I perceived the suggestions which the enemy of your progress (Satan, worldly ways) makes upon your heart, and I also perceive the grace which the most holy Spirit of God gives you to maintain you strong and firm in pursuing the path wherein He has placed you.

The evil one cares not about our mortifying the body (exterior behavior), provided we do always what he wishes (interior life): he fears not austerity, but obedience. What greater austerity can there be than holding one’s will continually subject and obedient? You are fond of these voluntary penances (false humility); if, after all, the works of self-love can be called by the name of penances (contrived spiritual efforts).

When you gave yourself to God, after many prayers and much consideration (authenticity), it was found good that you should enter into obedience and the denial of your own will, rather than be left to your own judgment and to yourself: do not, then, let yourself be overcome, but remain where our Lord has placed you (patience, trust, and submission).

It is true, that you there have great mortifications of heart, perceiving yourself so imperfect in that path, and so worthy of frequent correction and reproof; but is not this the very thing you ought to seek, mortification of the heart, and the continual sense of your own abjectness? (Brutal honesty, penetrating self-knowledge)

But, say you, you cannot do such and such a penance…Tell me, I reply, what better penance could an erring heart have, than to endure a continual cross and denial of its self-love? But I say too much: God Himself will hold you with that same hand of His mercy with which He placed you in this vocation; and the enemy will have no victory over you…. (within failure God succeeds) –The Saint Francis de Sales Collection.