Читать книгу Selected Letters of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal - Saint Jeanne-Françoise de Chantal - Страница 15

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Vive ✠ Jésus!

Annecy, 1615.

My dearly beloved Sister,

Your letters delight me, they are altogether after my own heart, that heart that so loves its dear Péronne. It is true, my child, that in this life we must always be beginning anew, but if it were not so where should we be? For this is essential to our humility and to confidence, the two virtues our good God asks of us. Be brave, train yourself to courage and to exactitude in the observance. Keep a light heart, and above all things put sadness far from you. God is wholly ours, and we, my daughter, have no other wish than to be wholly His. How then can we be solicitous about anything whatsoever? When you have time give me news of that heart that is so dear to me and that I know so well, I say, so well, thanks be to God.

I am quite easy as to dearest Sister Marie Jacqueline, for I never doubted but that she would be a success, yet to hear your assurance of it is very consoling. Give her all the help you can so as to lighten as much as possible the burden of her charge. Look after her health; I entrust it to you, and on this point she is to go by what you say.

I beseech you, my love, be a good example to others, avoid all useless conversation, never absent yourself from the community assemblies without real necessity. Give challenges to spur each other on to virtue. Let your chief care be to inculcate recollection, practise it yourself in good earnest, it ought to be preeminently our practice. Incite one another to it, and to seek Our Lord, and our own perfection in singleness of heart.

I have received all your letters and the other things you sent by Chambéry, but they came very late. Another time, my dearest daughter, to give you comfort we'll talk as you desire, heart to heart, but I am feeling the cold to-day, and am pressed for time. In a word, humility, exact observance, holy confidence and joy in God.

Our very dear Father is, he says, entirely yours. All our Sisters salute you. To conclude, you are, as I told you the other day, my own dear Péronne, whom I love with all my heart. When M. Michel goes to see you he will give you plenty of news; he is not, however, going for some little time yet.

Yours wholly in Jesus.