Letter 137

My dear and dearly loved child,

May the life and the love of Jesus be our life and love. Fr. Jerome Lallemant has given me news of you on his arrival. It is a great consolation to me that the news is good and such as I desire. You did well to open your heart to him and speak candidly. We should act like that with persons of his merit. We dare not wait longer for ships. They have arrived and we fear for their safe return as it is late in the season and they may be broken on ice. In the short time they are here it will be impossible for me to write to all whose letters require an answer and I shall have to defer about six score till next year, and this I don’t like to do. But I must for mortification, for God is Master of our times and moments and He wills it thus. Oblige me by assuring our mothers of this and of telling them of my heart-felt sentiments. I am singularly obliged to them for inviting me to return to France and that they would heartily welcome me and my Sisters. You make the same request and so does my son; you all have more charity for me than I deserve. I pray Our Lord to be your reward. I believe that Fr. Lallemant has calmed your fears for us because it’s remarkable how God deals with this country: when we think all is lost He draws on resources hidden from the eyes of the world by which He re-establishes or balances all things. We have seen so again this year by the great number of people who have come to settle down here and we expect a big number next year.

I cannot hide from you that I was rather surprised by certain points touched on by our Mothers in their letters concerning our Foundation contract. I don’t know who gave such an account but I assure you it is not based on fact. It claims among other things that I had made a contract in Dieppe, nullifying that made in Paris. I assure you it is not true. It speaks of the Fathers disrespectfully and untruthfully and that gives the greatest pain, to the four of us from Tours. For thanks to Our Lord the others do not know what is going on. The Fathers do but they are so virtuous and discreet that they haven’t said a single word. They even know the source of the reports, but they do not say so. So just as good people take everything for the best, they have excuses for everybody, say that people are mistaken or there is a misunderstanding.

Dear Mother Clare complains that I treat you and herself as two children. That is perhaps because I do not write to you about these external matters. I assure you my dear child that it is all so basic that I do not speak of it except through necessity and always strongly. Besides when I am inclined to speak of it I see you so well occupied that I would have scruples speaking of distracting matters. It’s good sometimes to speak of such matters when it is a question of the Glory of God but apart from that all is trash and a cause of much annoyance. Consider the effects of this report made to our Mothers. I’d like to believe it was made innocently and for a good purpose; and yet you see how it was taken for the worst and has troubled the hearts of some. Yet God has willed that it has never caused a word against charity. All that has been a lesson to me that one cannot love too much, purity of heart and interior and exterior silence. Assure dear Mother Clare that I love and cherish her as I do you. But it is a love that wishes you both in a state of eminent sanctity.

I am very grateful for your charity that came in a time of great necessity. I thank you with all my heart. You press me to tell you my needs so as to provide for them. I speak simply. I would be very much inhibited to tell you. It is true that having lost all we are in need of everything and yet l seem to want nothing. I think it is the peace of mind that I feel that makes me blind to my own necessities though I see clearly the needs of the Community. I must admit my dear child the cross is delightful when it pleases Our Divine Saviour to accompany it by peace of heart. Ask His Goodness that He may continue to give it to me while I am in charge and that I may be faithful to Him in what He wants of me. I believe we won’t be able to occupy our new building before the end of next March. We have great difficulty in furnishing it on account of the cold which is already intense. Recommend this new house to God for fear my sins would cause a second and worse fire. Calm the fears of my friends. Assure them that our poverty and our losses are inconvenient but have not caused us to lose heart. Are we not happy to have the chance of experiencing the real meaning of poverty, a virtue proper to our profession? Never have I experienced an interior peace so profound so solid as at present. My God! How loveable is complete interior and exterior denudation! How happy is the disencumbered heart! I assure you I wouldn’t change my present state for the most advantageous in Europe. As for the Iroquois I have no fear whatever of them and I don’t see why we should even though they defeated the Neutral Nations and these are more numerous than the Hurons. Their victories inflate their pride; confidence in God who humbles us, strengthens us and gives us assurance and is the foundations of our peace.

From Quebec. 23 October 1651.
Kelly, Sr M. St. Dominic, O.S.U. Marie of the Incarnation 1599 - 1672 Correspondence, (translated from the French edition by Dom Guy Oury Monk of Solesmes), Irish Ursuline Union, 2000, p. 167 - 168.