ANNECY, _April 5th, 1637._ MY DEAREST DAUGHTER,
May our most gentle Saviour in His goodness fill our souls with the merits of His holy Passion! Alas! my daughter, if you knew me such as I really am you would not desire many years of life for me in this valley of tears, but rather that God in His merciful goodness should soon take me to Himself. Still less should you think that sanctity was ripe in me, for truly all I can discover within my soul is very great poverty and misery. To speak quite in confidence to you and to you alone: it has pleased the divine Goodness to deprive me of all light and consolation, and to let me be overwhelmed with darkness and affliction. In a word, I am she for whom our good Mother has asked you to pray, and I beseech you to do it with all the compassionate affection and the loving charity which God has put into your heart for me. For indeed, dearest daughter, I am in sore need of your prayers; no other desire am I conscious of save that God may hold me in His blessed hands and so keep me from offending Him. To do and suffer all, for and according to His good pleasure, is enough for me. I tell you all quite openly in order that you may speak of me to the _Heart_ of our divine Saviour, whom I bless and thank for the graces that He continues to bestow upon you, with the growth of that intimate realization of His divine presence. Oh, how precious, how glorious is this grace! Yet this gift of His presence is not the same as His presence in the divine Sacrament, where His Sacred Body and Soul and Divinity all in the most real sense dwell with us, and remain with us in our miserable tabernacles until the species is consumed. Nevertheless in the gift of the presence of God this eternal Truth remains in us by essence, by power, and by grace, and to be conscious of this is an exceptional favour. You will understand this better by reading the books that treat of it. In the "Treatise of Divine Love" I think you will find it admirably explained. What I now tell you I have learnt there, or heard in sermons. Oh! what a happiness for a soul to possess her God in peace, and to be possessed entirely by Him! I am surprised that what I say contents you and gives you peace, but it is because our good God makes all things work to good for those who love Him.