Abandonment to Divine Providence

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SECOND BOOK - ON THE EXERCISE OF THE VIRTUE OF ABANDONMENT

Letter XXXI – Conduct in Sickness

To Sister Marie-Antoinette de Mahuet (1735).

Although your illness is not serious I am sure you act like those generous souls, who, in their least discomforts go on till the worst comes to the worst, in order to have occasion to make greater sacrifices for God. But, it is usually said, in order to offer the sacrifice of one’s life to God ought one not to feel better prepared for death! and I am so unprepared! To these fears I urge you to reply in the following manner. Whether ready and prepared to die or not, I am always ready, always disposed to do the will of God. Your blessed Father St. Francis of Sales said a very remarkable and consoling thing on this subject that would suit all sorts of people: “I believe,” said he, “that God would not condemn the greatest sinner on earth, however great his crimes, who at his last moments made a generous offering of his life, abandoning himself entirely to His divine will and loving Providence.” And I truly believe it, since such an act is one of perfect love capable of blotting out all sin even without confession, like baptism and martyrdom. Often let us make these acts of love, then, by placing in the hands of God all that He has lent us, because He could not give us anything absolutely. And since, according to the words of Jesus Christ we must become little children again, let us imitate those little ones whose father, to try their dispositions makes them return some of the playthings and sweets he has given them. They would be very silly and very selfish if they did not at once say, “Dear father, take what you like, you can have them all.” After all, what do these poor children give, and to whom does it really belong? All the same the father’s heart is touched by these little signs of a good disposition. “Oh you good children, you dear children!” and he kisses them and is always more generous towards them in future. This is how our good God will act towards us, whenever He gives us occasion to offer Him some sacrifice.


Letter XXXII – Patience with the Faults of Others

To Sister Marie-Therese de Viomenil. On bearing with your neighbour and yourself.

My dear Sister,

It is a great grace to see others behaving badly without feeling bitterness, indignation, impatience, or even disturbance. If, for good reasons, you speak about it, watch over your heart and your tongue, so that nothing may escape you that would not be approved by God: and have good motives for whatever you say. Humble yourself quietly and lament in peace those faults that may have crept in during such talks. Often ask God to give you great charity and circumspection, and then remain tranquil. Keep yourself in the holy desire to belong entirely to God; pray with faith, confidence and resignation, and above all humble yourself profoundly before His divine Majesty. It is for Him to finish the work He has begun in you; no one else would be able to succeed in it, but know that there are many sacrifices to be made before God can take possession of our hearts by the ineffable delights of His pure love. Let us sigh for this happiness, and let us never weary of begging for it; let us purchase it by generous sacrifices, we shall never be able to pay too much for it. As our hearts cannot exist without love, shall we not go to the Heart of our God to derive from it the sustenance that alone can appease our hunger? May this divine love come then, and take possession of our hearts, may it sustain them, set them on fire and transform them into itself. Let us abandon ourselves without reserve to God and not interfere with His loving providence but think only of keeping straight in the road that God has marked out for us from all eternity, and in which we find ourselves at the present moment. One can dispute unendingly about predestination, and such arguments can only serve to make salvation seem more difficult; what is, however, undeniable is that there is no better expedient to ensure predestination than the actual and continual accomplishment of the will of God.


Letter XXXIII – Patience with Oneself

To the same person. On bearing with herself.

My dear Sister,

We must submit to God in all things and about all things; as to the state and condition in which He has placed us, the good or evil circumstances that He has allotted us, and even as to the character, mind, nature, temperament, and inclinations with which He has endowed us. Practise yourself, therefore, in being patient with regard to yourself and in this perfect submission to the divine will. When you have acquired this you will enjoy great peace, and not distress yourself about anything, nor get out of humour with yourself, but put up with yourself with the same gentleness which you should use towards your neighbour. This is a more important matter than you would imagine, and just at present is most essential to your sanctification. Keep it, therefore, always before your eyes, and make frequent acts of submission to the holy will of God, of charity, of endurance, and of gentleness towards yourself even more than towards your neighbour. You will never attain to this without great efforts.

A soul to whom God makes known its defects is much more burdensome to itself than its neighbour ever could be to it, because the latter, however near to us, is not always with us; at any rate is not within us, whereas we carry ourselves about with us, and cannot leave ourselves for a single moment, nor completely cease to behold ourselves, to feel ourselves, and to carry about with us everywhere our imperfections, and our faults. But see wherein the infinite goodness of our God shines forth; for the sorrow and shame that our faults cause us are their own remedy, provided that this shame never turns into defiance, and that the sorrow is inspired by the love of God, and not by self-love. Sorrow born of self-love is full of vexation and bitterness; far from healing the wounds of our soul, it only serves to poison them. On the other hand, sorrow produced by the love of God is calm and full of resignation; while detecting the fault it delights in the humiliation which follows, and from this it results that much merit is gained, and thus even from losses we make profit. Cease then from tormenting yourself on account of your defects and of the imperfection of your works. Offer to God the sorrow they occasion you, and allow His divine Providence to make good these slight infidelities by many little crosses and sufferings of all kinds. Arm yourself only with patience, raise yourself again as soon as possible and deplore your falls with a sweet, tranquil humility. God wishes you to act thus, and by this indefatigable patience you will render Him more glory and will make more progress than the most violent efforts would have enabled you to do.


Letter XXXIV – Preparation for the Sacraments

To the same person. On preparation for the Sacraments, prayer, reading and conduct.

Believe me, my dear Sister, that peace of mind, confidence, and abandonment to God, with the desire of being united to Jesus Christ are the best preparation for the Sacraments. But the devil tries to deceive people, and leaves nothing undone to disturb the interior peace of the soul, for he well knows that once this divine peace is firmly established in the heart, all will be easy to us, and we shall fly, as it were, in the ways of perfection. Do not let us be deluded, then, by any pretexts of which he may make use, however specious they may be, and let us go to God humbly with the simplicity and confidence that St. Francis of Sales advises, in the uprightness of a heart that sincerely seeks Him. As to prayer you well know what I have so much recommended to you; do not allow yourself to be discouraged nor vexed at your distractions. Manage, however, that your interior turning to God and the raising of your heart to Him during the day may become so frequent that that alone, in case of need will take the place of prayer, without, however, leaving off making it as well as you can. Apply yourself especially to reading the letters of St. Francis of Sales, you will find them so well suited to your present state and condition that you could read them as though the saint had written them to yourself from heaven, and as though the Holy Spirit had dictated them to him for you.

You wish to know what it is that I ask of God for you in particular. It is this, and for such easy things that their very facility will charm you.

1st. The moderation of your exterior conduct, which will be a wonderful help to you in gradually overcoming your passions; in other words, to speak gently, to act quietly, without any vehemence or impetuosity just as though you were of a phlegmatic temperament.

2nd. Interior gentleness towards yourself and others, at least of the kind that nothing contrary to this virtue may show in your exterior conduct; or that, if for a moment you should forget yourself you will not fail to make reparation and to rise without delay.

3rd. An entire abandonment to divine Providence as to the success of everything, without excepting your own advancement in virtue; not wishing to be better than God wishes you to be, and saying always, “I wish only what God wills.”

4th. A peace of heart that nothing can disturb, not even your own faults and sins, and which will make you return to God with a peaceful and quiet humility, as though you had not had the misfortune to offend His divine Majesty or that you were assured of pardon. Follow this advice with simplicity, and you will see how God will help you.


Letter XXXV – Conduct in a Time of Rest

To a secular. On conduct during a time passed in the country.

This is what you should do during the time you spend in the country. If you faithfully follow my counsels, they will sanctify this time of rest and make it bear fruit.

1st. Approach the Sacraments as often as you are allowed to do so.

2nd. Offer to God each morning the recreations of the day and with them the different pains both exterior and interior with which He is pleased in His goodness to season them, and say from time to time: “Blessed be God in all things and for all things; Lord may Your holy will be done.”

3rd. As you are less busy than others, employ more of your time in reading good books, and in order to make this more efficacious, set about it in this way. Begin by placing yourself in the presence of God, and by begging His help. Read quietly, slowly, word for word to enter into the subject more with the heart than the mind. At the end of each paragraph that contains a complete meaning, stop for the time it would take you to recite a “Pater” or even a little longer, to assimilate what you have read, or to rest and remain peacefully before God. Should this peace and rest last for a longer time it will be all the better; but when you find that your mind wanders resume your reading, and continue thus, frequently renewing these same pauses.

4th. Nothing need prevent you continuing the same method, if you find it useful to your soul, during the time you have fixed for meditation.

5th. In the course of the day, occupy yourself about things that are necessary, and that obedience requires of you, and which divine Providence has marked out for you.

6th. Be careful to drop vain and useless thoughts directly you are conscious of them, but quietly, without effort or violence.

7th. Above all drop all anxious thoughts, abandoning to divine Providence all that might become a subject of preoccupation for you.

8th. In raising your heart to God, often say to Him, “Lord deliver me from so many reflexions which, however good in appearance, might keep me in my own way, and in a dangerous confidence in myself. Substitute Your divine Spirit for mine, transform and remodel all the powers of my soul by this holy Spirit and by His holy operations.” At other times say, “When will it please you, oh my God, to teach me the great secret of understanding how to keep myself in interior peace and silence, to allow of Your effecting in my soul all the changes You know to be necessary? Lord, this I desire with all my heart, and ask it of You with the greatest earnestness through Jesus Christ Your Son, in order that You may be able to establish gradually within me the reign of Your ineffable peace, of Your grace and of Your divine love. And since for this You require the cooperation of Your poor unworthy creature, I will prepare myself with the help of Your grace, by being faithful to all the little practices that have been recommended to me; I hope that You will bless and second this blind submission, and I offer You beforehand all the pains of my mind, and rebellions of heart which You may permit in order to try me; I resign myself to them and from henceforth offer them to You in sacrifice.”


Letter XXXVI – On Life and Death

To Sister M. Antoinette de Mahuet (1742). On life and death, consolations and trials.

Here I am again at Albi, in a very agreeable climate, and among sociable people in whom the only fault I find is that of being too kind to me who always prefer solitude. The frequent invitations I receive are, to me, a veritable cross, and God will without doubt send me many others to temper the pleasure I feel in finding myself for the fourth time in a country that I have always loved so much. Blessed be God for all. He sows crosses everywhere! but I have already made a sacrifice of all, have accepted and offered in advance all the afflictions He is pleased to send me. This intention made beforehand renders trials much easier to bear when they come and makes them seem much lighter than imagination depicted them. Therefore I am overjoyed to find myself where God wishes me to be by the arrangements of His loving providence which always leads me as though by the hand. This paternal solicitude of which I am continually the object, redoubles my confidence. Although I am always in perfect health I feel that the years, so rapidly passing, will soon bring me to that eternal goal to which we are all hastening. True! this thought is bitter to nature but by dint of considering it as salutary it becomes almost agreeable as a disgusting remedy gradually ceases to appear so when its good effects have been experienced. One of my friends said the other day that in getting old it seemed to him that time passed with increasing rapidity, and that weeks seemed to him as short as days used to be, months like weeks, and years like months. As for that, what do a few years more or less signify to us who have to live and continue as long as God Himself? Those who have gone before us twenty or thirty years ago or even a century, or those who will follow us twenty or thirty years hence will neither be behindhand nor before others in that vast eternity, but it will seem to all of us as though we began it together. Oh! what power does not this thought contain to soften the rigours of our short and miserable life which, patiently endured, will be to our advantage. A longer or a shorter life, a little more, or a little less pain, what is it in comparison with the eternal life that awaits us? for which we are making rapidly, incessantly, and which is almost in sight, for me especially who am as it were on the brink, and on the point of embarking. It is therefore time, I ought to say with St. Francis of Sales and Fr. Surin to prepare my small equipment for eternity. Now the best equipment is that which appeared for us in the crosses which we bear lovingly, and the great sacrifices we make for God in doing His holy will. Nothing will console us more at the hour of death than our humble submission to the different arrangements of divine Providence in spite of the subtle imaginations of self-love often hidden under the most spiritual disguise and the most specious pretexts.

Do not be surprised then, my dear Sister, at being placed by God in this necessity of practising abandonment. The vicissitudes of good and evil, of illness and cure through which He makes you pass are well calculated to keep you in a state of continual dependence upon Him and to impel you to make acts of confidence of the most meritorious kind. To make a holy use of sufferings mitigates them considerably, and renders them extremely profitable. To bear them well is to make a great sacrifice comparable to that of those generous Christians who formerly confessed their faith at the stake; because the sufferings of life and the sorrows attached to the different states make martyrs of Providence, as the tortures inflicted by tyrants made martyrs of faith and of religion. I find, too, that the comparison of which you make use is very just. Yes, our life is like the journey of the Israelites across the desert amidst a thousand trials and followed by the too just judgments of God. Let us imitate the faithful Jews in recognising the divine equity in the chastisements He inflicts on us, and in regarding all our afflictions both visible and hidden as the work of God and not that of man’s injustice. God, says St. Augustine, would not allow any evil to happen, if He were not sufficiently powerful and good to turn it all to the greater good of His elect. Let us make use of our present evils, to escape those that are eternal, and to merit the rewards promised to faith and patience. The time will come, and it is at hand, when we shall say with David, “We have rejoiced for the days in which Thou hast humbled us for the years in which we have seen evils” (Ps. 89, v. 15).


Letter XXXVI – Not to Desire Consolations

To the same person. Nancy, 21st February 1735. Desire for consolations a mistake.

My dear Sister,

I have seen the card announcing the death of dear Sister Anne-Catherine de Prudhomme (see note). I could in no way regret the departed whose fate is rather to be envied. At the sight of death fear should be united to confidence, but confidence ought to predominate.

Abandonment is what the Sister you mention should aim at. I refer her on this subject to the letter of B. Paul, who says she is no longer uneasy, as formerly, about the graces necessary during life, and at the hour of death, because she will be encouraged by God whose name of “Father” gives her confidence with resignation. If it is not possible to feel this, even then one must abandon oneself to God, and this abandonment when not felt is of more value since it involves a greater sacrifice.

This letter of B. Paul I use as spiritual reading. After having answered it, it seemed to me that I had understood better from it, and more enjoyed certain very interior things that were both delicate and profound. I do not at all approve of an anxious pursuit after consolations either in spiritual or physical wretchedness and misery. That comes of too much care of oneself. Would that there were souls strong and courageous enough to endure the apparent absences of the heavenly Spouse, who never absents Himself in reality, but only in appearance, to detach us from what is sensible even in the most spiritual things, because the gifts of God are not God Himself. He alone is all, and should be all in all to us. Excessive fear arises from a want of confidence and abandonment: it is on this account that I referred Sister. . . . to this letter of B. Paul. God wills that she, and you too, should remain in such absolute poverty that He has given me nothing for either of you; but I hope that you will both profit by a good long letter written to someone of whom I asked a copy. Will you return me the original as I want to send it to another person, who is precisely Sister. . . . of whom God made me think. I greet most heartily all the Sisters, and particularly Marie-Anne-Therese, and with especial respect your Rev. Mother, L. F. de Rosen.

Note.–This Sister came of a very noble family of Lorraine, and was professed in the Convent of the Visitation, Sister Marie de Nancy, in the year 1666, at the age of 21. Her principal attraction was that of abandonment to divine Providence. She was perfectly submissive to the will of God by a continual “fiat” for every event, saying on all occasions, “If you, my divine King, my great Monarch, will, or do not will such, or such a thing, that suffices me. May You be praised and blessed for all and in all.” Her great confidence in God drew down abundant graces upon her soul. In her last illness she remained always in a state of constant adoration, contrition, faith, confidence, and union with Jesus Christ crucified, of love of God, and abandonment to His fatherly goodness, and always wore a look of peace, joy, and thanksgiving. Her union with God continuing up to her last breath, she quietly expired of simple weakness at the age of 90, with all her intellectual faculties unimpaired. (This extract is from the life of this good Sister, by Rev. Mother L. F. de Rosen.)