I love Father Peyriguere’s letter writing style.  The subtly of his straightforward letters deserves slow deliberate thought.  Matter of factually, he says things few are able to say and few are able to understand, and even less are able to live.

Yes, as you say, be full of gratitude.  Gratitude because you came out of the night, and also because you were plunged into it, abandoned to it, crushed by it.  Gratitude for everything in your life, since everything comes to you from God, and you know that God is your Father and Friend.  He wants only what is for our good.  He leads us along His own paths as far as He wants us to go.  And how good it is to let Him choose the paths along which He leads our steps toward Him

While praising and loving the “mysteries of God’s designs,”…you must not strain to see these designs.  There is only one thing worth-while: to surrender yourself and your fortune to His will with the blind and total trust of a little child in his father’s arms.  The child does not know where is father is taking him, and doesn’t even think of asking..

Yes, your duty of the moment is to be calm, peaceful, totally relaxed, and to question neither God nor yourself about what will happen next–and I mean by this not what will happen the day after tomorrow or tomorrow, but even today.

Welcome with great serenity the progressive return of light to your soul.  Do not rush at it greedily and impatiently.  Accept it as it comes, and in the measure which it is given to you.

Rest, rest, rest!  This is your duty for the time being.  Remember that in the life of the soul there is neither action nor inaction.  These words are meaningless.  There is simply acceptance of the will of the Father, and this is supreme activity.  Everything that does not come from Him, but that we have tried to wrest from Him by our desires and preferences, is agitation and,  therefore, useless.  

And so, for what has happened and what will happen, God be praised.

You want to hear about our work?  Yes, I accepted the help of a follower of Father de Foucauld, a sister who i now settled in Khenifra.  Do you know what I told her before she came?  Not to insist on having mass every day.  Father de Foucauld asks his followers to be ready to die of hunger.  And I, harsher still, imposed upon her a more terrible hunger than any other, a hunger for the Eucharist.  She is sure of mass and, therefore, of Communion only every two weeks.  She agreed.  To make up for this and to help her to hold fast, every time I go to Khenifra I tell her to repeat over and over again to the Eucharistic Christ in her chapel, “Just the same, if It were not here, you would not be there.”  And it’s true.  Without her, a little corner of the world would be empty of Christ.  Because of her it is full of Christ.

Disciple of Charles de Foucauld