Salesian Literature

Letters on:

Overcoming Fear, Temptation, Failure and Discouragement

1. We must be patient as we seek perfection    ::    2. Have courage, for you have only just begun   ::    3. Be gentle and charitable to your soul

4. God loves greater infirmity with greater tenderness   ::    5. We must bear ourselves until God bears us to Heaven   

6. Self-love can be mortified, but never dies   ::    7. We must attain holy indifference   ::    8. Lean on the mercy of God

9. To change the world, we must change ourselves   ::    10. In patience shall you possess your soul   ::    11. Do not worry yourself about temptations  

12. We must not be fearful of fear   ::    13. Constrain yourself only to your serving God well   ::    14. True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God

15. We must do all by love and nothing by force   ::    16. Be then all for God

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4. God loves greater infirmity with greater tenderness

To a superior of the Visitation nuns, on accepting imperfections

 

Madame,

 

It would have been to me a consolation beyond compare to see you all when I passed by, but since God did not will it, I could not will it.  And meanwhile, my dearest daughter, I very willingly read your letters and answer them.

 

Our Blessed Lady knows, dearest child, that her Son thinks of you, and regards you with love!  Yes, my dear daughter, He thinks of you, and not only of you, but of the least hair of your head (Mt. 10:30; Lk. 21:18).  This is an article of faith, and we may not have the least doubt of it.  But of course I know well you do not doubt it; you only express thus the aridity, dryness, and insensibility in which the lower portion of your soul finds itself now.  “Indeed the Lord is in this place and I know it” (Gen. 28:16), said Jacob – that is, I did not perceive it; I had no feeling of it; if seemed not so to me.

 

I have spoken of this in my Treatise on the Love of God, treating of the death of the soul and of resignations; I do not remember in which section[1].  And you can have no doubt about whether God regards you with love, for He regards lovingly the most horrible sinners in the world on the smallest true desire they have of conversion.

 

And tell me, my dearest child, have you not the intention of being God’s?  do you not want to serve Him faithfully?  And who gives you this desire and this intention, if not God Himself in His loving regard for you?  The way is not to examine whether your heart pleases Him, but whether His heart pleases you.  And if you look at His heart, it will be impossible for it not to please you, for it is a heart so gentle, so sweet, so condescending, so amorous of poor creatures if only they acknowledge their misery, so gracious toward the miserable, and so good to penitents!  And who would not love this royal heart, paternally maternal toward us?

 

You say rightly, my dearest child, that these temptations come because your heart is without tenderness toward God.  For it is true that if you had tenderness, you would have consolation; and if you had consolation you would no longer be in trouble.  But, my daughter, the love of God does not consist in consolation, nor in tenderness; otherwise Our Lord would not have loved His Father when He was “sorrowful unto death” (Mt. 26:38), and cried out, “My Father, my Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (cf. Mt. 27:46)  And it was exactly then that He made the greatest act of love it is possible to imagine.

 

In fact, we always wish to have a little consolation and sugar on our food – that is, we want to have the feeling of love and tenderness, and consequently consolation.  And similarly, we greatly wish to be without imperfection.  But, my dearest child, we must patiently continue to be of human nature and not angelic.

 

Our imperfections must not give us pleasure; indeed we should say with the holy Apostle, “Unhappy man that I am: who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24)  But neither must they astonish us nor take away our courage.  We must, indeed, draw from them submission, humility, and distrust of ourselves, but not discouragement, nor affliction of heart, much less distrust of the love of God toward us.  So God does not love our imperfections and venial sins, but He loves us greatly in spite of them.  Again, the weakness and infirmity of the child displeases the mother, yet she does not stop loving it, but even loves it tenderly and with compassion.  In the same way, although God does not love our imperfections and venial sins, He does not cease to love us tenderly.  Therefore, David had reason to say to Our Lord, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak” (Ps. 6:3; RSV Ps. 6:2).

 

Well, now, that is enough, my dearest daughter.

 

Live joyously.  Our Lord watches over you, and watches over you with love, and with greater tenderness insofar as you have more infirmity.  Never let your spirit voluntarily nourish thoughts contrary to this; and when they come, do not regard them in themselves.  Turn your eyes from their iniquity, and turn them back toward God with a courageous humility, to speak to Him of His ineffable goodness, with which He loves our failing, poor, and abject human nature, in spite of its infirmities.

 

Pray for my soul, my dearest child, and recommend me to your dear novices, all of whom I know, except Sister Colin.

 

I am entirely yours in Our Lord.  May He live for ever and ever in our hearts!  Amen.

 

Francis

 

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[1] Treatise on the Love of God, Book 9, chapters 3, 11 – 13.

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