Selected Letters of Saint Jane Frances de ChantalChantal, Jeanne-Françoise de, Saint
Religion
Selected Letters of Saint Jane Frances de Chantal
Chantal, Jeanne-Françoise de, Saint
Chantal, Jeanne-Françoise de, Saint, 1572-1641 -- Correspondence
Glory be to God, dearest Daughter, that this disagreement between you
and our Sisters of Nevers has come to an end. I have known of it for a
long time. Henceforth, I conjure you, live together in perfect and sweet
union, for such was the desire of our Blessed Father.
I shall write to our Sister the Superior of Paris, and if she can leave
you the dowry of Sister M. Marguerite I am sure she will do so, for she
is no lover of money, but justice must be maintained.
For God's sake keep far from you all desire of being well off. Love
poverty and God will make you abound in true riches: this is the spirit
of our Blessed Father. He could not tolerate any eagerness in us for
temporal goods, or that we should be solicitous at all about them. It
consoled him to see souls love and esteem poverty. Surely it is but
reasonable that we who are vowed to it should no longer hold dear the
riches we have renounced. And it is with the great Master that this
contract has been made. Oh! my daughter, be not angry with me for
speaking thus. I do not accuse you of this evil, but I speak because I
have an extreme desire to see holy poverty honoured and cherished
amongst us, and my heart's wish is that every soul in the Institute
should love it.
O Jesu! never burden yourself, daughter dearest, with girls who have no
religious vocation, nor fitting dispositions for our manner of life.
After having exercised charity for some months towards this girl, if God
does not truly touch her heart and if she does not genuinely desire to
be a Religious, you ought in all humility to ask these gentlemen, her
relations, to take her away: for how does it look, I pray you, to keep
girls in the convent who are simply boarders and _must_ have their meals
apart? Certainly, daughter, this must not be done, and I feel confident
that Sister Marie Aimée (de Morville) is too good-hearted not to help
this girl to overcome herself, and send her to eat with the community
while she is with you. My God, how we must guard ourselves against this
miserable world, and take every precaution, lest its spirit enter into
our monasteries. May God in His mercy preserve us from it!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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