No sooner was my father returned home, than he became violently ill. My
mother was at the same time indisposed in another part of the house. I
was all alone with him, ready to render him every kind of service I was
capable of, and to give him all the dutiful marks of a most sincere
affection. I do not doubt but my assiduity was very agreeable to him. I
performed the most menial offices unperceived by him taking the time
for it when the servants were not at hand; as well to mortify myself as
to pay due honor to what Jesus Christ said, that He came not to be
ministered to, but to minister. When father made me read to him, I read
with such heartfelt devotion that he was surprised. I remembered the
instruction my sister had given me, and the ejaculatory prayers and
praises I had learned.
She had taught me to praise Thee, O my God, in all Thy works. All that
I saw called upon me to render Thee homage. If it rained, I wished
every drop to be changed into love and praises. My heart was nourished
insensibly with Thy love; and my spirit was incessantly engrossed with
the remembrance of Thee. I seemed to join and partake in all the good
that was done in the world, and could have wished to have the united
hearts of all men to love Thee. This habit rooted itself so strongly in
me, that I retained it throughout my greatest wanderings.
My cousin helped not a little, to support me in these good sentiments;
I was often with her, and loved her, as she took great care of me, and
treated me with much gentleness. Her fortune being equal neither to her
birth nor her virtue, she did with charity and affection what her
condition obliged her to do. My mother grew jealous, fearing I should
love my cousin too well and herself too little. She who had left me in
my young years to the care of her maids, and since that to my own, only
requiring if I was in the house. Troubling herself no further, now
required me always to stay with her, and never suffered me to be with
my cousin but with great reluctance. My cousin fell ill. My mother took
that occasion to send her home, which was a very severe stroke to my
heart, as well as to that grace which began to dawn in me.
My mother was a very virtuous woman. She was one of the most charitable
women of her age. She not only gave the surplus, but even the
necessities of the house. Never were the needy neglected. Never any
wretched one came to her without succor. She furnished poor mechanics
wherewith to carry on their work, and needy tradesmen wherewith to
supply their shops. From her, I think, I inherited my charity and love
for the poor. God favored me with the blessing of being her successor
in that holy exercise. There was not one in the town, or its environs,
who did not praise her for this virtue. She sometimes gave to the last
penny in the house, though she had a large family to maintain, and yet
she did not fail in her faith.
My mother's only care about me had been all along to have me in the
house, which indeed is one material point for a girl. This habit of
being so constantly kept within, proved of great service after my
marriage. It would have been better had she kept me more in her own
apartment, with an agreeable freedom and inquired oftener what part of
the house I was in.
After my cousin left me, God granted me the grace to forgive injuries
with such readiness, that my confessor was surprised. He knew that some
young ladies had, out of envy, traduced me and that I spoke well of
them as occasion offered. I was seized with an ague, which lasted four
months, in which I suffered much. During that time, I was enabled to
suffer with much resignation and patience. In this frame of mind and
manner of life I persevered, so long as I continued the practice of
mental prayer.
Later we went to pass some days in the country. My father took along
with us one of his relations, a very accomplished young gentleman. He
had a great desire to marry me; but my father, resolved not to give me
to any near kinsman on account of the difficulty obtaining
dispensations, put him off, without alleging any false or frivolous
reasons for it. As this young gentleman was very devout, and every day
said the office of the Virgin, I said it with him. To have time for it,
I left off prayer which was to me the first inlet of evils. Yet, I kept
up for a long time some share of the spirit of piety; for I went to
seek out the little shepherdesses, to instruct them in their religious
duties. This spirit gradually decayed, not being nourished by prayer. I
became cold toward God. All my old faults revived to which I added an
excessive vanity. The love I began to have for myself extinguished what
remained in me of the love of God.
I did not wholly leave off mental prayer, without asking my confessor's
leave. I told him I thought it better to say the office of the Virgin
every day than to practice prayer; I had not time for both. I saw not
that this was a stratagem of the enemy to draw me from God, to entangle
me in the snares he had laid for me. I had time sufficient for both, as
I had no other occupation than what I prescribed to myself. My
confessor was easy in the matter. Not being a man of prayer he gave his
consent to my great hurt.
Oh, my God, if the value of prayer were but known, the great advantage
which accrues to the soul from conversing with Thee, and what
consequence it is of to salvation, everyone would be assiduous in it.
It is a stronghold into which the enemy cannot enter. He may attack it,
besiege it, make a noise about its walls; but while we are faithful and
hold our station, he cannot hurt us. It is alike requisite to dictate
to children the necessity of prayer as of their salvation. Alas!
unhappily, it is thought sufficient to tell them that there is a Heaven
and a Hell; that they must endeavor to avoid the latter and attain the
former; yet they are not taught the shortest and easiest way of
arriving at it. The only way to Heaven is prayer; a prayer of the
heart, which every one is capable of, and not of reasonings which are
the fruits of study, or exercise of the imagination, which, in filling
the mind with wandering objects, rarely settle it; instead of warming
the heart with love to God, they leave it cold and languishing. Let the
poor come, let the ignorant and carnal come; let the children without
reason or knowledge come, let the dull or hard hearts which can retain
nothing come to the practice of prayer and they shall become wise.
O ye great, wise and rich, have ye not a heart capable of loving what
is proper for you and of hating what is destructive? Love the sovereign
good, hate all evil, and ye will be truly wise. When ye love anyone, is
it because ye know the reasons of love and its definitions? No,
certainly. Ye love because your heart is formed to love what it finds
amiable. Surely you cannot but know that there is nought lovely in the
universe but God. Know ye not that He has created you, that He has died
for you? But if these reasons are not sufficient, which of you has not
some necessity, some trouble, or some misfortune? Which of you does not
know how to tell his malady, and beg relief? Come, then, to this
Fountain of all good, without complaining to weak and impotent
creatures, who cannot help you; come to prayer; lay before God your
troubles, beg His grace--and above all, that you may love Him. None can
exempt himself from loving; for none can live without a heart, nor the
heart without love.
Why should any amuse themselves, in seeking reasons for loving Love
itself? Let us love without reasoning about it, and we shall find
ourselves filled with love, before the others have learned the reasons
which induced to it. Make trial of this love, and you will be wiser in
it than the most skillful philosophers. In love, as in everything else,
experience instructs better than reasoning. Come then, drink at this
fountain of living waters, instead of the broken cisterns of the
creature, which far from allaying your thirst, only tend continually to
augment it. Did ye once drink at this fountain, ye would not seek
elsewhere for anything to quench your thirst; for while ye still
continue to draw from this source, ye would thirst no longer after the
world. But if ye quit it, alas! the enemy has the ascendant. He will
give you of his poisoned draughts, which may have an apparent
sweetness, but will assuredly rob you of life.
I forsook the fountain of living water when I left off prayer. I
became as a vineyard exposed to pillage, hedges torn down with liberty
to all the passengers to ravage it. I began to seek in the creature
what I had found in God. He left me to myself, because I first left
him. It was His will by permitting me to sink into the horrible pit, to
make me feel the necessity I was in of approaching Him in prayer.
Thou hast said, that Thou wilt destroy those adulterous souls who
depart from Thee. Alas! it is their departure alone which causes their
destruction, since, in departing from Thee, O Sun of Righteousness,
they enter into the regions of darkness and the coldness of death, from
which they would never rise, if Thou didst not revisit them. If Thou
didst not by thy divine light, illuminate their darkness, and by thy
enlivening warmth, melt their icy hearts, and restore them to life,
they would never rise.
I fell then into the greatest of all misfortunes. I wandered yet
farther and farther from Thee, O my God, and thou didst gradually
retire from a heart which had quitted Thee. Yet such is thy goodness,
that it seemed as if Thou hadst left me with regret; and when this
heart was desirous to return again unto Thee, with what speed didst
Thou come to meet it. This proof of Thy love and mercy, shall be to me
an everlasting testimony of thy goodness and of my own ingratitude.
I became still more passionate than I had ever been, as age gave more
force to nature. I was frequently guilty of lying. I felt my heart
corrupt and vain. The spark of divine grace was almost extinguished in
me, and I fell into a state of indifference and indevotion, though I
still carefully kept up outside appearances. The habit I had acquired
of behaving at church made me appear better than I was. Vanity, which
had been excluded to my heart now resumed its seat. I began to pass a
great part of my time before a looking glass. I found so much pleasure
in viewing myself, that I thought others were in the right who
practiced the same. Instead of making use of this exterior, which God
had given me, that I might love Him the more, it became to me only the
means of a vain complacency. All seemed to me to look beautiful in my
person, but I saw not that it covered a polluted soul. This rendered me
so inwardly vain, that I doubt whether any ever exceeded me therein.
There was an affected modesty in my outward deportment that would have
deceived the world.
The high esteem I had for myself made me find faults in everyone else
of my own sex. I had no eyes but to see my own good qualities, and to
discover the defects of others. I hid my own faults from myself, or if
I remarked any, yet to me they appeared little in comparison of others.
I excused, and even figured them to myself as perfections. Every idea I
had of others and of myself was false. I loved reading to such excess,
particularly romances, that I spent whole days and nights at them.
Sometimes the day broke while I continued to read, insomuch, that for a
length of time I almost lost the habit of sleeping. I was ever eager to
get to the end of the book, in hopes of finding something to satisfy a
certain craving which I found within me. My thirst for reading was only
increased the more I read. Books are strange inventions to destroy
youth. If they caused no other hurt than the loss of precious time, is
not that too much? I was not restrained, but rather encouraged to read
them under this fallacious pretext, that they taught one to speak well.
Meanwhile, through thy abundant mercy, O my God, Thou camest to seek me
from time to time, Thou didst indeed knock at the door of my heart. I
was often penetrated with the most lively sorrow and shed abundance of
tears. I was afflicted to find my state so different from what it was
when I enjoyed Thy sacred presence; but my tears were fruitless and my
grief in vain. I could not of myself get out of this wretched state. I
wished some hand as charitable as powerful would extricate me; as for
myself I had no power. If I had had any friend, who would have examined
the cause of this evil, and made me have recourse again to prayer,
which was the only means of relief, all would have been well. I was
(like the prophet) in a deep abyss of mire, which I could not get out
off. I met with reprimands for being in it, but none were kind enough
to reach out to free me. And when I tried vain efforts to get out, I
only sunk the deeper, and each fruitless attempt only made me see my
own impotence, and rendered me more afflicted.
Oh, how much compassion has this sad experience given me for sinners.
It has taught me why so few of them emerge from the miserable state
into which they have fallen. Such as see it only cry out against their
disorders, and frighten them with threats of future punishment! These
cries and threats at first make some impression, and they use some weak
efforts after liberty, but, after having experienced their
insufficiency, they gradually abate in their design, and lose their
courage for trying any more. All that man can say to them afterward is
but lost labor, though one preach to them incessantly. When any for
relief run to confess, the only true remedy for them is prayer; to
present themselves before God as criminals, beg strength of Him to rise
out of this state. Then would they soon be changed, and brought out of
the mire and clay. But the devil has falsely persuaded the doctors and
the wise men of the age, that, in order to pray, it is necessary first
to be perfectly converted. Hence people are dissuaded from it, and
hence there is rarely any conversion that is durable. The devil is
outrageous only against prayer, and those that exercise it; because he
knows it is the true means of taking his prey from him. He lets us
undergo all the austerities we will. He neither persecutes those that
enjoy them nor those that practice them. But no sooner does one enter
into a spiritual life, a life of prayer, but they must prepare for
strange crosses. All manner of persecutions and contempts in this world
are reserved for that life.
Miserable as the condition was to which I was reduced by my
infidelities, and the little help I had from my confessor, I did not
fail to say my vocal prayers every day, to confess pretty often, and to
partake of the communion almost every fortnight. Sometimes I went to
church to weep, and to pray to the Blessed Virgin to obtain my
conversion. I loved to hear anyone speak of God, and would never tire
of the conversation. When my father spoke of Him, I was transported
with joy; and when he and my mother went on any pilgrimage, and were to
set off early in the morning, I either did not go to bed the night
before, or hired the girls to awake me early. My father's conversation
at such times was always of divine matters, which afforded me the
highest delight, and I preferred that subject to any other. I also
loved the poor, and was charitable, even while I was so very faulty.
How strange may this seem to some, and how hard to reconcile things so
very opposite.