything belonging to me they will oblige me by burning it. Would to God that my sisters treated me as I deserve before Him, then I should have some hope that by humiliations I might become what they imagine me to be: but this providing me with continual temptations to vanity is a thing insupportable to me. I tell you this with sorrow in my heart and tears in my eyes. The good N. and N. are very happy in having so many exterior humiliations. I cherish them more on account of these, and believe them to be, in God's judgement, which is so different from that of men, all the greater because of them.
Yours, etc.
[A] Acts, XX, 26.