To Mother de Saumaise, at Moulins
(13) 1682
Dearest Mother,
It would give me great satisfaction to be able to tell you my miseries, for they would make you understand better Our Sovereign Master’s great mercies to me. One of the most precious and useful of these is my illness. Yes, I assure you the cross of infirmity and humiliation is so necessary for me that my Sovereign told me that without it, I should not have been able to avoid another which, I think would have been very dangerous.
I need not think about myself anymore, nor about what it may please my Savior to do concerning me or in me. He said He would never fail to take care of me except when I insisted on meddling in my own affairs. I have often found this out through my infidelity which has brought about the upsetting of my plans. All I wish to do now is what He has so often told me. “Let Me act”, He said.
The Sacred Heart, Romain Cazes, 1870
Moreover, He has turned loose in me three persecutors. They torment me continually. The first one calls up the other two. That first one is such a great desire to love Him that it seems everything I see ought to be changed into flames of pure love so that He may be loved in the Blessed Sacrament. It is a martyrdom to me to think He is so little loved there, and that there are so many hearts that reject His pure love, forget it, and spurn it. If only I myself at least would love Him my heart would be consoled with its sorrow. But I am the most ungrateful and faithless of creatures and lead a life wholly unmortified and filled with self love.
I feel myself continually urged to suffer, but with what terrible repugnance on the part of my low nature! This makes my crosses so heavy that I would be crushed many a time if the Heart of my adorable Jesus did not sustain me and assist me in all my needs. And all the while in the midst of my constant sufferings my heart continues to thirst after suffering. My soul suffers great agony at not yet being able to be separated from the body. I can think of no greater sacrifice than that of having to continue to live. Yet I would go on living from now until Judgment Day if God wanted me to, although the thought of being separated so long from my Lord would be harder for me to bear than a thousands deaths. Everything conspires to afflict and torment me because I cannot give my whole affection to my Divine Love, who favors me continually with His Holy Presence and Himself instructs me to describe it to you as follows.
Suppose that a powerful monarch, feeling urged to exercise his charity, should cast his eyes about over his subjects in order to select the poorest, most miserable and utterly destitute among them. Then, having found her, with overflowing liberality he poured out upon her his riches, of which the greatest would be that this great monarch would want so to humble himself as to walk constantly at the side of this poor outcast, carrying a torch and all gleaming in his royal purple. And, after allowing himself to be seen, he hid this light in the darkness of night, so as to give this poor outcast courage to approach him, and to listen to and speak to him with confidence, to receive his embraces and to return them on her part. He always looked out for her needs and took care of everything that concerned her. But if, after all that, this person should come to withdraw herself from her benefactor and to be unfaithful to him, and if, to punish her, he did nothing else than let the light he had hidden shine forth, so that she could see what he is and what she is, he all resplendent with beauty, she all covered with dirt, wounds and all sorts of filth…and if she saw at the same time the enormity of her malice and ingratitude, in contrast with the goodness of this Sovereign…I do not know whether I put it clearly enough to make you see what I mean.
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This is something like the way in which my Sovereign has dealt with His unworthy slave. Indeed, this Divine Presence makes diverse impressions on me. Sometimes He raises me to the height of all bliss from which I draw inexpressible delight. Then all I can exclaim is: ‘My Life, my Love, and my All! You are mine and I am all Yours!’ At other times He plunges me into the depths of my own nothingness where I suffer inexplicable confusion at seeing this abyss of every misery close to the abyss of all perfection. At still other times He so enters into me that He seems to leave me with no other being or life than Himself. He does this in so painful a manner that I have to repeat incessantly: ‘I want to suffer everything without complaint, since my pure love prevents me from being afraid of anything.’
But I would weary you if I recounted all these things in detail, for God is an unfathomable abyss of every good. All my glory ought to consist, as He has taught me, in considering myself but a play thing to give pleasure to His adorable Heart, which is my whole treasure. I must confess that I have nothing but my Savior Jesus Christ. He often says to me: ‘What would you do without Me? You would certainly be very poor!’
As for the other graces and gifts I receive from His bounty, I must confess that they are very great. But the Giver is more Precious than all His gifts. My heart cannot love or be attached to anything but Him alone. All else is nothing and often serves only to contaminate pure love, and to separate the soul from its Well-Beloved, Who wants to be loved solely and without self interest. I beg you to thank the Lord for His great mercies to me.
St. Margaret Mary Alacoque was born in France in 1647 to a large Catholic family. She became a nun at age twenty-three and experienced three apparitions by our Lord Jesus to promote devotion to his Sacred Heart, which she did despite her own fears of her unworthiness. Among her last words, she said, “I need nothing but God, and to lose myself in the heart of Jesus.” St. Margaret Mary’s writings are in the public domain, but her letters are published as part of a collection which you can find at this affiliate link: The Letters of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: Apostle of the Sacred Heart.