The happiness experienced by a Community of Poor Clares in practising abandonment to God.
My dear Sister,
I have made a discovery here that has given me more satisfaction than anything else could have done. In this town of Albi there is a convent of Poor Clares of the Great Reform, entirely separated from the world, who take no dowry and live on daily alms. The Superior is the most saintly person I have ever encountered in my life. I felt beforehand a great interior drawing to have a share in their holy intercourse, and nearly all of them have told me that they felt the same about me. I believe that God intends to bestow some great graces on me through their holy prayers. They lead a very interior life and practice abandonment to God with a remarkable perfection. When I assured them that on every occasion that presented itself I would try to procure alms for them, they seemed to be quite scandalised and begged me to think only of their spiritual needs and to make them more detached and more holy by my instructions and prayers. You cannot imagine anything more wonderful than their union, candour, and simplicity. Impressed by their great austerities I asked them one day if such a hard life did not affect their health and shorten their lives. They replied that there were hardly ever any invalids amongst them, and that very few died young, most of them living to be over eighty. They added that fasting and mortification contributed to improve their health and to prolong life, which good cheer usually tended to shorten. I have never beheld such gaiety and holy joy anywhere else as among these good nuns. To please them I had to talk continually on spiritual subjects as they could not tolerate gossip and worldly news, but said "of what use is all that to us"? I assure you, you would be edified and very glad on my account of this fortunate discovery, for, although I have often visited this place before, I knew the Community only by name, and looked on the nuns as dead to all; buried and quite out of sight.
What a favour and consolation for me! I might add it is fitting also to praise and magnify God for the wonders He has worked in these souls.
To Sister Marie-Anne-Thérèse de Rosen (1724).
Concerning motives for abandonment on account of the goodness and greatness of the divine Majesty.
My dear Sister,
Do not ask me for new ways of acquiring the friendship of God, and of making rapid progress in virtue. I know only one way which I have more than once explained to you, and of which my daily experience demonstrates more and more clearly the infallible efficacy. This secret is, abandonment to divine Providence. Bear with me for calling your attention to it once again, and do not grow weary, either, of learning what I do not weary of teaching you. I should like to cry out everywhere, " Abandonment! abandonment!" and again " Abandonment!" unbounded and unreserved; and for two good reasons.
1st. Because the greatness of God and His sovereign dominion over all, require that all creatures should bow before Him, that all should be cast down, and as it were annihilated before His supreme Majesty. There is no comparison between His infinite greatness and our nothingness. It is above all things, comprehends all things, absorbs all things in its immensity. Or, rather, it is all things since all things that have a separate existence from the Divinity have received their being from Him in creation and still continue to receive it in their preservation which is creation renewed unceasingly. Thus the existence we have received from God remains, as it were, in the bosom of the Divinity and never leaves its service, but remains plunged and engulfed therein. God, then, is the author of all being, nothing is, nor lives, nor subsists, nor moves, but by Him, and in Him, He is Who is, by Whom and in Whom all exists, and Who is in all things.
Things, compared with nothingness, seem to have an existence,
but, compared with God, they seem nothing; they only possess
being and substance by the gift of God; while He alone exists
of Himself, and owes nothing to any other than Himself. Therefore as
everything belongs to Him, necessarily everything will
return to Him that His supreme dominion may be glorified by
all His creatures. Those creatures that have not the gift of
Our merits, regarded in this light, far from inspiring us with pride will pierce us with the idea of our own utter dependence, which, as we see more clearly we shall understand better; and we shall finish by arriving at the complete annihilation of our entire being before God. Thus alone shall we be true, and shall be before God in our proper state--that of nothingness. Thus, also, shall we practise perfect abandonment. To keep oneself always in this interior disposition is what Holy Scripture calls "walking in justice--in truth," outside this state there is nothing but falsehood and injustice towards God. Injustice because we deprive Him of the gory that belongs to Him; falsehood because we flatter ourselves in appropriating what can never belong to us.
2nd. The second motive to induce us to abandon ourselves without reserve is, that, unless God receives from His creatures the homage due to His infinite Majesty He cannot give free vent to His infinite goodness. All that His creatures bring to Him by a total renunciation He wills to return to them by a gratuitous gift of His mercy; or rather, He repays infinitely more than they have given Him, because in return for the gift of their limited being He bestows on them His infinite riches. Therefore at the bottom of this abyss of renunciation where we should expect to find nothingness we find infinitude. What an exchange of the divine liberality! What ingenuity of divine wisdom! What a contrivance and surprise of the divine goodness!