XCV To M. Noël Brulart, the Commander de SilleryA
Vive ✠ Jésus!
[Date not given.]
Now see, my most dear Brother, how you have fallen into the state to which I always feared your great fervour would reduce you. And yet you say that you fear to flatter yourself and are not sufficiently on your guard against your own cowardliness. My true Father, for the love of God make no such reflections: for believe me all these little apprehensions that you are not doing enough are not half so pleasing to God as would be your submission in accepting the relief you require both for body and mind. God only wants your heart. Our uselessness and powerlessness when lovingly accepted through reverence and devotion to His most holy will are more agreeable to Him than if we were perpetually doing violence to ourselves by great works of penance. Indeed, as you know, it is the height of perfection to will in regard to ourselves as God wills. And since He has given you a delicate constitution He wishes you to take care of it, so do not want to exact from it what He in His gentleness does not ask. A mild and tranquil inaction is what He requires of you, resting near Him, without paying any attention whatsoever either to the suggestions of your understanding or the movements of your will, unless it be to say some words of love, fidelity, and simple acquiescence offered gently and tranquilly without effort, and without desire to feel consolation or satisfaction in them. This practised with peace and repose of spirit will be very agreeable to God, more so, I think, than anything else you could do. Bear this state then, letting it take the place of the excessive application of mind which has reduced you to your present condition. Just one word more. Believe me, if instead of the four or five hours which you spend every day on your knees you would spend one hour—that is a quarter of an hour after rising, another in preparation for holy Mass, the same in thanksgiving, and one short quarter for the evening examen—that should be quite sufficient. Try for the love of God, by repose of body and mind, and by taking plenty of good nourishing food, to regain your former strength. If I did not feel it my duty to make this request I should not be writing to you so soon. And I trust through your goodness and all your fatherliness towards us that, for our consolation, you will not overlook anything which you feel may help towards your recovery, or that you think will make you stronger in the future. I have not written to our charming and lovable dearest daughter,B because she does not know of your illness.
A word to the good mother, who, though we write seldom to each other, I know to be so dear to you in Our Lord.
I pray God in His mercy to preserve you for many years for the service of His glory and the happiness of our Congregation. Amen.
I am, Sir,
Yours, etc.
Notes
A Noël Brulart, Commander of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (better known in the correspondence of St. Jane Frances as the Commander de Sillery), after a brilliant career at Court, where as Ambassador to the courts of Spain and Rome he displayed all the pride and splendour that his great revenues enabled him to gratify, fell under the influence of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Visitation Nuns, by whom he was excited to a higher ambition, and in 1632, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, giving up his worldly career, became a Priest and consecrated his wealth to relieving the unfortunate and furthering the interests of religion. A generous benefactor to the Visitation Order, amongst many other gifts he built the Church of the first monastery of Paris (designed by Mansard), where he was buried. It is now, alas! the Protestant temple of the Rue St. Antoine, near the Bastille. Commander de Sillery closed a life of rare sanctity on the 26th Sep., 1640, in the sixty-third year of his age. The above letter is taken from the “Lettres de Ste Jeanne Françoise Frémoit de Chantal.” Tournei edition. J. Casterman, 1848.
B Presumably Mother Marie Jacqueline Favre.