LXXXIX. To M. de Coysia, Counsellor to the Royal Senate of Savoy.

Vive ✠ Jésus!

Annecy, 19th March, 1633.

Alas! Sir, what is this that I have just heard? That you are arrested and charged with fresh accusations! Our good God, in permitting so much affliction, can have no other design than by it to make you conformable to His beloved Son our most gentle Redeemer. If you shut your eyes to the things of earth and open them to eternal truths this tribulation, accepted with loving and patient submission, will, in the end, work a weight of glory and bring you solid peace. One single spark of this true honour is worth more, a million times, than all the prosperity that the world could offer, which, as you know, Sir, is all deceit and illusion. Ponder well over the accusations with which the most holy Son of the Eternal Father was charged, the pains that He suffered, followed as they were by a terrible and ignominious death. You are not more innocent than He. And all this He suffered for you, for me, for all ungrateful men, because it was the good pleasure of His Eternal Father, with a love, patience, and humility incomprehensible to us. So do you, Sir, seek to imitate this portion of His Passion. Lovingly embrace His will. Resign yourself absolutely to it. Place yourself and all your affairs in His hands, so that He may dispose of all according to His good pleasure....

I need not assure you of our prayers: both affection and duty claim them. May Our Lord be the joy and consolation of Madame, my most dear sister, and of yourself.

Always sincerely your very humble servant.

Feast of the glorious Saint Joseph, to whom I recommend you with all my heart.