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

​

14. True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God

To Jane de Chantal, on charity and humility

 

My dear, my very dear child,

 

I have been ten entire weeks without having a bit of news of you, and your last letters were at the beginning of last November.  But the chief thing is that my fine patience almost disappeared from my heart, and I think would have disappeared altogether, if I had not remembered that I must keep it so that I may preach it to others.  But at last, my dearest child, yesterday comes a packet, like a fleet form the Indies, rich in letter and spiritual songs.

 

Oh!  How welcome it was, and how I cherished it!  There was one of the twenty-second of November, another of the thirtieth of December, and the third of the first of January of this year.  But if all the letters I have written you during this time were in one packet, they would be in far greater number, for as far as possible I have always written, both by Lyons and by Dijon.  Let this be said to discharge my conscience, which would hold itself forever guilty, were it not to respond to the heart of a daughter so uniquely loved.  I am going to tell you many things in a desultory fashion, according to the subject of your letters…

 

We must, after the example of our St. Bernard, be quite clean and neat, but not particular or dainty.  True simplicity is always good and agreeable to God.  I see that all the seasons of the year meet in your soul, that sometimes you feel the winter; on the morrow dryness, distractions, disgust, troubles, and weariness; sometimes the dews of May, with the perfume of holy flowers; sometimes the ardours of desire to please our good God.  There remains only autumn, of whose fruit, as you say, you do not see much.

 

Still it often happens that in threshing the corn, and pressing the grapes, there is found more than the harvest or vintage promised.  You would like all to be spring and summer; but no, my dear child, there must be change in the interior, as well as in the exterior.  It is in Heaven that all will be spring with respect to beauty, autumn with respect to enjoyment, and summer with respect to love.  There will be no winter in Heaven, but here winter is needed for abnegation and a thousand little virtues that are exercises in time of sterility.

 

Let us always walk our little step; if we have a good and resolute affection, we can never go otherwise than well.  No, my dearest child, the exercise of virtues does not require that we should ever keep actually attentive to all.  That would certainly too much entangle and hamper our thoughts and affections.  Humility and charity are the mainstays; all the others are attached to them.  We need only to keep ourselves well in these two virtues: one the lowest, the other the highest, since the preservation of the whole edifice depends on the foundation and the roof.  When one keeps the heart bound to the exercise of these, there is no great difficulty in getting the others.  These are the mothers of the virtues, which follow them as little chickens follow their mother hens.

 

Oh!  Indeed I greatly approve of your being schoolmistress.  God will be pleased, for He loves little children, and as I said at catechism the other day (to induce our ladies to take care of the girls) the angels of little children love with a special love those who bring up children in the fear of God, and who instil into their tender hearts true devotion, just as, on the contrary, Our Lord threatens those who scandalise children with the vengeance of their angels… (Mt. 18:6, 10).

 

What more shall I tell you?  I have just come from giving catechism where we have had a bit of merriment with our children, making the congregation laugh a little boy mocking balls and costume parties, for I was in my best humour, and a great audience encouraged me with its applause to play the child with the children.  They tell me it suits me well, and I believe it.

 

May God make me a true child in innocence and simplicity; but am I not also a true simpleton to say that to you?  I can’t help it; I make you see my heart as it is, and in the variety of its movements, that, as the Apostle says, you may think no more of me than is in me (2 Cor. 12:6).

 

Live joyful and courageous, my dear child.  You must have no doubt that Jesus Christ is ours.  “Yes,” a little girl once said to me, “He is more mine than I am His, and more mine than I am my own.”

 

I am going to take Him for a little while into my arms, this sweet Jesus, to carry Him in the procession of the Confraternity of the Cord, and I will say to Him the Nunc Dimittis, with Simeon (Lk. 2:29-32).  For, truly, if He is with me, I care not where I go.  I will speak to Him of your heart, and believe me, with all my power, I will beg Him to make you His very dear and well-beloved servant.  Ah! My God! How am I indebted to this Saviour, who so loves us, and how would I, once for all, press and glue Him to my breast.

 

I mean to yours, as well, since He has willed that we should be so inseparably one in Him.  Adieu, my most cherished, and truly most dear sister and daughter.

 

May Jesus ever be in our hearts; may He live and reign there eternally; may His holy name, and that of His glorious Mother, be ever blessed!  Amen.  Vive Jesus, and let the world die if it does not wish to live for Jesus.  Amen.

 

Francis

​

​

Back to Top

​