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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11. Do not worry yourself about temptations

To Jane de Chantal, on dealing with temptations

 

My child,

 

You will have now at hand, I am sure, the three letters that I have written to you, and which you had not yet received when you wrote to me on the tenth of August.  It remains for me to answer yours of the tenth, since by the preceding I have answered all the others.

 

Your temptations against the Faith have come back, and although you do not respond to them even with a single word, they press you.  You do not respond to them: that is good, my child.  But you think too much of them; you fear them too much; you dread them too much.  They would do you no harm without that.  You are too sensitive to temptations.  You love the Faith, and would not have a single thought come to you contrary to it; and as soon as a single one arises, you grieve about it and distress yourself.  You are too jealous of this purity of faith; everything seems to spoil it.  No, no, my child, let the wind blow, and think not that the rustling of the leaves is the clashing of arms.

 

Lately I was near the beehives, and some of the bees flew onto my face.  I wanted to raise my hand, and brush them off.  “No,” said a peasant to me, ”do not be afraid, and do not touch them.  They will not sting you at all; if you touch them they will bite you.”  I trusted him; not one bit me.  Trust me; do not fear these temptations.  Do not touch them; they will not hurt you.  Pass on, and do not occupy yourself with them…

 

Today is St. Augustine’s feast day; you may guess whether I have entreated for you both the Lord, and the servant and the mother of the servant of God.[1]  How my soul loves yours!  Let your soul continue to confide in mine and love it well. God wishes it, my dearest child, I know it well, and He will be glorified by it.  May God be our heart, my child; and I am in God, whom we love, and to whom we are vowed, wishes us to be such.  It is He who has given me to you: may He be for ever blessed and praised!

 

Francis

 

P.S.  I was closing this letter badly done as it is, and here are brought to me two others, one of the sixteenth, the other of the twentieth of August, enclosed in a single packet.  I see nothing in them save what I have said; you fear temptations too much.  There is no harm but that.  Be quite convinced that all the temptations of Hell cannot stain a soul that does not love them: let them have their course then. The Apostle St. Paul suffered terrible ones, and God did not will to take them form hi, and all this occurred out of love.

 

Come, come, my child, courage; let the heart be ever with its Jesus; and let this vile beast bark at the gate as much as he likes.  Live, my dear child with the sweet Jesus and your holy Abbess amid the darkness, the nails, the thorns, the spears, the derelictions; and with your mistress St. Monica, live long in tears without gaining anything.  At last, God will raise you up, and will cause you to rejoice, and “will make you see the desire of your heart” (Ps. 20:3; RSV Ps. 21:2).

 

I hope so; and if He does not do this, still we will not cease serving Him.  And for that reason He will not cease to be our God, for the affection we owe Him is of an immortal and imperishable nature.

 

Francis

 

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[1] St. Monica.

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