Letter 109
From Quebec to her son. Summer 1647.
She replies to his complaints that not only did she abandon him so young, but now refuses him the papers with her memoirs. She promises him that in future she will hide nothing of her interior dispositions and she begins by telling him that God is leading her by a way of extreme familiarity with His Divine Majesty.

My dear and well beloved son,

The peace of our loveable and adorable Jesus be yours.

I received your letter and your whole packet when I had given up hope. Still I thought that you might have sent them through the Paris Ursulines as the surest way, and I wasn’t mistaken, for with their letters I got all yours. But I have to talk to you about other matters my dear son. You reproach me affectionately in such a way that I have to answer you. Indeed you have some reason to complain. I would willingly complain if it were permitted by Him who came on earth to bring the sword and make strange divisions. It is true that even though you were the only thing in the world to which my heart was attached, He wanted to separate us while you were still an infant at the breast and I fought for twelve years to hold on to you. Even then I had to share you with Him. Finally I had to yield to the power of Divine love and suffer the most painful separation of all, but that didn’t prevent me thinking myself time and time again the most cruel of mothers. I ask your pardon my dear son because I have caused you much suffering. But let us find consolation in the thought that life is short and that we will have, through the mercy of Him who separated us in this world, a whole eternity to see each other and enjoy each others company in Him. As for my papers, what are they? I have only very few, my dear son, because I don’t write the things you mention. It is true that when I was extremely ill I gave the little I had to Sr. St. Joseph to have them burned, but she told me she would send them to you instead, so you had them before you asked for them. But since you find consolation in my writings and you ask for them, if I had only one sheet of paper left I’d write what should be sent to you in case I die unexpectedly.

You want to know how God has led me. I should be happy to tell you so that you would bless the ineffable Goodness who has so lovingly called us to His service. But you know there is danger of these letters falling into other hands and the fear of that happening restrains me. I assure you that from this out I will hide nothing from you of my spiritual state. At least I will speak to you clearly enough for you to understand. To tell the truth, I think I owe that to a son, consecrated to the service of my Divine Master and with whom I seem to be one in spirit. This is a paper that will let you see my dispositions when I recovered from illness nearly two years ago. Not that I should decide to write about my dispositions without necessity. In this case a sentence from Holy Scripture attracts me so strongly that physically I was not able to bear it and sought relief by writing a few words that will let you see the way His infinite bounty is leading me. It is none other than the way of loving familiarity and intimacy with intellectual lights. This brings me to that intimacy without being able to apply my mind to any interior occupations except where drawn by that light. The usual subjects of this intimate conversation are the divine attributes, the truths of Holy Scripture from the Old and New Testaments especially the maxims of the Son of God, His sovereign Dominion, the spread of His Kingdom by the conversion of souls, in such a way that this attraction is the driving force of all my activity, interior and exterior. When I say I cannot give myself to any other occupation I mean I cannot give it my full attention. When my interior liberty is not taken away totally by this adorable Goodness of my Divine Spouse, I tell Him everything I want even about worries of everyday affairs, because He honours me with a sense of His continual and familiar presence. When you were only about a year old He began to draw me to this method of prayer but even in that time I have passed through different states according to the designs of His Goodness, so loving and full of Mercy in spite of my vileness, baseness, rusticity and infidelities. Only Infinite Goodness would tolerate this and it has impeded the work of my sanctification. To tell the truth I haven’t a trace of holiness. That’s what I beg you to recommend to Our Lord because otherwise I would only be a tinkling cymbal with its transient sound. I fear destroying God’s plans for me and wasting His grace.

Since my illness my interior disposition has been a complete detachment from all things, all exterior things are a cross, not that I am anxious about them, I accept them as God’s orders. Obedience tells me that nothing can happen but by His doing. I have a continual interior urge to follow and embrace what I know to be for the greater Glory of God and what seems to be the most perfect of the gospel maxims according to the duties of my state and the directions of my superior. I fail often and this humiliates me beyond what I can say. For the past three years I think almost continually of death but I wish for neither life nor death but for what the Master of life and death has ordained for me from all Eternity. These sentiments bring solid peace to my heart and soul and a spiritual nourishment that enables me to live and accept with serenity whatever happens either to me or to others in this end of the world where there are plenty of occasions for practising patience and other virtues that I know nothing about. Do not rejoice to have a mother who serves God with purity and fidelity. When you have thanked Him for His favours ask His pardon for my infidelity and spiritual impurity and don’t fail to ask Him to give me the contrary virtues.

This is the paper of which I have spoken. I am copying it because it is only a scribble written to ease a feeble head. On these words of the Prophet I was filled with a spiritual light on the twofold beauty of the Son of God. My heart had to seek refuge in my pen but without any forethought as the Spirit would not allow it as it was to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity my soul had access and it was to Him I addressed my aspirations as the Spirit led me. It was all beyond the power of words, this is all I can say about it: “You are the most beautiful of the Sons of Men, oh my Beloved! You are beautiful my dear Love, in your two-fold beauty, Divine and Human”.

“You are beautiful my dear Love and you enrapture my spirit in the ineffable vision of You in Your Father and Your Father in You. But how can I bear to look on such splendours if you do not enrapture my spirit and in this rapture unite it to yourself making it one with you, so that I see you, God from God, Light from Light, God from true God and I embrace you as my Love and only Good. Oh my Divine Spouse what is this? I see You entirely belonging to Your Father and You are all mine: Your Father and you belong entirely to me. Your Father is also mine; I don’t know how that can be. I see myself in One who lets me do what I like by the power which He gives me, which is my love and my life. Oh my beloved, in this intimacy that charms my soul it seems that my nothingness is lost in a bottomless abyss. This great abyss is You who hold me under your power and at the same time inspires me to talk to You, as if I had power over You!
Pardon me for taking liberties, it’s your fault for you enchant me in this state. This overture that you have made to my heart that is continually aspiring and sighing is a wordless dialogue that would physically overpower me if it passed through the senses. All is reduced to saying that I see you as Essential Being. 0, Love, Love. having made me repeat this canticle for a long time I find myself in You, You leave me speechless. I am powerless by an inexpressible consummation of love. I see much of Your grandeur and Your outpourings of love. 0 uncreated Word, they annihilate my power of thought in a profound abyss.

You know my dear Spouse, the effect on my heart of the word my spiritual Father spoke after my confession, that even if I were to die alone in his absence in view of the access You have given my soul I would have nothing to fear, otherwise You would not treat me as a Spouse in whom I should have confidence. My spirit is still touched. Not to treat You as my spouse would be insupportable, that is why nothing causes me anxiety any more. My Beloved, You know all my affairs, do them for me. You know the number of souls that I am responsible for, to present them everyday to Your Father on Your divine Heart. Today I am so ill and so powerless that I can do no more, I abandon myself to You.

After that I felt my cares drop from me and my heart sighing after You. I say to You from time to time, as one abandoned to You, my dearly Beloved, You do my work my dear Love; I have charged You with it. I was in pain when my father ordered me to ask you what place You would give me if You called me to Yourself because my dear Love I am so abandoned to Your disposal that I hardly bother about what You would do with me. All the same I asked through obedience, but in asking You I felt myself carried away into abandonment. Put me where You like, You will be my Love everywhere. I hope I will see You in Your two-fold beauty, Divine and Human, in the splendour of the Saints, in the clay of Your strength. You, my beloved, for love of mankind have become man to allow us to share in Your Godhead. I look forward gladly to Your last coming, so that my soul may see You triumph over my enemies, singing with You the song of victory. I cannot put into words what I think at this point. If my heart responds, You alone know the access it has to Your divine Heart. I must stop my dear Love, my Pledge, my Security, my Life. You are all mine and I am all Yours, I think of my weakness and rusticity”.

That is enough for this year, my dear Son. I am so immersed in external business that I can write to you only in little stolen moments. [I have six score letters to answer, besides dispatching the community writings. This is how we spend our life while awaiting Eternity.] I am consoled to hear the news of your holy Congregation, and the happy outcome of its business. You fortunately are known only to God; keep away from all conversations except where God will be glorified otherwise remain hidden in Our Adorable Jesus, our Unique Good, our Life, our All.

From Quebec. 1647
p. 122 – 124.