Her have I loved, and have sought her out from my youth, and have desired to take her for my spouse, and I became a lover of her beauty. These words stand written in the Book of Wisdom[2] and are spoken by the beautiful and all-loving Wisdom.

A Servant was filled with disgust and dejection of heart on his first setting forth on the uneven ways. Then did the Eternal Wisdom meet him in a spiritual and ineffable form, and lead him through bitter and sweet until she brought him to the right path of divine truth. And after well reflecting on his wonderful progress, he thus spoke to God; Sweet and tender Lord! from the days of my childhood my mind has sought for something with burning thirst, but what it is I have not as yet fully understood. Lord, I have pursued it ardently many a year, but I never could grasp it, for I know not what it is, and yet it is something that attracts my heart and soul, without which I never can attain true rest. Lord, I sought it in the first days of my childhood, as I saw done around me, in creatures, but the more I sought it in them the less I found it, and the nearer I approached them the further I receded from it, for every image that presented itself to my sight, before I wholly tried it, or gave myself up quietly to it, warned me away thus: "I am not what you seek!" And this repulsion I have experienced more and more in all things. Lord, now my heart rages after it, for my heart would so gladly possess it. Alas! I have so constantly had to experience what it is not! But what it is, Lord, I am not as yet clear. Tell me, beloved Lord, what it is indeed, and what is its nature, that so secretly agitates me.

Answer of Eternal Wisdom. Dost you not know it? And yet it has lovingly embraced you, has often stopped you in the way, until it has at length won you for itself alone.

The Servant. Lord, I never saw it; never heard of it: I know not what it is.

Eternal Wisdom. This is not surprising, for its strangeness and your familiarity with creatures were the cause. But now open your interior eyes and see who I am. It is I, the Eternal Wisdom, who, with the embrace of My eternal providence, have chosen you in eternity for Myself alone. I have barred the way to you as often as you would have parted company with Me, had I permitted you. In all things you didst ever meet with some obstacle and it is the sweet sign of My elect that I will needs have them for Myself.

The Servant. Tender loving Wisdom! And is it You I have so long been seeking for? is it You my spirit has so constantly struggled for? Alas, my God, why didst You not show Thyself to me long ago? Why have You delayed so long? How many a weary way have I not wandered!

Eternal Wisdom. Had I done so you would not have known My goodness so sensibly as now you know it.

The Servant. O unfathomable goodness! how very sweetly have You not manifested Thyself to me! When I was not, You gave me being. When I had separated from You, You didst not separate from me; when I wished to escape from You, You didst hold me sweetly captive. Yes, You Eternal Wisdom, if my heart might embrace You and consume all my days with You in love and praise, such would be its desire; for truly that man is blest whom You do anticipate so lovingly that You let him have nowhere true rest, till he seeks his rest in You alone. O Wisdom Elect! since in You I have found Him whom my soul loveth, despise not Your poor creature. See how dumb my heart is to all the world in joy and sorrow. Lord, is my heart always to be dumb towards You? O give my wretched soul leave, my dearest Lord, to speak a word with You, for my heart is too full to contain itself any longer; neither has it anyone in all this world to whom it can unburden itself, except to You, my elected Lord, Father, and Brother. Lord, You alone know the nature of a love overflowing heart, and know that no one can love what he cannot in any way know. Therefore, since I am now to love You alone, give me to know You entirely, so that I may be also able to love You entirely.

Eternal Wisdom. The highest emanation of all beings, taken in their natural order, is through the noblest beings to the lowest, but their refluence to their origin is through the lowest to the highest. Therefore, if you are wishful to behold Me in My uncreated Divinity you must learn how to know and love Me here in My suffering humanity for this is the speediest way to eternal salvation.

The Servant. Then let me remind You to-day, Lord,of Your unfathomable love, when You didst incline Thyself from Your lofty throne, from the royal seat of the fatherly heart, in misery and disgrace for three and thirty years, and didst show the love which You have for me and all mankind, principally in the most bitter passion of Your cruel death: Lord, be You reminded of this, that You mayest manifest Thyself spiritually to my soul, in that most sweet and lovely form to which Your immeasurable love did bring You.

Eternal Wisdom. The more mangled, the more deathly I am for love, the more lovely am I to a well-regulated mind. My unfathomable love shows itself in the great bitterness of My passion, like the sun in its brightness, like the fair rose in its perfume, like the strong fire in its glowing heat.

Therefore, hear with devotion how cruelly I suffered for you.

After the Last Supper, when on the Mount of Olives, I gave Myself up to the pangs of cruel death, and when I felt that he was present before Me, I was bathed in a bloody sweat, because of the anguish of My tender Heart, and the agony of My whole bodily nature. I was ignominiously betrayed, taken prisoner like an enemy, rigorously bound, and led miserable away. After this I was impiously maltreated with blows, with spittle, with blindfolding, accused before Caiphas, and pronounced worthy of death. Unspeakable sorrows of heart were then seen in My dear Mother, from the first sight she had of My distress till I was hung upon the cross. I was shamefully presented before Pilate, falsely denounced, and sentenced to die. They stood over against Me with terrible eyes like fierce giants, and I stood before them like a meek lamb. I, the Eternal Wisdom, was mocked as a fool in a white garment before Herod, My fair body was rent and torn without mercy by the rude stripes of whips, My lovely countenance was drenched in spittle and blood, and in this condition I was condemned, and miserable and shamefully led forth with My cross to death. They shouted after Me very furiously, so that: Crucify, crucify the miscreant! resounded to the skies.

The Servant. Alas! Lord, the beginning is indeed so bitter, how will it end? If I were to see a wild beast so abused I should hardly be able to bear it. With what reason, then, must not Your Passion pierce my heart and soul! But, Lord, this is a great marvel to my heart; I would needs seek Your divinity, and You showest me Your humanity; I would needs seek Your sweetness, and You settest before me Your bitterness; I would needs conquer,

You teachest me to fight. Lord, what do You mean?

Eternal Wisdom. No one can attain divine exaltation or singular sweetness except by passing through the image of My human abasement and bitterness. The higher one climbs without passing through My humanity, the deeper one falls. My humanity is the way one must go, My Passion the gate through which one must penetrate, to arrive at that which you seek.

Therefore, lay aside your faint-heartedness, and enter with Me the lists of knightly resolve: for, indeed, softness beseems not the servant when his master stands ready in warlike boldness. I will put you on My coat of mail, for My entire Passion must you suffer over again according to your strength.

Make up your mind to a darting encounter, for your heart, before you will subdue your nature, must often die, and you must sweat the bloody sweat of anguish because of many a painful suffering under which I mean to prepare you for Myself; for with red blossoms will I manure your spice garden.

Contrary to old custom, must you be made prisoner and bound; you will often be secretly calumniated and publicly defamed by My adversaries; many a false judgment will people pass on you; My torments must you then diligently carry in your heart with a motherly heartfelt love. You will obtain many a severe judge of your godly life; so also will your godly ways be often mocked as folly by human ways; your undisciplined body will be scourged with a hard and severe life; you will be scoffingly crowned with persecution of your holy life; after this, if only you will issue forth from your own will and deny yourself, and shalt stand as wholly disengaged from all creatures in the things which might lead you astray in your eternal salvation, even as a dying man when he departs hence, and has nothing more to do with this world if only you will do this, then will you be led forth with Me on the miserable way of the cross.

The Servant. Woe is me, Lord, but this is a dreary pastime! My whole nature rebels against these words. Lord, how shall I ever endure it all?

Gentle Lord, one thing I must say: could You not have found out some other way, in Your eternal wisdom, to save me and show Your love for me, some way which would have exempted You from Your great sufferings, and me from their bitter participation? How very wonderful do Your judgments appear!

Eternal Wisdom. The bottomless abyss of My hidden mysteries (in which I order everything according to My eternal providence), let no one explore, for no one can fathom it. And yet, in this abyss, what you ask about and many things besides are possible, which yet never happen. However, know this much, that, in the order in which emanated beings now are, a more acceptable or more pleasing way could not be. The Lord of nature knows well what He can do in nature. He knows what is best suited to every creature, and He operates accordingly. How should man better know the hidden things of God than in His assumed Humanity? How might he, who has forfeited all joy through irregular lusts, be rendered susceptible of regular and eternal joy?

How would it be possible to follow the unpracticed way of a hard and despised life, unless it had been followed by God Himself? If you didst lie under sentence of death, how could He, who should suffer the fatal penalty in your stead, better prove His fidelity and love towards you, or better excite you to love Him in return? Him, therefore, whom My unfathomable love, My unspeakable mercy, and My bright divinity, My most affable humanity, brotherly truth, espousing friendship, cannot move to ardent love, what else shall soften his stony heart? Ask the fair array of all created beings if ever I could have maintained My justice, evinced My fathomless mercy, ennobled human nature, poured out My goodness, reconciled heaven and earth, in a way more efficacious than by My bitter death?

The Servant. Lord, truly, I begin to perceive that it is even so, and he whom want of understanding has not blinded, and who well considers the subject, must confess it to You, and extol the beautiful ways of Your love above all ways. But still to follow You is very painful to a slothful body.

Eternal Wisdom. Be not terrified at the following of My Passion. For he whose interior is so possessed by God that suffering is easy to him has no cause to complain. No one enjoys Me more in My singular sweetness than he who stands with Me in harsh bitterness. No one complains so much of the bitterness of the husks as he to whom the interior sweetness of the kernel is unknown. For him who has a good second the fight is half won.

The Servant. Lord, Your comforting words have given me such heart, that, methinks, I am able to do and suffer all things in You. Therefore, I desire that You would unlock for me the entire treasure of Your Passion, and tell me still more about it.

Eternal Wisdom. When I was suspended on the lofty tree of the cross because of My unfathomable love to you and all mankind, My whole frame was very grievously distorted, My bright eyes were extinguished and turned in My head; My divine ears were filled with scoffing and blasphemy; My delicate nostrils were wounded with foul smells; My sweet mouth was tormented with bitter drink; and My tender feeling with hard blows. The whole earth was not able to afford Me any rest, for My feeble head was bowed down with pain and distress, My fair throat was unnaturally distended, My pure countenance polluted with spittle, My beautiful complexion faded. Lo! My comely figure withered entirely away, as though I were an outcast leper, and had never been the fair and Eternal Wisdom.

The Servant. O You most gracious mirror of all graces, in which the heavenly spirits regale and feed their eyes, would that I had before me Your delicious countenance in its deathly aspect until I had well steeped it in the tears of my heart; would that I might behold again and again those beautiful eyes, those bright cheeks, that tender mouth, all ghastly and dead, till I had fully relieved my heart in fervent lamentation over my Love. Alas! sweet Lord, Your Passion affects so deeply the hearts of some people that they are able to lament over You with the greatest fervour, and weep for You from their very hearts. O God, could I, and might I, now represent all devout hearts with my lamentation, might I shed the tears of all eyes, and utter the doleful words of all tongues, then would I show You today how near to my heare Your woeful Passion lies.

Eternal Wisdom. No one can better show how deeply his heart is affected by My Passion than he who endures it with Me in the practice of good works. To Me, a free heart, unconcerned about perishable love, and ever intent on following the main thing according to the type of My contemplated Passion, is more agreeable than if you didst always bewail Me, and didst shed as many tears from weeping over My torments as there ever rained drops of water from the sky; for the following of Me was the cause in which I suffered bitter death, although tears are also pleasing and agreeable to Me.

The Servant. O sweet Lord, since then an affectionate following of Your meek life and voluntary Passion is so agreeable to You, I will in future be more assiduous in a voluntary following than in a weeping sorrow. But, as I ought to have both, according to Your words, teach me how I shall resemble You in both.

Eternal Wisdom. Renounce your pleasure in dissolute sights and voluptuous words; let that savour sweetly of love, and be grateful to you, which before was repugnant to you; you should seek all your rest in Me, should willingly suffer wrong from others, desire contempt, mortify your passions, and die to all your lusts. Such is the first lesson in the school of wisdom, which is to be read in the open, distended book of My crucified body. And consider and see, whether, if any one in all this world were to do his utmost, he could yet be to Me what I am to him?

The Servant. Lord, if I forget Your worth, Your gifts, Your benefits, and all things, still one thing moves me and goes to my very heart; this is, when I well reflect not only on the way of our salvation, but also on its unfathomably faithful way. Dear Lord, many a one so bestows a gift on another, that his love and faith are better known by his way than by his gift. A small gift in a faithful way is often better than a great one without this way. Now Lord, not only is Your gift so great, but also the way of it, methinks, is so unfathomably faithful. You didst not only suffer death for me, but You didst also seek whatever is deepest in love, whatever is most intimate and hidden, in which suffering can or may be experienced.

You didst really do as though You hadst said: Behold all hearts, if ever a heart was so full of love; look on all my limbs; the noblest limb I have is my heart; my very heart have I permitted to be pierced through, to be slain and consumed, and bruised into small pieces, that nothing in me or upon me might remain unbestowed, so that ye might know my love. Alas! Lord, how was it in Your mind, or what were Your thoughts? Might one not indeed learn something farther on this head?

Eternal Wisdom. Never was there a thirsty mouth that longed so ardently for the cool fountain, nor a dying man for the pleasant days of life, as I longed to help all sinners and to render Myself beloved of them.

Sooner could you recall the days that are gone, sooner could you make green all withered flowers, and gather up every drop of rain, than possess the power to measure the love which I bear to you and all mankind. And, therefore, was I so covered with marks of love that one could not have placed the small point of a needle on any spot of My lacerated body that had not its particular love-mark. My right arm stretched out; My left very grievously distended; My right foot perforated; My left cruelly transfixed; that I hung fainting, and in great distress of My divine limbs; all My delicate members were immovably fastened to the hard bed of the cross. My hot blood, because of My anguish, burst forth in many a wild gush, which overflowed My expiring body, so that it was a most piteous sight to see.

Behold a lamentable thing! My young, My fair and blooming body began to fade, to wither and pine away, My weary and tender back had a hard pillow on the rough cross, My heavy body gave way, My whole frame was gashed with wounds, and like one great sore, and all this My loving heart willingly endured.

The Servant. Now then, cheer up you soul of mine! Collect yourself entirely from all exterior things into the calm silence of your interior, that so you mayest break away, and wander at large, and run wild in the rugged wilderness of an unfathomable sorrow of heart, up to the high rock of misery, now contemplated; and mayest cry aloud from the depths of your sad and languishing heart, till it resound over hill and valley throughout the sky, and pierce even to heaven before all the heavenly host; and speak with your lamentable voice thus: Alas, ye living rocks, ye savage beasts, ye sunny meads! who will give me the burning fire of my full heart, and the scalding water of my sorrowful tears, to wake you up, that ye may help me to bewail the unfathomable heartrending woe which my poor heart so secretly suffers?

Me had my heavenly Father adorned above all living creatures, and elected to be His own tender and blessed spouse. And lo, I have fled from Him! Woe is me! I have lost the beloved of my choice, my only one! Woe on my wretched heart! forever woe! What have I done, what have I lost! I have fled from myself, all the host of heaven, all that could give me joy and delight, have fled from me! I sit forsaken, for my false lovers were deceivers. O misery and death! How falsely and miserably have ye not forsaken me, how despoiled me of all the good with which my only love had arrayed me! Alas honour! alas joy! alas all consolation! how am I utterly robbed of you! Whither shall I turn myself? The entire world has forsaken me, because I have forsaken my only love. Wretched me! when I did so what a lamentable hour it was! Behold in me a late daisy, behold in me a sloe thorn, all ye red roses, ye white lilies! take notice how very quickly that flower withers, fades, and dies, which this world gathers! For I must always thus living, die; thus blooming, fade; thus youthful, grow old; thus healthy, sicken. And yet, tender Lord, all that I suffer is of small account compared to my having made wroth Your fatherly countenance; for this is to me a hell and a grief above all grief.

Alas, that You should have been so graciously kind, that You should have warned me so tenderly, and drawn me so affectionately, and that I should have so utterly despised it all! O heart of man! what can you not endure! As hard as steel must you be not to burst utterly with woe. True, I was once called His beloved spouse: woe is me! I am not now worthy to be called His poor handmaid. Nevermore, for bitter shame, may I raise my eyes.

Henceforth in joy and sorrow my mouth to Him must be dumb. O how narrow for me is this wide world! O God, were I but in a wild forest, where no one might hear or see me, but where I could cry aloud to my heart's desire, to the relief of my poor heart; for other consolation I have none! O sin, to what a pass has you brought me! Woe to you, you false world! woe to him that serves you! How have you rewarded me, seeing that I am a burthen to myself and you, and ever must be. Hail, all hail to you, ye rich queens! ye rich souls, who, by the misfortunes of others, have become wise; who have continued in your first innocence of body and mind; how unwittingly blessed ye are! O pure conscience! O free and single heart! how ignorant are ye of the state of a heart oppressed and sorrowful through sin! Ah me, poor spouse, how happy was I with my Beloved, and how little did I know it! Who will give me the breadth of the heavens for parchment, the depth of the sea for ink, leaves and grass for pens, that I may write fully out my desolation of soul, and the irreparable calamity which my woeful separation from my Beloved has brought upon me! Alas that ever I was born! What is left but for me to cast myself into the abyss of despair?

Eternal Wisdom. You must not despair. Did I not come into the world for the sake of you and all sinners, that I might lead you back to My Father in such beauty, brightness, and purity, as otherwise you never could have acquired?

The Servant. O what is that which sounds so sweetly in a dead and outcast soul?

Eternal Wisdom. Dost you not know Me? What! are you fallen so low, or have you lost your senses, because of your great trouble, my tender child?

And yet it is I, the all-merciful Wisdom, I Who have opened wide the abyss of infinite mercy, which is, however, hidden from all the saints, to receive you and all penitent hearts. It is I, the sweet Eternal Wisdom, who became wretched and poor that I might guide you back again to your dignity. It is I, Who suffered bitter death that I might bring you again to life. Lo, here I am, pale, bloody, affectionate, as when suspended between you and the severe judgment of My Father, on the lofty gibbet of the cross. It is I, your brother. Behold, it is I, your bridegroom! Everything that you ever didst against Me will I wholly forget, as though it had never happened, provided only that you return to Me, and never quit Me more. Wash yourself in My precious blood, lift up your head, open your eyes, and be of good cheer.

Receive as a token of entire peace and complete expiation My wedding ring on your hand, receive your first robe, shoes on your feet, and the fond name of My bride for ever! Lo, I have garnered you up with such bitter toil!

Therefore, if the whole world were a consuming fire, and there lay in the midst of it a handful of flax, it would not, from its very nature, be so susceptible of the burning flame as the abyss of My mercy is ready to pardon a repentant sinner, and blot out his sins.

The Servant. O my Father! O my Brother! O all that can ravish my heart! And will You still be gracious to my offending soul? O what goodness, what unfathomable compassion! For this will I fall prostrate at Your feet, O heavenly Father! and thank You from the bottom of my heart, and beg of You to look on Your only-begotten Son, whom, out of love You gave to bitter death, and to forget my grievous misdeeds. Remember, heavenly Father, how You didst swear of old to Noah, and didst say: I will stretch My bow in the sky; I will look upon it, and it shall be a sign of reconciliation between Me and the earth. O look now upon it, tender Father, how cruelly stretched out it is, so that its bones and ribs can be numbered; look how red, how green, how yellow, love has made it! Look, O heavenly Father, through the hands, the arms, and the feet, so woefully distended, of Your tender and only-begotten Son. Look at His beautiful body, all rose colour with wounds, and forget Your anger against me. Remember that You are only called the Lord of Mercy, the Father of Mercy, because You forgive.

Such is Your name. To whom did You give Your best-beloved Son? To sinners.

Lord, he is Mine! Lord, he is ours! This very day will I enclose myself with His bare extended arms in a loving embrace in the bottom of my heart and soul, and living or dead will never more be separated from Him. Therefore, do Him honour today in me, and graciously forget that wherein I may have angered You. For, methinks it were easier for me to suffer death than ever to anger You, my heavenly Father, again. Neither afflictions nor oppressions, neither hell nor purgatory, are such causes of lamentation to my heart, as that I ever should have angered and dishonoured You, my Creator, my Lord, my God, my Saviour, the joy and delight of my heart. Oh, if for this I could give voice to my grief of soul, through all the heavens, till my heart should burst into a thousand pieces, how gladly would I do it!

And the more entirely You forgive my evil deeds, so much the greater is my sorrow of heart at having been so ungrateful in return for your great goodness. And You, my only consolation, You my tender elected one, Eternal Wisdom! how can I ever make You a complete and proper return of thanks for having at so dear a rate healed and reconciled with Your pangs and wounds the breach which all created beings could not have made good? And, therefore, my eternal joy, teach me how to bear Your wounds and love-marks on my entire body, and how to have them at all times in my keeping, so that all this world, and all the heavenly host, may see that I am grateful for the infinite good which, out of Your unfathomable goodness alone, You have bestowed on my lost soul.

Eternal Wisdom. You should give yourself and all that is yours to Me cheerfully, and never take them back. All that is not of absolute necessity to you should you leave untouched; then will your hands be truly nailed to My cross. You should cheerfully set about good works and persevere in them; then will your left foot be made fast. Your inconstant mind and wandering thoughts should you make constant and collected in Me; and thus your right foot will be nailed to My cross. Your mental and bodily powers must not seek rest in lukewarmness; in the likeness of My arms they should be stretched out in My service. Your sickly body must often, in honour of my dislocated bones, be wearied out in spiritual exercises, and rendered incapable of fulfilling its own desires. Many an unknown suffering must strain you to Me on the narrow bed of the cross, by which you will become lovely like Me, and of the colour of blood. The withering away of your nature must make Me blooming again; your spontaneous hardships must be to My weary back as a bed; your resolute resistance to sin must relieve My spirit; your devout heart must soften My pains, and your high flaming heart must kindle My fervid heart.

The Servant. Now, then, fulfill You my good wishes, according to Your highest praise, and according to Your very best will; for indeed Your yoke is sweet, and Your burthen light: this do all those know who have experienced it, and who were once overladen with the heavy load of sin.

The Servant. Sweetest God, if I leave You but a little I am like a young roe which has strayed from its dam, and is pursued by the hunter, and runs wildly about, until it escapes back to its cover. Lord, I flee, I run to You with ardent desire, like a stag to the living waters. Lord, one little hour without You is a whole year; to be estranged one day from You is as much as a thousand years to a loving heart. Therefore, You branch of salvation, You bush of May, You red blooming rose-tree, open and spread out the green branches of Your divine nature. Lord, Your countenance is so full of graciousness, Your mouth so full of living words, Your whole carriage such a pure mirror of all discipline and meekness! O You aspect of graciousness to all the saints, how very blessed is he who is found worthy of Your sweet espousals!

Eternal Wisdom, Many are called to them, but few are chosen.

The Servant. Gentle Lord, either they have broken with You, or You with them.

Eternal Wisdom. Lift up, therefore, your eyes, and behold this vision.

The Servant lifted up his eyes and was terrified, and, with a deep sigh, said: Woe to me, dear Lord, that ever I was born! Do I see aright, or is it only a dream? I saw You before in such richness of beauty, and such tenderness of love; now I see nothing but a poor, outcast, miserable pilgrim who stands wretchedly leaning on his staff before an old decayed city. The trenches are in ruins, the walls falling down, only that, here and there, the high tops of the old timber work still project aloft; and in the city is a great multitude of people; among them are many that look like wild beasts in a human form: and the miserable pilgrim goes wandering about to see if any one will take him by the hand. Alas! I behold the multitude drive him with insult away, and hardly look at him, because of the things about which they are busy. And yet some, but only a very few, offer to give him their hands; this the other wild beasts come and prevent. Now I hear the miserable pilgrim begin to sigh woefully, and cry aloud: O heaven and earth have pity on me me who have garnered up this city with such bitter toil, and who am so badly welcomed in it, while those who have spent no labour upon it are yet so kindly received!

Lord, such is what has been shown me in the vision. O You eternal God, what does it mean? Am I right or wrong?

Eternal Wisdom. This vision is a vision of pure truth. Listen to a lamentable thing; O let it touch your heart with pity! I am the miserable pilgrim whom you didst see. At one time I was in great honour in that city, but now I am brought down to great misery and driven out.

The Servant. Dearest Lord! what is this city, what are the people in it?

Eternal Wisdom. This decayed city is an image of that spiritual life in which I was once so worthily served. And while they were living in it so holily and securely, it begins in many places to fall very much to ruin; the trenches begin to decay, and the walls to crack, that is to say, devout obedience, voluntary poverty, secluded purity in holy simplicity, begin to disappear, and, at last, to such a degree that nothing is to be seen standing, except the high timber work of mere exterior observance. As to the great multitude, the beasts in human form, they are worldly hearts under spiritual disguises, who, in the vain pursuit of transitory things, drive Me out of their souls. That a few should, nevertheless, offer to give Me their hands, but are hindered by the rest, signifies that some men of good intentions and devout feelings are perverted by the speech and evil example of others. The staff on which you didst see Me stand leaning, is the cross of My bitter passion, with which I admonish them at all times to think on My sufferings, and to turn, with the love of their hearts to Me alone. But the cry of misery you didst hear is My death which even here begins to cry aloud, and ever cries aloud, because of those in whom neither My unfathomable love nor My bitter death is able to do so much as to expel the worm of sinful thoughts from their hearts.

The Servant. O Lord, how it cuts through my very heart and soul to think You are so lovable, and yet, in spite of all Your advances, art in many hearts so utterly despised. Ah! tender Lord, what will Your advances be to those who, though they see You in the miserable shape in which You are rejected by the multitude, yet stretch out their hands to You with sincere faith and love?

Eternal Wisdom. Those who for My sake give up perishable affections, and receive Me with sincere faith and love, and remain constant to the end, will I espouse with My divine love and sweetness, and will give them My hand in death, and exalt them on the throne of My glory before the whole court of heaven.

The Servant. Lord, there be many who think they will still love You without giving up perishable love. Lord, they will needs be very dear to You, and yet will not the less indulge in temporal love.

Eternal Wisdom. It is as impossible as to compress the heavens together and enclose them in a nut shell. Such persons array themselves in fair words, they build upon the wind, and construct upon the rainbow. How may the eternal abide with the temporal, when even one temporal thing neither can nor will endure another? He but deceives himself who thinks he can lodge the King of kings in a common inn, or thrust Him into the mean dwelling of a servant. In entire seclusion from all creatures must he keep himself who is desirous of receiving his guest as he ought.

The Servant. Alas, sweet Lord, how completely bewitched must they all be not to see this!

Eternal Wisdom. They stand in deep blindness. They endure many a hard struggle for pleasures which they neither fix their attachment nor afford them full gratification. Before they obtain one joy they meet with ten sorrows, and the more they pursue their lusts the more are these upbraided with being insufficient. Lo! godless hearts must needs be at all times in fear and trembling. Even the fleeting pleasure they obtain proves very harsh to them, for they procure it with much toil, they enjoy it in great anxiety, and lose it with much bitterness. The world is full of untruth, falsehood, and inconstancy; when profit is at an end, friendship is at an end, and to speak shortly, neither true love, nor entire joy, nor constant peace of mind, was ever obtained by any heart from creatures.

The Servant. Alas! dear Lord, what a lamentable thing it is, that so many a noble soul, so many a languishing heart, so many an image formed after God in such beauty and sweetness, that in Your espousals ought to be queens and empresses, powerful in heaven and on earth, should so foolishly go astray and degrade themselves! Oh, wonder of wonders! to think that of their own accord they should be lost! since, according to Your words of truth, the fell separation of the soul from the body were better for them than that You, the Life Eternal, shouldest have to separate from their souls where You findest no dwelling-place. Oh, ye dull fools, behold how your great ruin prospers, how your great loss increases, how you allow the precious, the fair, the delightsome moments to pass away, which ye may hardly or indeed never again possess, and how gaily you carry yourselves the while, as though it concerned you not! Alas! You gentle Wisdom, did they but know it and feel it surely they would desist.

Eternal Wisdom. Listen to a wonderful and lamentable thing. They know it and feel it at all hours, and yet do not desist; they know it and yet will not know it; they beautify it, like unsound argument, with dazzling brightness, which yet is unlike the naked truth, as so many of them at last, when it is too late, will have to feel.

The Servant. Alas! tender Wisdom, how senseless they are, or what does it mean?

Eternal Wisdom. Here will they needs escape calamity and suffering, and yet fall into the midst of it; and as they will not endure the eternal good and My sweet yoke, they will be overwhelmed by the inevitable doom of My severe justice with many a heavy burthen. They fear the frost, and fall into the snow.

The Servant. Alas! tender and merciful Wisdom, remember that, without being strengthened by You, no one can accomplish anything. I see no other help for them than to raise their eyes to You, and to fall at Your feet with bitter, heart-felt tears, entreating that You would vouchsafe to enlighten them, and free them from the bonds with which they are made fast.

Eternal Wisdom. I am at all times ready to help them, if only they be ready. I do not turn away from them.

The Servant. Lord, it is painful for love to separate from love.

Eternal Wisdom. Very true, if I could not and would not lovingly make good all love in hearts of love.

The Servant. O Lord, it is impossible to leave off old custom.

Eternal Wisdom. But it will be yet more impossible to endure future torments.

The Servant. They are perhaps so well regulated in themselves that it does them no injury.

Eternal Wisdom. I was the best regulated of men, and yet the most self-mortified. How may that be regulated which, from its very nature, corrupts the heart, confuses the mind, perverts discipline, draws off the heart from all fervour, and robs it of its peace? It breaks open the gates, behind which godly living lies hidden, that is, the five senses. It casts forth sobriety and introduces audaciousness, the loss of grace, estrangement from God, interior tepidity, and exterior sloth.

The Servant. Lord, they do not think they are hindered so much, if only what they love have the appearance of a spiritual life.

Eternal Wisdom. A clear-seeing eye may just as easily be blinded by while meal as by pale ashes. Behold, was ever any person's presence so harmless as Mine among My disciples? No unprofitable words fell from us, among us there was no extravagant demeanour, no beginning loftily in the spirit, and sinking down in the depth of endless words; there was nothing but real earnestness and entire truth without any deceit. And yet, My bodily presence had to be withdrawn from them before they became susceptible of My spirit. What a hindrance, then, must not a merely human presence prove!

Before they are influenced to good by one person, they are seduced by a thousand; before they are reformed in one point by good precept, they are often led astray by bad example; and, to speak briefly, as the sharp frost in May nips the blossoms and scatters them abroad, so the love of perishable things blights godly seriousness and religious discipline. If you have still a doubt respecting it, look around you into the beautiful, fruitful vineyards which formerly were so delightful in their first bloom, how utterly withered and ruined they are, so that they contain few traces more of fervent seriousness and great devotion. Now, this produces an irreparable injury, for it has become a thing of habit, a spiritual decorum, which, secretly, is so destructive of all spiritual salvation. It is all the more pernicious as it appears innocent. How many a precious spice-garden is there, which, adorned with delightful gifts, was a heavenly paradise, where God was well pleased to dwell, which, now, by reason of perishable love, has become a garden of wild weeds; where lilies and roses formerly grew, now stands thorns, nettles, and briars, and where angels were used to dwell, swine now root up the soil. Woe betide the hour, when all lost time, when all good works neglected, shall be reckoned up, when every idle word spoken, thought, written, whether in secret or in public, shall be read out before God and the whole world, and its meaning, without disguise, be understood!

The Servant. Alas! my Lord, some hearts there are, of so tender a nature, that they are much sooner attracted by love than fear, and as You, the Lord of nature, art not a destroyer but a fulfiller of nature, O, therefore, most kind and gracious Lord, put an end to this sad discourse, and tell me how You are a Mother of beautiful love, and how sweet Your love is.

The Servant.�Lord, let me reflect on that divine passage, where You speakest of Thyself in the Book of Wisdom: "Come over to Me, all ye that desire Me, and be filled with My fruits. I am the Mother of fair love; My Spirit is sweet above honey and the honeycomb. Wine and music rejoice the heart, but the love of wisdom is above them both.[3]

Ah, Lord! You can show Thyself so lovely and so tender, that all hearts must needs languish for You and endure, for Your sake, all the misery of tender desire; Your words of love flow so sweetly out of Your sweet mouth, and so powerfully affect many hearts in their days of youthful bloom, that perishable love is wholly extinguished in them. O my dear Lord, this it is for which my soul sighs, this it is which makes my spirit sad, this it is about which I would gladly hear You speak. Now, then, my only elected Comforter, speak one little word to my soul, to Your poor handmaid; for, lo!

I am fallen softly asleep beneath Your shadow, and my heart watcheth.

Eternal Wisdom.�Listen, then, my son, and see, incline to Me your ears, enter wholly into your interior, and forget yourself and all things. I am in Myself the incomprehensible good, which always was and always is, which never was and never will be uttered. I may indeed give Myself to men's hearts to be felt by them, but no tongue can truly express Me in words. And yet, when I, the Supernatural, immutable good, present Myself to every creature according to its capacity to be susceptible of Me, I bind the sun's splendour, as it were, in a cloth, and give you spiritual perceptions of Me and of My sweet love in bodily words thus: I set Myself tenderly before the eyes of your heart; now adorn and clothe you Me in spiritual perceptions and represent Me as delicate and as comely as your very heart could wish, and bestow on Me all those things that can move the heart to especial love and entire delight of soul. Lo! all and everything that you and all men can possibly imagine of form, of elegance, and grace, is in Me far more ravishing than any one can express, and in words like these do I choose to make Myself known. Now, listen further: I am of high birth, of noble race; I am the Eternal Word of the Fatherly Heart, in which, according to the love-abounding abyss of My natural Sonship in His sole paternity, I possess a gratefulness before His tender eyes in the sweet and bright-flaming love of the Holy Ghost. I am the throne of delight, I am the crown of salvation,

My eyes are so clear, My mouth so tender, My cheeks so radiant and blooming, and all My figure so fair and ravishing, yea, and so delicately formed, that if a man were to lie in the glowing furnace till the day of judgment, only to have one single glance at My beauty, he would not deserve it. See, I am so deliciously adorned in garments of light, I am so exquisitely set off with all the blooming colours of living flowers, that all May-blossoms, all the beautiful shrubs of all dewy fields, all the tender buds of the sunny meads, are but as rough thistles compared to My adornment.

In the Godhead I play the game of bliss,

Such joy the angels find in this,

That to them a thousand years

But as one little hour appears.

All the heavenly host follow Me entranced by new wonders, and behold Me; their eyes are fixed on Mine; their hearts are inclined to Me, their minds bent on Me without intermission. Happy is he who, in joyous security, shall take Me by My beautiful hand, and join in My sweet diversions, and dance for ever the dance of joy amid the ravishing delights of the kingdom of heaven! One little word there spoken by My sweet mouth will far surpass the singing of all angels, the music of all harps, the harmony of all sweet strings. My faithfulness is so made to be loved, so lovely am I to be embraced, and so tender for pure languishing souls to kiss, that all hearts ought to break for My possession. I am condescending and full of sympathy and always present to the pure soul. I abide with her in secret, at table, in bed, in the streets, in the fields. Turn Myself whichever way I will, in Me there is nothing that can displease, in Me is everything that can delight the utmost wishes of your heart and desires of the soul. Lo! I am a good so pure, that he who in his day only gets one drop of Me regards all the pleasures and delights of this world as nothing but bitterness; all its possessions and honours as worthless, and only fit to be cast away; My beloved ones are encompassed by My love, and are absorbed into the One Thing alone without imaged love and without spoken words, and are taken and infused into that good out of which they flowed. My love can also relieve regenerate hearts from the heavy load of sin, and can give a free, pure, and gentle heart, and create a clean conscience. Tell Me, what is there in all this world able to outweigh this one thing? For he who gives his heart wholly to Me lives joyfully, dies securely, and obtains the kingdom of heaven here as well as hereafter.

Now, observe, I have assuredly given you many words, and yet My beauty has been as little touched by them as the firmament by your little finger, because no eye has ever seen My beauty, nor ear heard it, neither has it ever entered any heart. Still let what I have said to you be as a device to show you the difference between My sweet love and false, perishable love.

The Servant.�Ah! You tender, delicious, wild flower, You delight of the heart in the embracing arms of the pure loving soul, how familiar is all this to him who has even once really felt You; but how strange is it to that man who knows You not, whose heart and mind are still in the body! O,

You most heart-felt incomprehensible good this is a precious hour, this is a sweet moment, in which I must open to You a secret wound which my heart still bears from Your sweet love. Lord, plurality in love is like water in the fire. Lord, You know that real fervent love cannot bear duality.

Alas! You only Lord of my heart and soul, my heart desires that You should have a particular love for me, and that I should be particularly pleasing to Your divine eyes. O Lord, You have so many hearts that ardently love You, and are of much account with You. Alas! my sweet and tender Lord, how stands it with me in this matter?

Eternal Wisdom.�My love is of that sort which is not diminished in unity, nor confounded in multiplicity. I am as entirely concerned and occupied with you alone, with the thought how I may at all times love you alone, and fulfill everything that appertains to you, as though I were wholly disengaged from all other things.

The Servant.�O rare! O wonderful! whither am I borne, how am I gone astray! how is my soul utterly dissolved by the sweet friendly words of my beloved! Oh, turn away Your bright eyes from me, for they have overcome me.[4] Wherever was there a heart so hard, a soul so lukewarm, so cold as, when it heard Your sweet living words, so exceedingly fiery as they are, was not fain to melt and kindle in Your sweet love! O wonder of wonders! that he who thus sees You with the eyes of his soul, should not feel his very heart dissolve in love. How right blessed is he who bears the name of Your Spouse, and is so! What sweet consolations and secret tokens of Your love must not he eternally receive from You! O you sweet virgin St. Agnes, you fair wooer of Eternal Wisdom! how well could you console yourself with your dear Bridegroom, when you didst say, "His blood has adorned my cheeks as with roses." O gentle Lord, that my soul were but worthy to be called Your wooer!

And were it indeed possible that all delights, all joy and love, that this world can afford, might be found united in one man, how gladly would I renounce him for the sake of that name! How blessed is that man, that ever he was born into the world who is named Your friend, and is so! Oh, if a man had even a thousand lives, he ought to stake them at once for the sake of acquiring Your love. Oh, all ye friends of God, all ye heavenly host, and you dear virgin St. Agnes, help me to pray to Him: for never did I rightly know what His love was. Alas! you heart of mine, lay aside, put away all sloth, and see if, before your death, you mayest advance so far as to feel His sweet love. O you tender beautiful Wisdom! O my elected One! What a truly right gracious love You can be above all loves else in the world!

How very different is Your love and the love of creatures! How false is everything that appears lovely in this world and gives itself out to be something, as soon as one really begins to know it. Lord, wherever I might cast my eyes I always found something to disgust me; for, if it was a fair image, it was void of grace; if it was fair and lovely, it had not the true way; or if it had indeed this, still, I always found something either inwardly or outwardly, to which the entire inclination of my heart was secretly opposed. But You are beauty with infinite affability, You are grace in shape and form, the word with the way, nobility with virtue, riches with power, interior freedom and exterior brightness, and one thing You are which I have never found in time, namely, a power and faculty of perfectly satiating every wish and every ardent desire of a truly loving heart. The more one knows You, the more one loves You; the more acquainted one is with You, the more friendly one finds You. Ah me! what an unfathomable, entirely pure, good You are! See how deceived all those hearts are that fix their affections on anything else! Ah! ye false lovers, flee far from me, never come near me more. I have chosen for my heart that one only love in which my heart, my soul, my desire, and all my powers can alone be satiated with a love that never dissolves away. Oh Lord, could I but trace You on my heart! could I but melt You with characters of gold into the innermost core of my heart and soul, so that You mightest never be eradicated out of me!

Oh, misery and desolation! that ever I should have troubled my heart with such things! What have I gained with all my lovers, but time lost, forfeited words, an empty hand, few good works, and a conscience burdened with infirmity? Slay me, rather, in Your love, O Lord, for from Your feet I will never more be separated.

Eternal Wisdom.�I go forth to meet those who seek Me, and I receive with affectionate joy such as desire My love. All that you can ever experience of My sweet love in time, is but as a little drop to the ocean of My love in eternity.

Likely To Be Repugnant To A Loving Heart In God. One Is, How He Can Appear

So Wrathful And Yet Be So Gracious

The Servant. Three things there are at which I marvel very much; one is, that You should be beyond all measure so amiable Thyself, and yet so severe a judge of evil deeds. Lord, when I reflect on Your severe justice, my heart with passionate voice exclaims: "Woe to all who persist in sin!" for did they but know the strict account of every single sin, which You will infallibly require, even from Your very dearest friends, they would sooner pluck out their teeth and hair than ever provoke Your anger! Woe is me! How very terrible is Your angry countenance, how very intolerable Your ungentle averted looks! So full of fire are Your threatening words that they cut through heart and soul. Shield me, O Lord, from Your wrathful countenance, and extend not Your vengeance against me to the next world. Lo! when I only doubt, lest, because of my guilty deeds You mayest have turned Your face angrily away from me, it is a thing so insupportable, that nothing in all this world is so bitter to me. Oh, my Lord and Father, how could my heart endure Your angry countenance for ever! When I but seriously reflect on Your countenance inflamed with anger, my soul is so horrified, all my strength is so shaken, that I can liken it to nothing else than to the heavens beginning to darken and grow black, to fire raging in the clouds, and to a mighty thunder rending them, so that the earth trembles, and fiery bolts dart down upon men. Lord, let no one confide in Your silence, for verily Your silence will soon be turned to dreadful thunder. Lord, the angry countenance of Your Fatherly anger to that man who is fearful of provoking and losing You, is a hell above all hells. I will say nothing of that furious countenance of Yours which the wicked at the last day will have to behold in bitterness of heart. Woe, everlasting woe to those who shall have to expect so great a calamity!

Lord, all this is a profound mystery to my heart, and yet You say that You are so gracious and so good.

Eternal Wisdom. I am the immutable good, and subsist the same and am the same. But that I do not appear the same, arises from the difference of those who view Me differently, according as they are with or without sin. I am tender and loving in My nature, and yet a terrible judge of evil deeds. I require from My friends childlike awe, and confiding love, in order that awe may restrain them from sin, and love unite them to Me in faith.

The Servant. Lord, all has been explained to my heart's satisfaction, except one thing. In truth, Lord, when a soul is quite exhausted with yearning after You and the sweet caresses of Your presence, then, Lord, are You silent and say not a word. O Lord! ought not this to grieve my heart, that You, my tender Lord, You who are my only one love, and the sole desire of my heart, should yet behave Thyself so strangely, and in such a way hold Your peace?

Eternal Wisdom. And yet do all creatures cry aloud to Me that it is I.

The Servant. O dear Lord! that is not enough for a languishing soul.

Eternal Wisdom. If every little word I utter is a little word of love to their hearts, and every word of the Sacred Scriptures written by Me is a sweet love-letter, as though I Myself had written it, ought this not to be enough for them?

The Servant. O Lord, You know well that to a loving heart everything that is not its only love and its only consolation, is insufficient. Lord, You are so very intimate, choice, and fathomless a love; lo! if even all the tongues of all the angels were to address me, love unfathomable would still pursue and strive after Him alone whom it longs for. A loving soul would still take You for the kingdom of heaven, for surely You are her heaven. Alas! Lord, may I venture to say that You should be a little more favourable to such poor affectionate hearts as pine and languish for You, as breathe out so many an unfathomable sigh to You, as look up so yearningly to You, crying aloud from their very hearts,

Return to us, O Lord! and speaking and reasoning with themselves thus: "Have we cause to think we have angered Him, and that He will forsake us? Have we cause to think He will not give us His loving presence back again, so that we may affectionately embrace Him with the arms of our hearts, and press Him to our bosoms till all our sorrow vanish? Lord, all this You know and hear, and yet You are silent!"

Eternal Wisdom. I know it and see it with heart-felt eager joy. But now, since your wonder is so great, answer Me a question. What is that which, of all things, gives the most delight to the highest of created spirits?

The Servant. Lord, I would fain learn this from You, for such a question is too great for my understanding.

Eternal Wisdom. Then I will tell You. Nothing tastes better to the very highest angel than, in all things, to do My will; so that if he knew that it would tend to My praise to root up nettles, and other weeds it would be for him, of all things, the most desirable to perform.

The Servant. Ah, Lord, how do You strike home to me with this question! For surely Your meaning is, that I ought to keep myself disengaged and serene in joy, and seek Your praise alone, both in sorrow and delight.

Eternal Wisdom. A desertion above all desertion is to be deserted in desertion.

The Servant. Alas! Lord, but it is a very heavy woe.

Eternal Wisdom. Where is virtue preserved except in adversity? Yet know that I often come and ask for admission into my house, and am denied.

Often am I received like a poor pilgrim, and meanly entertained, and speedily driven out. I come even to My beloved, and fondly take up My abode with her, but this takes place so secretly that it is totally hidden from all men, except those only who live in entire seclusion, and perceive My ways, who are ever careful to correspond to My graces. For in virtue of My divinity, I am a perfectly pure essential spirit, and am spiritually received into pure spirits.

The Servant. Gentle Lord, methinks You are altogether a hidden lover, therefore I desire You would give me some signs of Your true presence.

Eternal Wisdom. In nothing can you discern My presence so well as in this, namely, when I hide and withdraw Myself from the soul, as not till then are you capable of perceiving who I am or what you are. I am the Eternal Good, without which no one has any good. When I, the Eternal Good, pour Myself out so graciously and lovingly, everything into which I enter is made good. By this goodness My presence is to be known even as is the sun by his brightness, who, in his substance, is yet not to be seen. If ever you are sensible of Me, enter into yourself and learn to separate the roses from the thorns, and to choose out the flowers from the grass.

The Servant. Lord, truly I seek and find in myself a great inequality.

When my soul is deserted, she is like a sick person who can relish nothing; who is disgusted with everything; the body is languid, the spirits are dull; dryness within, and sadness without; all that I see and hear is then repugnant to me, and I know not how good it is, for I have lost all discrimination. I am then inclined to sin, weak in resisting my enemies, cold and lukewarm in all that is good; he who visits me finds an empty house, for the master, who gives wise counsel and makes all the family glad at heart, is not within. But, Lord, when in the midst of my soul the bright morning star rises, all my sorrow passes away, all my darkness is scattered, and laughing cheerfulness appears. Lord, then leaps my heart, then are my spirits gay, then rejoices my soul, then is it my marriage feast, while all that is in me or about me is turned to Your praise. What before was hard, troublesome, and impossible, becomes easy and pleasant; fasting, watching, praying, self-denial, and every sort of rigour, are made sweet by Your presence. Then do I acquire great assurance in many things, which, in my dereliction I had lost; my soul is then overflowed with clearness, truth, and sweetness, so that she forgets all her toil; my heart can sweetly meditate, my tongue loftily discourse, and whoever seeks high counsel from me touching his heart's desire finds it; for then I am as though I had overstepped the bounds of time and space, and stood in the ante-chamber of eternal salvation. Alas, Lord! who will grant that it might only be of longer duration, for behold, in a moment it is snatched away, and I am again stripped and forsaken. Sometimes I pursue it as if I had never gained it, till at last, after much sorrow and trouble of heart, it comes back. Lord! are You this thing, or am I it, or what is it?

Eternal Wisdom. You are and have of yourself nothing but imperfection;

I am it, and this is the game of love.

The Servant. But, Lord, what is the game of love?

Eternal Wisdom. All the time that love is with love, love does not know how dear love is; but when love separates from love, then only does love feel how dear love was.

The Servant. Lord! this is a dreary game. Alas, Lord! is inconstancy never cast aside in any one while time lasts?

Eternal Wisdom. In very few persons, for constancy belongs to eternity.

The Servant. Lord, who are these persons?

Eternal Wisdom. The very purest of all, and in eternity the most like to God.

The Servant. Lord, which are they?

Eternal Wisdom. They are those persons who have denied themselves in the most perfect manner.

The Servant. Gentle Lord, teach me how, in my imperfection, I ought to behave in this manner.

Eternal Wisdom. In good days you oughtest to look at evil days, and in evil days not to forget good days; thus can neither elation injure you in My company nor despondency in dereliction. If, in your faintheartedness, you can not endure My absence with pleasure, wait for Me at least with patience, and seek Me diligently.

The Servant. O Lord, long waiting is painful.

Eternal Wisdom. He who will needs have love in time, must know how to bear weal and woe. It is not enough to devote to Me only a portion of the day. He who would enjoy God's intimacy, who would hear His mysterious words, and mark their secret meaning, ought always to keep within doors. Alas! how is it that you always permittest your eyes to wander so thoughtlessly around, when you have standing before you the Blessed and Eternal Image of the Godhead which never for a moment turns away from you? Why do you let your ears escape from you when I address you so many a sweet word? How is it that you so readily forget yourself when you are so perfectly encompassed with the eternal good? What is it your soul seeks in exterior things who carries within herself so secretly the kingdom of heaven?

The Servant. What is the kingdom of heaven, O Lord, which is in the soul?

Eternal Wisdom. It is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

The Servant. Lord, I understand from this discourse, that You have much hidden intercourse with the soul, which is wholly hidden from her, and that You do secretly attract the soul, and do leisurely initiate her into the love and knowledge of Your high divinity, her who at first was only concerned with Your fair humanity.

Temporal Suffering

The Servant. Another thing, Lord, I have at my heart: may I venture to tell it You? May I indeed venture to dispute with You like holy Jeremias?

Gentle Lord, people say as follows: that how sweet soever Your love may be,

You do yet allow it to prove very harsh to Your friends in the many severe trials which You send them, such as worldly scorn and much adversity, both inwardly and outwardly. Scarcely is any one, say they, admitted to Your friendship, but he has forthwith to gather up his courage for suffering.

Lord, by Your goodness! what sweetness can they have in all this? Or how can You permit it in Your friends? Or are You pleased not to know anything about it?

Eternal Wisdom. Even as My Father loves Me, so do I love My friends. I do to My friends now as I have done from the beginning of the world.

The Servant. This is what they complain of; and therefore, say they,

You have so few friends because You allowest them to prosper in this world so very sorrily. Lord, on this account there are also indeed many who, when they gain Your friendship, and ought to prove constant in suffering, fall off from You; and (woe is me! that I must say it in sorrow of heart, and with bitter tears) relapse to that state which, through You, they had forsaken.

O my Lord, what have You to say to this?

Eternal Wisdom. This is the complaint of persons of a sick faith and of small works, of a lukewarm life, and undisciplined spirit. But you, beloved soul, up with your mind out of the slime and deep slough of carnal delights! Unlock your interior sense, open your spiritual eyes and see. Mark well what you are, where you are, and whither you do belong; for then will you understand that I do the very best for My friends. According to your natural essence you are a mirror of the Divinity, you are an image of the Trinity, and a copy of eternity; for as I, in My eternal uncreated entity, am the good which is infinite, so are you according to your desires, fathomless, and as little as a small drop can yield in the vast depth of the sea, just so little can all that this world is able to afford contribute to the fulfillment of your desires. Thus, then, are you in this wretched valley of tears, where joy and sorrow, laughing and weeping, mirth and sadness, are mingled together; where no heart ever obtained perfect happiness; for it is false and deceitful, more than I will tell you. It promises much and performs little; it is short, uncertain, and changeable; today much joy, tomorrow a heart full of woe. Behold, such is the disport of this scene of time!

Eternal Wisdom. O my chosen one! now look from the very bottom of your heart at this lamentable misery. Where are now all those who heretofore sat down amidst this temporal scene with tranquility and pleasure, with tenderness and comfort of body? What avails them all the joys of this world which are as soon vanished on the wings of swift time as though they had never been? How quickly over is that carnal love for which pain must be eternally endured! O ye senseless fools! Where is now what ye so gaily uttered: "Hail, ye children of merriment, let us give holiday to sorrow, let us cherish the fullness of joy!" What avail now all the pleasures ye ever obtained? Well may ye cry aloud with sorrowful voice; Woe upon us that ever we were born into the world! How has swift time deceived us! How has death stolen upon us! Is there any one still upon the earth who could be more deceived than we have been deceived? Or is there any one willing to take counsel from the calamity of others? If any one were to bear all the sufferings of all mankind for a thousand years it would only be as a moment against this! How very happy is that man who has never sought after pleasures displeasing to God, who for His sake has renounced all temporal delights! We foolish ones, we deemed such men forsaken and forgotten of God: but see how He has embraced them in eternity with such marks of honour before all the heavenly host. What harm can all their sufferings and disgraces now do them, which have turned out so much to their joy?

Meanwhile, all that we so entirely loved, how is it vanished? Ah, misery on misery! and it must last for ever. Oh, for ever and ever, what are you? Oh, end without end! Oh, dying above all dying, to be dying every hour, and yet never to die. Oh, father and mother, and all that we ever held dear, God bless you for ever and ever, for we shall never see you and love you again: we must ever be separated from you. Oh, separation, oh, everlasting separation, how grievous you are! Oh, wringing, oh, shrieking and howling for ever, and yet never to be heard! Nothing but sorrow and distress must our wretched eyes behold, our ears be filled with nothing but alas! nothing save only Woe is me! Oh, all hearts, let our lamentable For ever and ever! move your compassion, let our miserable For ever! pierce to your core. Oh, ye mountains and valleys, why do ye wait for us, why do ye keep us so long, why do ye bear with us, why do ye not bury us from the lamentable sight? Oh, sufferings of that world and sufferings of this world, how very different ye are! Oh, time present, how blinding, how deceiving you are, that we should not have foreseen this in the bright days of our youth, which we wasted so luxuriously, which will never more return! Oh, that we had but one little hour of all those vanished years! Yet this is denied by God's justice, and without any hope for us, ever must be denied. Oh, suffering, and distress, and misery, in this forgotten land, where we must be separated from all that is dear, without solace or hope, for ever and ever! Nothing else would we desire than that if there was a millstone as broad as the whole earth, and in circumference so large that it everywhere touched the heavens, and that if there came a little bird every hundred thousand years, and took from the stone as much as the tenth part of a grain of millet, so as in ten hundred thousand years to peck away from the stone as much as an entire grain of millet; we unfortunates would desire nothing more than that, when the stone came to an end, our torments too might terminate; and yet even this cannot be. Behold, such is the song of woe which succeeds the joys of this world.

The Servant. Oh, You severe Judge, how terrified are the depths of my heart, how powerless sinks my soul beneath the load of sorrow and compassion for those unhappy spirits! Who is there in the world that hears this, and is so insane as not to tremble at such fearful distress? Oh, You, my only love, forsake me not! Oh, You, my only chosen consolation, do not thus separate from me! Sooner than be thus separated from You, my only love, for ever and ever (I will say nothing of the rest), oh, misery of misery! I would prefer to be tormented a thousand times a day. When I but think of such a separation, my heart for anguish is like to break. Yes, tender Father! do with me here what You will, You have my free consent, but, oh, deliver me from this woeful separation, for I could by no means endure it.

Eternal Wisdom. Cast away your fear. That which is united in time remains undivided in eternity.

The Servant. Oh, Lord, would that all men heard this, who still consume their days so foolishly, so that they might become wise, and might reform their lives, before these things should overtake them. Oh, ye senseless, obdurate men! how long will ye protract your foolishness, sinful lives? Be converted to God, and shield yourselves against this wretched misery, and lamentation of eternal woe.

Eternal Wisdom. Now lift up your eyes and see where you do belong.

You do belong to the Fatherland of the celestial paradise. You are here as a stranger guest, a miserable pilgrim; therefore, as a pilgrim hastens back to his home where his dear friends expect him, and wait for him with great longing, so should you desire to hasten back to your fatherland, where all will be glad to see you, where all long so ardently for your joyous presence, that they may greet you tenderly, and unite you to their blessed society for ever. And didst you but know how they thirst after you, how they desire that you should combat devoutly in suffering, and behave chivalrously in all adversity, even such as they have overcome, and how they now with great sweetness remember the cruel years through which they once passed, truly, all suffering would only be the easier to you, for, the more bitterly you will have suffered, the more honourably will you be received. Oh, then, how pleasant will honour be, what joy will then pervade your heart and mind when your soul shall be so honourably praised, commended, and extolled by Me before My Father and all the heavenly host, because she has suffered so much, and fought against and overcome so much in this scene of temporal strife, in whose fullness of reward many a one who has never known affliction will have no participation. How brightly will not then the crown shine that here below is gained with such bitterness! How exquisitely beautiful will not the wounds and marks glitter, which here below are received from My love! So welcome will you be made in your fatherland, that the greatest stranger to you of all its countless hosts will love you more ardently and faithfully than any father or mother ever loved the child of their bosom in this scene of time.

The Servant. O Lord, through Your goodness, dare I hope that You will tell me yet more about my fatherland, so that I may long for it all the more, and may suffer every affliction the more cheerfully? Yes, my Lord, what manner of place is my fatherland? Or what do people do there? Or are there very many people there? Or do they really know so well what takes place with us on earth as Your words declare?

Eternal Wisdom. Now, then, ascend you on high with Me. I will carry you thither in spirit, and will give you, after a rude similitude, a distant glimpse into the future. Behold, above the ninth heaven, which is incalculably more than a hundred thousand times larger than the entire earth, there is another heaven which is called Coelum Empyreum, the fiery heaven, so called, not from its being of fire, but from its immeasurably transparent brightness, which is immovable and unchangeable in its nature; and this is the glorious court in which the heavenly hosts dwell, where the morning star with the rest praises Me, and all the children of God rejoice.

There stand, encompassed with inconceivable light, the everlasting thrones, from which the evil spirits were hurled, in which the elect are seated. See how the delightful city shines with beaten gold, how it glitters with costly jewels, inlaid with precious stones, transparent as crystal, reflecting red roses, white lilies, and all living flowers. Now, look on the beautiful heavenly fields themselves. Lo! here all delights of summer, here sunny meads of May, here the very valley of bliss, here the glad moments are seen flitting from joy to joy; here harps and viols, here singing, and leaping, and dancing, hand in hand for ever! here the gratification of every desire, here pleasure without pain in everlasting security! Now, look how the countless multitude drink to their hearts' desire at the living fountains of gushing water; look how they feast their eyes on the pure, clear mirror of the revealed Divinity, in which all things are made plain and evident to them. Steal a little nearer, and mark how the sweet queen of the celestial kingdom, whom you love with so much ardour, soars aloft in dignity and joy over the whole celestial host, reclining tenderly on her beloved, encircled with rose-flowers and lilies of the valley. See how her ravishing beauty fills with delight and wonder all the heavenly choirs. Oh, now behold what will rejoice your heart and soul, and see how the mother of compassion has turned her compassionate eyes towards you and all sinners, and how powerfully she appeals to her beloved Son, and intercedes with Him. Now, turn round with the eyes of your pure understanding, and behold also how the high seraphim and the love-abounding souls of the seraphic choirs blaze up perpetually in Me; how the bright company of the cherubim have a bright infusion and effusion of My eternal inconceivable light, how the high thrones and hosts, the lordships, powers, and dominations, regularly fulfill My beautiful and eternal order in the universality of nature. Mark, too, how the third host of angelic spirits executes My high messages and decrees in the particular parts of the world; and see, how lovingly, how joyfully, and variously the multitude is marshalled, and what a beautiful sight it is!

Turn next your glance and see how My chosen disciples and best beloved friends sit in repose and honour upon their awful judgment-seats, how the martyrs glitter in their rose-coloured garments, the confessors shine in their vernal beauty, how refulgent the virgins appear in their angelic purity, how all the heavenly host overflows with divine sweetness! Oh, what a company! Oh, what a joyous band! Blessed, thrice blessed is he who was born to dwell where they dwell! Lo, to this very fatherland I shall carry home from misery and tribulation, arrayed in all the richness of her rich morning gift, My beloved bride in My arms. I shall adorn her interiorly with the beautiful garment of the eternal light of that glory which will exalt her above all her natural powers. She will be clothed exteriorly with the glorified body, which is seven times brighter than the sun's light, swift, subtle, and to suffering, impassive; then I shall put on her the crown of delight, and on the crown a golden garland.

The Servant. Gentle Lord, what is the morning gift, and what the crown and golden garland?

Eternal Wisdom. The morning gift is a clear vision of that which here below you do merely believe in, an actual comprehending of that which now you hopest for, and a heartfelt pleasant enjoyment of that which on earth you love. As to the beautiful crown, it is essential reward, but the blooming garland is accidental reward.

The Servant. Lord, what is that?

Eternal Wisdom. Accidental reward consists in such particular delight as souls obtain by particular and meritorious works wherewith they have conquered here below, even as the souls of great doctors, steadfast martyrs, and pure virgins. But Essential reward consists in the contemplative union of the soul with the pure Divinity, for rest she never can till she be born above all her powers and capacities, and introduced to the natural entity of the Persons, and to the clear vision of their real essence. And in the emanation of the splendour of Their essence she will find full and perfect satisfaction and everlasting happiness; and the more disengaged and abstracted the self-expression of such souls is, the more free will be their soaring exaltation; and the more free their exaltation, the deeper will be their penetration into the vast wilderness and unfathomable abyss of the unknown Godhead, wherein they are immersed, overflowed, and blended up,[5] so that they desire to have no other will than God's will, and that they become the very same that God is: in other words, that they be made blessed by grace as He is by nature. Raise then your countenance joyfully, forget for a while all your tribulations, comfort your heart in this dark silent scene with the secret vision which you now enjoyest of the society of the blessed, and behold how blooming and fair those faces appear which here on earth were so often red with shame for My sake; lift up your glad heart and speak as follows: Where now is that bitter shame which so cruelly pierced your pure hearts? Where now the bowed heads, the cast down eyes? where the suppressed sorrow of heart, the deep sighs and bitter tears? where the pale looks, the dire poverty, and manifold infirmities? Where is now the miserable voice thus speaking: "Alas, my Lord and my God, how sad at heart I am!" Where are all those now who so greatly oppressed and despised you? No more are heard such words at these: "Ho, for the combat! ho, for the strife! be ready day and night like one who fights against the heathen!" Where is now what you were wont, in the presence of grace, to say a thousand times interiorly: "Are you prepared to combat steadily when forsaken?" No more is heard the sad and lamentable cry which you so often uttered: "O God, why have You forsaken me!" Rather do I hear the sweet words lovingly sounding in your ears: "Come hither to Me, My blessed ones, possess the everlasting kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world." Where is now all the sorrow and affliction which ye ever endured on earth? O God, how swiftly is it all vanished like a dream as though ye had never known tribulation! Of a truth, gentle Lord, how inscrutable are Your judgments to the world! Happy you, ye elect, it is all over now with dwelling in nooks and corners, with stealing away and hiding yourselves from the senseless follies of other men.

Oh, if all hearts were but one heart, they could not sufficiently reflect on the great honour, the immeasurable deserts, the praise which you will evermore possess. O ye heavenly princes, O ye noble kings and emperors, O ye eternal children of God, how full of joy are your countenances, how full of gladness your hearts! What a loftiness of soul ye have! How right cheerfully do your voices swell forth in this song: Praise and thanksgiving, glory and benediction, grace and joy and everlasting honour to Him, from world to world, from eternity to eternity, from the very bottom of our hearts, to Him by whose goodness we possess all these things for ever and ever! Amen! Lo, here is our fatherland, here is heartfelt jubilation, here is unfathomable everlasting life!

The Servant. O wonder above all wonders! Ah, fathomless good, what are You? Yes, my gentle Lord, my chosen One, how good it is to be here! O my only Love, let us tarry here!

Eternal Wisdom. It is not yet time to tarry here. Many a sharp conflict have you still to endure. This vision has only been shown to you that you mayest presently revert to it in all your sufferings, as thus you can never lose courage, and wilt forget all your sorrow; and further, as an answer to the complaint of foolish men who say that I allow My friends to fare so hard. See then what a difference there is between My friendship and the friendship of this temporal state; and to speak according to the truth, how much better than others My friends fare at My hands. I will say nothing of the great trouble, labour, and many a severe tribulation in which they swim and wade, night and day; only this, that they are so blinded they do not understand it. It is indeed My eternal economy that a mind not regulated should be a sharp torment and heavy burden to itself. My friends have bodily distress, but then they have peace of heart. The friends of the world hunt after bodily comfort and ease, but in their hearts, their souls and minds, they gain nothing but trouble and vexation.

The Servant. Those persons, Lord, are out of their right senses, and are raving, who would needs compare Your faithful friendship and the world's friendship together. That they should do so because You have few friends who have no suffering to complain of, is the fault of their great blindness.

O Lord, how very soft and gentle is Your Fatherly rod! Blessed is he on whom You sparest it not. Lord, I now plainly see that tribulation does not proceed from Your harshness, but rather from Your tender love. Let no one say for the future that You have forgotten Your friends. Those have You forgotten (for You have despaired of them), on whom You do spare chastisement here below. Lord, in all fairness those ought not to have joyous days, nor pleasures, nor comfort here below, whom You do intend to shield above from eternal misery, and endow with everlasting delight. Grant,

O Lord, that these two visions may never disappear from the eyes of my heart, so that I never may lose Your friendship.

The Servant. Tell me now, tender Lord, what this suffering is which You thinkest so very profitable and good?

Eternal Wisdom. What I mean is every kind of suffering, whether willingly accepted or unwillingly incurred as when a man makes a virtue of necessity in not wishing to be exempt from suffering without My will, and ordering it, in humble patience, to My eternal praise; and the more willingly he does this, the more precious and agreeable it is to Me.

Touching such kinds of suffering, hear further, and write it down in the bottom of your heart, and keep it as a sign to set before the spiritual eyes of your soul. My dwelling is in the pure soul as in a paradise of delights, for which reason I cannot endure that she should lovingly and longingly attach herself to anything. But, from her very nature, she is inclined to pernicious lusts, and therefore I encompass her path with thorns. I garnish all her outlets with adversity, whether she like it or not, so that she may not escape from Me; her ways I strew with tribulation, so that she may not set the foot of her heart's desire anywhere except in the loftiness of My divine nature. And if all hearts were but one heart, they would not be able to bear even that least reward which I certainly will give for the suffering endured by anyone for love of Me. Such is My eternal order in all nature, from which I do not swerve; what is precious and good must be earned with bitterness; he who recoils at thus, let him recoil; many are indeed called, but few are chosen.

The Servant. It may well be, Lord, that suffering is an infinite good, provided it be not without measure, and not too dreadful and overwhelming.

Lord, You alone know all hidden things, and didst create all things in weight, in number and measure; You know also that my sufferings are measureless, that they are wholly beyond my strength. Lord, is there anyone in all this world who has constantly more painful sufferings than I? They are to me invincible how am I to endure them? Lord, if You would send me ordinary sufferings, I could bear them, but I do not see how I can ever endure such extraordinary sufferings as these sufferings which in so hidden a manner oppress my heart and soul, which only You can perfectly understand.

Eternal Wisdom. Every sick man imagines that his own sickness is the worst, and every man in distress, his own distress the greatest. Had I sent you other sufferings it would have been the same. Conform yourself freely to My will under every pain which I ordain you to suffer, without excepting this or the other suffering. Dost you not know that I only desire what is best for you, even with as kindly a feeling as you yourself? Hence it is that I am the Eternal Wisdom, and that I know better than you what is for your good. Hence it is that you mayst have felt that the sufferings which I send are much more exquisite, and penetrate deeper, and operate better, for him who does them justice, than all self-chosen sufferings. Why then do you so complain to Me? Address Me rather as follows: O my most faithful Father, do to me at all times what You will!

The Servant. O Lord, it is so easy to talk, but the reality is so difficult to endure, for it is so very painful.

Eternal Wisdom. If suffering gave no pain, it could not becalled suffering. There is nothing more painful than suffering, and nothing more joyful than to have suffered. Suffering is a short pain and a long joy.

Suffering gives to the sufferer pain here and joy hereinafter. Suffering kills suffering. Suffering is ordained that the sufferer may not suffer eternally. Hadst you so much spiritual sweetness and divine consolation and heavenly delight as, at all times, to overflow with the divine dew, it would not be for you so very meritorious of itself, since, for all this together,

I should not have to thank you so much; it could not exculpate you so much as an affectionate suffering or patience in adversity, in which you sufferest for My sake. Sooner will ten be perverted and ruined in the midst of a great delight and joyous sweetness than one in the midst of constant suffering and adversity. If you hadst as much science as all the astronomers, if you could discourse as ably of God as all the tongues of men and angels, and didst possess the treasures of knowledge of all the masters, not all this could avail to advance you in a good life, so much as if you didst give yourself up, and didst abandon yourself in all your sufferings to God; for the former is common to the good and the bad, but the latter is proper to My elect alone. If anyone were able rightly to weigh time and eternity, he ought rather to desire to lie in a fiery furnace for a hundred years than to be deprived in eternity of the smallest reward for the smallest suffering; for this has an end, but the other is without end.

The Servant. Ah, sweet and dear Lord, how like a sweet harp are these words to a suffering mortal! Lord, Lord, would You but cheer me thus and come to visit me in my sufferings, I should be glad to suffer; it would then be better for me to suffer than not to suffer.

Eternal Wisdom. Now, then, listen to the sweet music of the distended strings of that Divine harp a God-suffering man how richly it sounds, how sweetly it vibrates. Before the world, suffering is a reproach, but before Me it is an infinite honour. Suffering is an extinguisher of My wrath, and an obtainer of My favour. Suffering makes a man in My sight worthy of love, for the sufferer is like Me. Suffering is a hidden treasure which no one can make good; and though a man might kneel before Me a hundred years to beg a friendly suffering, he nevertheless would not earn it. Suffering changes an earthly man into a heavenly man. Suffering brings with it the estrangement of the world, but confers, instead, My intimate familiarity. It lessens delight and increases grace. He to whom I am to show Myself a friend, must be wholly disclaimed and abandoned by the world. Suffering is the surest way, the nearest way, and the shortest way. He who rightly knows how profitable suffering is, ought to receive it as a gift worthy of God. Oh, how many a man there is who once was a child of eternal death, and plunged in the profoundest sleep, whom suffering has wakened up and encouraged to a good life. How many a wild beast, how many an untamed bird, there is in human form, whom constant suffering has shut up, as it were, in a cage, who, if any one were to leave him time and place free, would do his best to escape from his salvation. Suffering is a safeguard against grievous falls; it makes a man know himself, rely on himself, and have faith in his neighbour. Suffering keeps the soul humble and teaches patience. It is the guardian of purity, and confers the crown of eternal salvation. There is probably no man living but who derives good from suffering, whether he be in a state of sin, or on the eve of conversion, or in the fruition of grace, or on the summit of perfection; for it purges the soul as fire purges iron and purifies gold; it adorns the wrought jewel. Suffering takes away sin, lessens the fire of purgatory, expels temptation, consumes imperfections, and renovates the spirit. It imparts true confidence, a clear conscience, and constant loftiness of mind. Know that it is a healthy beverage, and a wholesome herb above all the herbs of paradise. It chastises the body which, at any rate, must rot away, but it nourishes the noble soul which shall endure for ever. Behold, the noble soul blooms by suffering even as the beautiful rose by the fresh dews of May! Suffering makes a wise mind and an experienced man. A man who has not suffered what does he know? Suffering is affection's rod, a paternal blow given to My elect. Suffering draws and forces men to God, whether they like it or not. He who is always cheerful in suffering, has for his servants joy and sorrow, friend and foe. How often have you not thrust an iron bit between the gnashing teeth of your enemies, and rendered them, with your joyous praise, and your meekness in suffering, powerless? Sooner would I create suffering out of nothing than leave my friends unprovided with it; for in suffering, every virtue is preserved, man adorned, his neighbour reformed, and God praised. Patience in suffering is a living sacrifice, it is a sweet smell of balsam before My divine face, it is an appealing wonder before the entire host of heaven. Never was a skillful knight in a tournament so gazed at as a man who suffers well is gazed at by all the heavenly court. All the saints are on the side of the suffering man; for, indeed, they have all partaken of it before him, and they call out to him with one voice that it contains no poison, but is a wholesome beverage.

Patience in suffering is superior to raising the dead, or the performing of other miracles. It is a narrow way which leads direct to the gates of heaven. Suffering makes us companions of the martyrs, it carries honour with it, and leads to victory against every foe. Suffering clothes the soul in garments of rose colour, and in the brightness of purple; in suffering she wears the garland of red roses, and carries the sceptre of green palms.

Suffering is for her as a shining ruby in a young maiden's necklace. Adorned with it, she sings with a sweet voice and a free heart a new song which not all the angelic choirs could ever sing, because they never knew suffering.

And, to be short, those who suffer are called the poor before the world, but before Me they are called the blessed, for they are My elect.

The Servant. Oh, how plainly does it appear that You are the Eternal Wisdom, since You can bring the truth home with such cogency that no one doubts it any longer. No wonder that he, to whom You do make suffering appear so lovely, can bear sufferings. Lord, in consequence of Your words, all sufferings in future must be easier and full of joy for me. Lord, my true Father, behold, I kneel before You this day, and praise You fervently for my present sufferings, and also for the measureless sufferings of the past, which I deemed so very great, because they appeared so hostile to me.

Eternal Wisdom. But what is your opinion now?

The Servant. Lord, my opinion in very truth is this: that when I look at You, You delight of my eyes, with looks of love, the great and violent sufferings with which, in so paternal a manner, You have disciplined me, and at the sight of which Your pious friends were filled with such terror on my account, have been like a sweet fall of dew in May.

(Now, when the same preacher had begun to write on suffering, there appeared to him, in the way already mentioned above, the same two persons that were in sorrow and trouble, sitting before him, and one of them prayed him to play on the harp to her. This he took amiss, and answered that it would be an unpriestly thing. Then he was told that it would not be unpriestly, and presently there entered a youth who prepared a harp, and when he had turned it, he spun the two threads crosswise over the strings, and gave it into the hands of the brother, and then the brother began to write on suffering).

The Divine Passion

The Servant. Truly, Lord, the unfathomable good which is found in Your Passion for those who avail themselves of the time and place to meditate on it is a thing hidden from all hearts. Oh, what a sure path is the way of Your Passion, along the way of truth, up to the very pinnacle of all perfection.

All hail to you, glorious St Paul! you noble light among all the stars of heaven, who was wrapt up so high and initiated so deeply into the mysteries of the Godhead, when you didst hear the deep words which it is not given to man to utter, and who yet wast so sweetly touched in your heart by this very passion of infinite love, above everything else, that you didst exclaim: "I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified."[6] Blessed be you, too, among all doctors, sweet St. Bernard, whose soul was so illuminated with the brightness of the eternal Word that most sweetly did your tongue exhale from a full heart the passion of His humility, when your fervent soul thus spoke: The green bunch of myrrh of my Lord's bitter Passion have I fondly taken betwixt my breasts, and tenderly pressed to my heart; I do not ask, like the bride, where He rests at noon whom I embrace in the midst of my heart: I do not ask where He feeds His flock at noon, whom my soul so longingly beholds on the cross; that is certainly loftier, but this is sweeter and easier to attain. From this love-o'erflowing Passion, I take what fully makes up for the insufficiency of my own small merits; herein lies my complete justification; to meditate on this Passion, I call eternal wisdom, the perfection of all knowledge, the riches of all salvation, an entire satisfaction of all desert; it casts me down in prosperity, it raises me up in adversity, it keeps me in an even balance between this world's weal and woe, and guards me against all evil in complete security. Sometimes I have drunk out of it a draught of salutary bitterness, but at other times I have also drunk out of it a draught of spiritual consolation and divine sweetness.[7] O sweet St. Bernard, therefore is it but just that your tongue should overflow with sweetness, since your heart was so wholly sweetened with sweet suffering. O Eternal Wisdom, in this, I observe that, whoever is desirous of great reward and everlasting salvation, of high knowledge and deep wisdom, of standing erect in joy and sorrow, of possessing full security against all evil, whoever wishes to drink a draught of Your bitter Passion, and Your singular sweetness, must carry You at all times, O crucified Jesus, before the eyes of his heart.

Eternal Wisdom. You do not rightly know what good is lodged in it.

Behold, assiduous meditation on My Passion makes out of a simple man a master of high knowledge; truly it is a living book in which everything is to be found. How right blessed is that man who has it ever before his eyes and studies it! What wisdom, grace, consolation, sweetness, what cleansing from all imperfection, may not such a man obtain through the devout contemplation of My living presence! Respecting which, listen to what follows. It fell out many years ago, that a certain preacher in the beginning of his conversion had a bitter affliction of inordinate despondency, which, at times, so overpowered him that no heart which had not experienced it could conceive it. And, as he once sat after meat in his cell, his affliction was so great that he could neither study nor pray, nor perform any other good deed, except sitting there so sadly in his cell, and laying his hands in his lap, as though he meant only to take care of the cell, for God's sake, because he was no longer of any use in spiritual things. And, as he thus sat disconsolate, it suddenly seemed to him as though he heard these words distinctly addressed to him: Why do you sit here? Arise and betake you to My sorrowful Passion, for then will you overcome your own sorrow. And immediately he arose, for the words were the same to him as though they came from heaven, and he began to meditate on the sorrowful Passion of the Lord, in which all his own sorrow was lost, so that he never felt it again in the same manner.

The Servant. O my sweet Wisdom, You understandest all hearts, and know that, above all things, I desire to have my heart penetrated with Your Passion, in the face of all men, and my eyes turned day and night into running fountains of bitter tears. Alas! there is just now in my soul a bitter complaint, that Your Passion does not at all times thoroughly penetrate my heart, and that I do not meditate on it so affectionately as in reason I ought to do, and as is worthy of You, my Lord elect; teach me, therefore, how I ought to comport myself!

Eternal Wisdom. The meditation on My torments must not be made by going through them in a hasty manner, when one has time and opportunity, but it must be made by going through them with heartfelt love and a compassionate searching into their mysteries; for, otherwise, the heart remains as unaffected by devotion, as the mouth by unchewed sweet-tasting food. If you have no liking to meditate on My Passion with weeping eyes, because of the bitter agony I suffered, then oughtest you to meditate on it with a laughing heart, because of the joyous benefit you will find in it.

But if you have no mind either to laugh or to cry, you oughtest to meditate on it in the dryness of your heart, to My honour and praise, by doing which you will have done no less than if you hadst been dissolved in tears or steeped in sweetness; for then you actest from love of virtue, without regard to yourself. And that you mayest take it all the more to heart, listen to what follows. Such is My severe justice that it permits no wrong deed in all nature, be it great or small, to pass without atonement and without being made good. Now, how should a great sinner, who has perhaps committed more than a hundred mortal sins, and for every mortal sin subjected himself, by the law of My Church, to do penance seven years long, or else to complete his upperformed penance in the furnace of grim purgatory how should such a miserable soul fulfill her penance? When would there be an end to her sighs and tears? Oh, how long, how much too long, would it not appear to her! Behold, she has speedily made all good by means of My innocent, meritorious Passion! with reason, then, let her grasp the treasure of My acquired merits, and apply it to herself, in virtue of which, even if she ought to burn a thousand years in Purgatory, she will be able, in a short time, to discharge her guilt and penance, so as to attain heaven without any purgatory at all.

The Servant. O tender and Eternal Wisdom, teach me this in Your goodness; how glad should I be to make such a grasp!

Eternal Wisdom. The way to make such a grasp is this. Let a man often and seriously weigh with a penitent heart the greatness and multitude of his evil deeds, by which he has so wantonly incensed the eyes of his Heavenly Father; in the next place, let him account as nothing the works of his own satisfaction, since, reckoned against his sins, they are but as a little drop in the deep ocean; and then, let him confidently weigh the immeasurable greatness of My satisfaction; for the least drop of My precious Blood, which everywhere flowed without measure out of My body, would alone suffice to atone for the sins of a thousand worlds. Every man, therefore, appropriates so much of My satisfaction to himself, in proportion as he assimilates himself to Me by sympathetic participation in My sufferings. Moreover let a man humbly and modestly merge the smallness of his works in the greatness of My satisfaction or atonement. And to tell it you in a few words, know then, that all the masters of numbers and measures would be unable to calculate the immeasurable benefit which lies hidden in the zealous meditation of My Passion.

The Cross, She Returns Again To His Passion

The Servant. You have revealed to me the measureless sufferings which You didst suffer in Your exterior Man on the gibbet of the cross, how cruelly tormented You wast, and encompassed about with the bands of miserable death. Alas! Lord, how was it beneath the cross? Or was there not one at its foot whose heart was pierced by Your woeful death? Or how didst You bear Thyself in Your sufferings towards Your sorrowing Mother?

Eternal Wisdom. Oh, listen now to a woeful thing, and let it sink into your heart. When, as you have heard, I hung suspended in mortal anguish before them, behold, they stood over against Me, and, with their voices, called out scoffingly to Me, wagging their heads contemptuously, and scorning Me utterly in their hearts, as though I had been a loathsome worm.

But I was firm amidst it all, and prayed fervently for them to My heavenly Father; behold, I, the innocent Lamb, was likened to the guilty thieves; by one of these was I reviled, but by the other invoked. I listened to his prayer and forgave him all his evil deeds. I opened to him the celestial paradise. Listen to a lamentable thing. I gazed around Me and found Myself utterly abandoned by all mankind, and those very friends who had followed Me, stood now afar off; yea, My beloved disciples had all fled from Me. Thus was I left naked, and stripped of all My clothes. I had lost all power Andes without victory. They treated Me without pity, but I bore Myself like a meek and silent lamb. On whichever side I turned I was encompassed by bitter distress of heart. Below Me stood My sorrowful Mother, who suffered in the bottom of her motherly heart all that I suffered in My body. My tender heart was, in consequence, deeply touched, because I alone knew the depth of her great sorrow, and beheld her distressful gestures and heard her lamentable words. I consoled her very tenderly at My mortal departure, and commended her to the filial care of My beloved disciple, and gave the disciple in charge to her maternal fidelity.

The Servant. Ah, gentle Lord, who can here refrain from sighing inwardly, and weeping bitterly? Yes, You beautiful Wisdom, how could they, the fierce lions, the raging wolves, be so ungentle to You, You sweet Lamb, as to treat You thus? Tender God, oh, that Your servant had but been there to represent all mankind! Oh, that I had stood up there for my Lord, or else had gone to bitter death with my only Love; or, had they not chosen to kill me with my only Love, that I yet might have embraced, with the arms of my heart, in sorrow and desolation, the hard stone socket of the cross, and, when it burst asunder for very pity, that my wretched heart, too, might have burst with the desire to follow my Beloved.

Eternal Wisdom. It was by Me from all eternity ordained, that when My hour was come, I alone should drink the cup of My bitter Passion for all mankind. But you, and all those who desire to imitate Me, deny yourselves, and take up, each of you, your own cross, and follow Me. For this dying to yourselves is as agreeable to Me as though you had actually gone with Me to bitter death itself.

The Servant. Gentle Lord, teach me then, how I should die with You, and what my own cross is. For, truly, Lord, since You have died for me, I ought not to live any more for myself.

Eternal Wisdom. When you do strive to do your best as well as you do understand it, and for so doing, do earn scornful words and contemptuous gestures from your fellow men, and they so utterly despise you in their hearts that they regard you as unable, nay, as afraid, to revenge yourself, and still you continuest not only firm and unshaken in your conduct, but do lovingly pray for your revilers to your heavenly Father, and do sincerely excuse them before Him; lo! as often as you diest thus to yourself for love of Me, so often is My own death freshly renewed and made to bloom again in you. When you do keep yourself pure and innocent and still your good works are so misrepresented, that with the joyful consent of your own heare you are reckoned as one of the wicked, and that from the bottom of your heare you are as ready to forgive all the injury you have received as though it never had happened, and, moreover, to be useful to and assist your persecutors by word and deed, in imitation of My forgiveness of My crucifiers, then truly are you crucified with your Beloved. When you do renounce the love of all mankind, and all comfort and advantage, so far as your absolute necessities will allow, the forsaken state in which you do then stand, forsaken by all earthly love, fills up the place of all those who forsook Me when My hour was come. When you do stand, for My sake, so disengaged from all your friends in those things by means of which they are an impediment between Me and you, even as though your friends did not belong to you, then are you to Me a dear disciple and brother, standing at the foot of My cross, and helping Me to support My sufferings. The voluntary detachment of your heart from temporal things, and its devotion to Me, clothe and adorn My nakedness. When, in every adversity which may befall you from your neighbour, you are oppressed for the love of Me, and do endure the furious wrath of all men from whichever side its blast come, how fiercely soever it come, and whether you be right or wrong, as meekly as a silent lamb, so that, in virtue o' your meek heart, and sweet words, and gentle looks, you disarmest the malice of the hearts of your enemies; behold even this is the true image of My death accomplished in you. Yes, wherever I find this likeness, what delight and satisfaction have I not then, and My heavenly Father also, in man. Oh, carry but My bitter death in the bottom of your heart, and in your prayers, and in the manifestation of your works, and then will you fulfill the sufferings and fidelity of My immaculate Mother and My beloved disciple.

The Servant. Ah, loving Lord, my soul implores You to accomplish the perfect imaging of Your miserable Passion on my body and in my soul, be it for my pleasure or my pain, to Your highest praise and according to Your blessed will. I desire, also, in particular, that You would describe something more of the great sorrow of Your sorrowing Mother, and would relate to me how she bore herself in the hour that she stood under the cross.

The Servant. Oh, the great riches of the Divine knowledge and wisdom! how very inscrutable are Your judgments, and how unknown Your ways. How many a strange way have you of bringing poor souls back to You! What were Your thoughts, or how glad at heart must You not have been in Your eternal immutability, when You didst so nobly create the pure, tender, illustrious creature above all pure creatures! Lord, then could You indeed say: I think the thoughts of peace.[8] Lord, You have, out of the abyss of Your essential goodness, reflected Your glory interiorly to Thyself again, inasmuch as You have led back to their origin all beings gone astray in their divine emanation. Yes, Heavenly Father, how should a sinful creature dare to approach You, unless You hadst given him Your own elected child,

Eternal Wisdom, for a guide? Yes, Eternal Wisdom, how should a sinful creature dare at all times to discover his uncleanness before such purity, unless indeed he took the mother of all compassion for his protectress?

Eternal Wisdom! if You are my brother, You are also my Lord; if You are truly man, woe is me! so are You also truly God, and a very severe judge of evil deeds. For this reason, when our poor souls are in the narrow prison-house of fathomless sorrow of heart, and we can neither stir here nor there, nothing remains for us except to lift up our miserable eyes to you,

O chosen Queen of Heaven. Therefore, you mirror reflecting the brightness of the eternal sun, you hidden treasure of infinite compassion, this day do I and all penitent hearts salute you! O ye exalted spirits, ye pure souls, stand forth, extol and praise, commend and exult in the ravishing paradise of all delight, the sublime Queen! for I am not worthy to do so, unless in her goodness she vouchsafe to allow me. O you chosen bosom friend of God, you fair golden crown of Eternal Wisdom, permit me, a poor sinner, even me in my weakness, to speak to you a little in confidence. With a trembling heart, with a countenance of shame, with dejected eyes, my soul falls down before you. O you mother of all graces, methinks neither my soul nor any other sinful soul requires permission or a passport to repair to you. Are you not the immediate mediatrix of all sinners? The more sinful a soul is, the more reasonable it seems to her that she should have free access to you; the deeper she is in wickedness, the more reason she has to press forwards to you. Therefore, my soul, step joyfully forth! If your great crimes drive you away, her unfathomable goodness invites you to draw near.

O, therefore, you only consolation of all sinful hearts, you only refuge of guilty mortals, to whom so many a wet eye, so many a wounded, miserable heart is raised up, be a gracious mediatrix and channel of reconciliation between me and the Eternal Wisdom. O think, think, you mild Queen elect, that you derivest all your merits from us poor sinners. What was it made you God's mother, made you a casket in which the Eternal Wisdom reposed? O

Lady, it was the sins of us poor mortals! How could you becalled a mother of graces and compassion, except through our wretchedness, which has need of grace and compassion. Our poverty has made you rich, our crimes have ennobled you above all pure creatures. O turn hither then the eyes of your compassion, which your gentle heart never turned from a sinner, from a forlorn mortal! Take me under your protection, for my consolation and confidence are in you. How many a guilty soul, after having bid farewell to God and all the heavenly host, by denying God and despairing of Him, and being lamentably separated from Him, has, by still clinging to you, been sweetly detained, till at length, through your intercession, it has again attained to grace. Who is the sinner, how great soever his crimes, to whom your overflowing goodness has denied assistance? Lo, when my soul seriously reflects within herself, methinks it were only right, if it were possible, that while my eyes wept for joy, my heart should leap out of my mouth; so does your name dissolve in my mouth like honey from the comb. Even you are called the mother, the Queen of Compassion, yes, tender mother, yes, gentle mother of compassion! O what a name! O how unfathomable is the being whose name is so rich in grace! Did ever the melody of song resound as soothingly in an agitated heart as your pure name in our penitent hearts? At this exalted name all heads in reason ought to incline, all knees to bend. How often have you not put to flight the hostile powers of wicked spirits, how often have you not allayed the angry justice of the severe judge! How often have you not obtained from Him grace and consolation! Yes, poor sinful mortals as we are, what have we to say to it? How shall we ever acknowledge such great goodness? If all angelic tongues, all pure spirits and souls, if heaven and earth and all that is contained in them cannot properly praise her merits, her ravishing beauty, her graciousness and immeasurable dignity, alas! what shall we sinful hearts be able to do? Let us do our best, and express to her our acknowledgements, our thanks; for indeed her great kindness does not look at the smallness of the gift, it looks at the purity of intention. ah, sweet Queen, with what justice may not your sex rejoice in your sweet name; for cursed was the first Eve that she ever eat of the bitter fruit of the tree of knowledge; blessed be the second Eve that she brought us again the sweet fruit of heaven! Let no one lament over Paradise; one paradise we lost, and have won two others. For is she not a paradise in whom grew the fruit of the living tree? in whom all delight and joy are contained together? And is not that also a paradise above every paradise in whom the dead again live, if they only taste His fruit from whose hands,feet, and side the living fountains which irrigate all the earth flow,[9] the fountains of inexhaustible mercy, fathomless wisdom, overflowing sweetness, ardent love, the fountains of eternal life? Truly, Lord, whoever tastes of this fruit, whoever has drunk of this fountain, knows that these two gardens of paradise far surpass the earthly paradise. But you, O Queen elect, art the gate of all grace, the door of compassion, that never yet was shut.

Heaven and earth may pass away, ere you will permit anyone who earnestly seeks your assistance to depart from you without obtaining it. Behold, for this very reason are you the first object my soul sees when I awake, the last when I lie down to sleep. How should anything which your pure hands present before God and commend to Him, how small soever in itself, be rejected? Take, O take, therefore, the smallness of my works and present it, so that, in your hands it may appear something before the eyes of God Almighty. Even you are the pure vessel of red gold, melted down with graces, inlaid with precious emeralds, and sapphires, and all virtues, whose single aspect, in the sight of the heavenly King, surpasses that of all other creatures. O, you lovely divine spouse elect, if King Ahasuerus was captivated by the beauty of Esther, if she was found pleasing in his eyes above all women, if she found favour above them all, so that he did for her whatever she desired, O you, all red roses and lilies, surpassing beauty, how justly may the King of Heaven be captivated by your spotless purity, your meek humility, by the sweet smelling nosegay of all your virtues and graces!

Or, who has ever caught the wild and noble unicorn, if not you?[10] How infinitely pleasing, above all mortals, in His eyes is your delicate and love-inspiring beauty, before which all other beauty fades like a glow-worm before the brightness of the sun. What overflowing grace have you not found before Him for yourself and us mortals who are without grace! How should, how can, then, the Heavenly King deny you anything? Truly mayest you say, My Beloved is mine, and I am His. Ah! you are God's, and God is yours, and ye two have an eternal and unfathomable reciprocation of love which no duality can divide. Think of us poor needy ones, who continue to wander so wretchedly in sorrowful affliction. Yes, exalted Lady of heaven and earth, arise now and be to us a mediatrix, and an obtainer of grace with your tender Child, the Eternal Wisdom. Ah, Eternal Wisdom, will You deny me anything?

Even as I present You before Your heavenly Father, so do I present Your pure tender mother before You. Look at her mild eyes which so often looked kindly on You; behold Those fair cheeks which she so often affectionately pressed to Your infant face. O look at her sweet mouth which used to kiss You so fondly and tenderly again and again. Look at her pure hands which so often ministered to You. O You goodness above all goodness, how can you deny anything to her who suckled You so affectionately and bore You in her arms; who laid You to rest, wakened You and tenderly reared You! O Lord, let me remind You of all the love You ever didst experience from her in Your childhood's days, when You didst sit in her motherly lap, and with Your playful eyes didst laugh so pleasantly and tenderly in her face with that fathomless love You hadst for her above all other creatures! Think, too, of the heart-rending woe which her maternal heart endured with You under the gibbet of Your miserable cross, where she saw You in the agony of death, and when her heart and soul so often died away in sorrow and distress with You.

Lord, I entreat You, for her sake, to grant me every means of shaking off my sins, of acquiring Your grace, and never losing it again.

The Servant. Who will give my eyes as many tears as there are letters, so that with bright tears I may write down the miserable tears of the unfathomable heart-rending grief of my Blessed Lady? Pure Lady and noble Queen of Heaven and Earth, touch my stony heart with one of your scalding tears, one of those which you didst shed in bitter distress for your tender Child under the wretched cross, so that my heart of stone may be softened, and may listen to you; for heart-rending grief is of such a nature, that no one can have a true knowledge of it, except him whom it touches. Touch then my heart, O Lady Elect, with your sorrowful words, and tell me in short significant terms, simply as an admonition, how it was with you in your mind, and how you didst support yourself at the foot of the cross, when you didst behold your tender Child, the beautiful and tender Wisdom, so lamentably expire.

Answer. You should listen to it with sorrow and heartfelt woe; for although I am now exempt from suffering, yet, at that time I was not. Before I had reached the foot of the cross, I had endured many a great unspeakable anguish of heart, especially at the spot where I first caught sight of the beating, kicking, and ill-usage of my Child, on beholding which my strength forsook me, and thus helpless was I carried after my dear Son to the foot of the cross. But, in respect of what you ask, how I felt in my mind, and how I supported myself, listen to as much as it is possible for you to know; for the whole no heart that ever was made can fathom. Understand, then, that all the sorrow that ever could afflict a heart would only be as a drop in the ocean compared to the unfathomable sorrow which my maternal heart at that time endured; and, understand, at the same time, that the dearer, the sweeter, the more precious the beloved one is, the more insupportable is his loss and death. Now, where on the whole earth was there ever a more tender one born, a lovelier one seen than my own best beloved one, Jesus Christ, by whom and in whom I had entire possession of all that the world could bestow? I was already dead to myself, and lived only in Him, and when at last my own fair love was slain, then only did I utterly die; and, as my only love was but one, and, moreover, dear to me above all other loves, so my only sorrow was but one, and a sorrow above all sorrows that ever were expressed. His fair and gentle humanity was, to me, a delightful spectacle; His dignified divinity was, to my eyes, a sweet contemplation; to think of Him was my heart's delight; to speak of Him was my pastime; to hear His sweet words was music to my soul. He was my heart's mirror, my soul's comfort; heaven and earth, and all that is in them, I possessed in His sweet presence. Lo, when I saw my love suspended in mortal agony before me, alas, the sight! Alas, what a moment was that! How died my heart within me! How was my courage extinguished! How did my strength fail me! I looked up, but I could not help my child. I looked down, and saw only those who so cruelly ill-used Him. O how narrow then to me was all this world! I had lost all heart; my voice had died from me; I had, moreover, lost all strength and yet, when I came to myself, I raised your feeble voice, and spoke to my Child, complaining, such words as these: Alas, my Child! Alas, you Child of mine! Alas, my heart's delightful mirror, in which I have so often taken delight to behold myself, how do I now see You miserably suspended before me! Alas, you treasure above all this world! My mother, my father, and all that my heart can express (such are You to me), take me with You! Or, to whom will You leave Your wretched mother? Oh, who will permit me to die for You, to suffer for You this bitter death? Oh, misery and distress of a love-torn mother, how am I robbed of all joy, of all love, of all consolation! Oh, you greedy death, why sparest you me? Take, take away the poor mother with her poor Child; to her, to live is bitterer than to die!

Him, even Him, whom my soul loveth, I see dying! And as I thus lifted up my voice in lamentation, behold, my Child consoled me very affectionately, and, among other things, said: That in no other way might mankind be redeemed, and that on the third day He intended to rise again and appear to me and His disciples; and He said further: Woman, cease your weeping; weep no more, my fair mother, I will not forsake you for ever! And while my Child thus tenderly consoled me, and commended me to the disciple whom He loved, and who also stood by, full of sorrow (those words of His were conveyed to my heart in a tone so lamentable, and so broken by sighs, that they pierced through my heart and soul like a sharp sword), even the hard hearts of the Jews were moved to compassion for me. I cast up my arms and my hands, and, in the anguish of my heart, would gladly have embraced my beloved, yet this I might not do. And then I sank down, overwhelmed by my heart-rending grief, at the foot of the cross and became speechless; and when I returned to myself, and could do nothing else, I kissed the blood that trickled down from His wounds, so that my pale cheeks and mouth were all tinged with blood.

The Servant. Ah, You unfathomable goodness, what infinite torture, what infinite misery is this! Whither shall I turn, or to whom shall I cast my eyes? If I look up at the beautiful Wisdom, I only see woe and distress, at which my heart is like to sink within me. They cry out and shout against Him outwardly, the agony of death struggles with Him inwardly, all His veins are on the rack, all His blood gushes away, it is nothing but ejaculations of woe, and cheerless dying without recovery. Then, if I but turn my eyes to His pure Mother, I see her tender heart pierced, alas! with wounds as though a thousand blades had transfixed it. I see her pure soul lacerated by woe.

Never were such gestures of misery and longing seen as hers; deprived was her sick body of all strength, her fair countenance besmeared with mortified blood. Oh, great misery above all misery! The torture of His heart consists in the affliction of His sorrowing Mother; the torture of His sorrowing Mother consists in the innocent death of her beloved Son, more painful to her than her own death. He beholds her and consoles her tenderly; she stretches out her hands to Him, and would gladly die instead of Him. Alas! which of the two feels here the most bitterly? Whose is the greater distress? To both it is so unfathomable that there never was any equal to it. Alas! the motherly heart. Alas! the tender womanly mind. How was your maternal heart ever able to support this infinite sorrow? Blessed be that heart compared to whose sorrow everything that ever was uttered of a heart's sorrow is only as a dream to the reality. Blessed be You, O rising blush of morning, above all creatures! And blessed be the flower-enamelled rose-scented meadow of Your fair countenance, adorned with the ruby red blood of Eternal Wisdom! Alas! You affable countenance of beautiful wisdom, how do You fade in death! Alas! You beautiful body, how do You hang suspended! Woe is me, You pure blood, how hotly do You run down on Your pure Mother who bore You! Lament, ye mothers, lament with me over this affliction! All ye pure hearts, let this rose-coloured, pure blood which so be sprinkles your pure Mother, go to your hearts! Behold, all hearts, ye who ever had sorrow, behold and see, if ever there was sorrow like to this sorrow! Truly, it is a wonder that our hearts melt not here for pity and compassion; so great, indeed, was this distress, that hard stones were rent asunder, the earth trembled, the sun was extinguished, because they would fain show compassion for their Creator!

Man

The Servant. Eternal Wisdom! the more one reflects on Your measureless Passion, the more unfathomable it appears. Your extremity was so very great under the cross, but still more so on the cross, according to Your exterior powers which, at that hour, felt all the pangs of bitter death. But, gentle Lord, how was it with Your interior Man, with Your noble Soul? Had it no consolation, no sweetness like other martyrs souls, so as to mitigate its cruel sufferings? Or, when did Your sufferings come to an end?

Eternal Wisdom. Now, listen to a misery of miseries, such as you never yet didst hear of. Although My soul, according to her highest powers, was at that time wrapt in the vision and enjoyment of the pure divinity, noble as, in truth, she is, behold, the lower powers of My exterior and interior nature were yet wholly abandoned to themselves, even to the very last drop of infinite bitterness of suffering, without any consolation, so that no torment was ever equal to it. And as I was thus left entirely helpless and forsaken, with running wounds, with weeping eyes, with extended arms, with the veins of My body on the rack, in the agony of death, then it was that I lifted up My voice in lamentation, and cried out miserably to My Father: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? And still in all this, My will was united in eternal conformity with His will. And when all My blood was poured out, and all My strength exhausted, behold, I was seized by a bitter thirst, because of My mortal agony. But I thirsted still more for the salvation of man. Then did they reach Me vinegar and gall to quench the burning thirst of My parched mouth. And when I had accomplished the work of human redemption, I cried out: It is finished! I was entirely obedient to My Father, even to death. My Spirit I commended into His hands, saying: Into Your hands I commend My Spirit. And then My noble Soul separated from My body, both of which yet remained unseparated from the divinity! After this a sharp spear was thrust into My right side; forthwith a stream of precious blood gushed out, and with it a fountain of living water. Behold, My child, in an extremity so pitiable as this did I redeem you, and all the elect, and did save you by the living sacrifice of My innocent blood from everlasting death.

The Servant. Alas! tender and loving Lord and Brother, with what sorrowful, what bitter toil didst You not reap me in! Alas! noble Lord, how ardently didst You love me, how generously didst You redeem me! Woe is me,

You fair Wisdom, how shall I ever be in a condition to acknowledge Your love, and Your sufferings? If I had Samson's strength, Absalom's beauty,

Solomon's wisdom, and the riches and greatness of all kings, my only wish would be to devote them to Your praise and service. But, Lord, I am nothing, and therefore can do nothing. O Lord, how am I to thank You?

Eternal Wisdom. If you hadst the tongues of all the angels, the good works of all mankind, and the powers of all created beings, you yet could not thank Me, nor requite Me, for the least pang which I suffered for the love of you.

The Servant. Tender Lord, inform and teach me, then, how I may become pleasing to You by means of Your grace, since no one is able to make You a return for the tokens of Your love.

Eternal Wisdom. You should often set My sorrowful cross before your eyes, and let My bitter torments penetrate to your heart, and shape your own sufferings after them. If I allow you to pine and wither in disconsolate affliction and dryness, without any sweetness, you should not seek after strange consolation. Let your cry of misery rise to your heavenly Father with a renunciation of yourself and all your desires, according to His Fatherly will. The bitter your suffering is from without, and the more resigned you are from within, the more like are you to Me, and the more dear to My heavenly Father, for herein the most pious are put to the strongest proof.

What though your desires may have a thirsty craving to seek satisfaction and delight in something that might be pleasant to them, yet should you forego it for My sake, and thus will your thirsty mouth be steeped with me in bitterness. You should thirst after the salvation of men. Your good works you should direct to a perfect life, and persevere to the end. Your will must be subject, your obedience prompt to your superiors; your soul, and all that belongs to it, you must surrender into your heavenly Father's hands, and your spirit must ever be dying out of time into eternity, in prefiguration of your last journey. Behold, thus will your cross be shaped after My miserable cross, and worthily accomplished in it. You should wholly lock yourself up with My love-wounded heart in My open side, and dwell there, and seek there your resting-place. Then will I wash you with the waters of life, and deck you out with My precious blood, in purple. I will associate Myself to you, and unite you with Myself eternally.

The Servant. Lord, never was there any magnet so powerful in attracting hard iron to itself, as Your love-fraught Passion, thus presented to my soul, is powerful to unite to itself all hearts. Alas! You loving Lord, draw me now by means of love and sorrow away from this world to You on Your cross, fulfill in me the closest resemblance to Your cross, so that my soul may enjoy You in Your highest glory.

The Servant. Ah, pure Mother and tender Lady! When did your great and bitter affliction of heart which you hadst for your Son, come to an end?

Answer. Listen to my words with sorrowful compassion. When my tender Child had expired, and when He hung suspended before me, and all the strength of my heart was utterly broken, though I could do nothing else, I yet cast many a glance up at my dead Child. And when they came to take Him down, it was as if I had been roused from the dead. With what motherly love did I not press them to my blood-stained cheeks, and when He was lowered down to me, how affectionately beyond measure did I not embrace Him, dead as He was in my arms; how did I not strain to my heart my only love elect, and kiss again and again the fresh bleeding wounds of His face! And yet, with what revishing beauty His entire body was transformed, all hearts could not sufficiently contemplate. Then did I take my tender Child on to my lap, and look at Him. I looked at Him, and He was dead! I looked at Him again and again, but He had neither voice nor consciousness. Then did I fetch many a deep and heart-rending sigh, my eyes shed many tears, my whole figure was deplorable to see, scarcely had my doleful words reached my lips, when they were choked by grief, and only half expressed. Alas, alas, cried I, whenever was anyone so cruelly used on earth as You, my innocent and beloved Child!

Alas, my Child, my only consolation, my only joy, how are You changed for me into a source of much bitterness! Where is now the joy I experienced at Your birth? Where the delight I had in Your childhood? Where the honour and dignity I had in Your presence? Whither is all gone that could ravish my heart? Oh sorrow! Oh anguish! Oh bitterness! Oh desolation of heart! truly is everything transformed into an unfathomable desolation of heart, into a mortal agony! Alas, You Child of mine, how am I so shorn of all love, how has my heart become utterly disconsolate! Such, and many such words of lamentation did I utter, because of my deceased Child.

The Servant. Oh, pure and beautiful Mother, permit me once more to console my heart in this moment with your dear Child, my Lord, the Eternal Wisdom, before the hour of separation comes, before He is snatched away from us to the grave. Immaculate Mother! however unfathomable your heart's affliction way, however strongly it may touch all other hearts, you didst yet, methinks, find some pleasure in the affectionate embracing of your deceased Child. Oh, pure and gentle Lady, I desire that you would offer me your dear Child, as He appeared in death, on the lap of my soul, so that I may experience, according to my ability, in spirit and meditation, what you didst in your body. Lord, my eyes are turned to You in the most rapturous joy and in deepest, heart-felt love, such as no only love was ever regarded with by the beloved. Lord, my soul expands to Your embrace even as the tender rose expands to the pure sun's brightness. Lord, my soul stretches out her arms to You with infinite desire. Oh, my loving Lord, with ardent desire I embrace You today, and press You to the bottom of my heart and soul, and put You in mind of the loving hour of Your death, that You mayest never allow it to be lost in me; and I request that neither life, nor death, nor joy, nor sorrow, may ever separate You from me. Lord, my eyes contemplate Your dead countenance, my soul kisses again and again all Your fresh bleeding wounds, all my senses are fed with this sweet fruit beneath the living tree of the cross; and it is reasonable, for this person consoles himself with his innocent life, the other with his great exercises and strict conduct; the one with this, the other with that; but, as for me, all my consolation, all my trust, are lodged wholly in Your Passion, in Your satisfaction and merited reward, and therefore, I shall at all times carry Your Passion joyfully in the bottom of my heart, and show the image of it outwardly, in words and deeds, to the utmost of my ability.

Oh, enchanting brightness of eternal light, how are You now for me utterly extinguished! Extinguish in me the burning lust of all vice.

Oh, pure transparent mirror of divine majesty, how are You now defiled! Cleanse away the great stains of my evil deeds!

Oh, beautiful image of paternal goodness, how are You befouled and utterly defaced! Restore the defaced and faded image of my soul!

Oh, You innocent Lamb, how wretchedly are You used! Amend and atone for my guilty, sinful life!

Oh, You King of all kings, and Lord of all lords, how does my soul see You lying here in so lamentable and ghastly a plight! Grant, that since my soul now embraces You with sorrow and lamentation in Your dereliction, she may be embraced by You with joy in Your everlasting glory. Amen.

The Servant. Now, tender Lady, put an end to your sorrow and your sad recital, and tell me how you didst separate from your Beloved.

Answer. It was a misery to see and hear. Alas, all was yet supportable, while I had my Child with me; but when they tore my dead Child from my blighted heart, from my embracing arms, from my face pressed to His, and buried Him, what a wailing I set up in that hour would hardly be believed; and then when it came to the separation, oh, what an agony, what woe, were seen in me! For when they separated me from my Beloved, the separating wrestled with my heart like bitter death. Supported by their hands who led me away, I walked with tottering steps, for I was robbed of all consolation, my heart longed woefully to return to my Love, my confidence was wholly set in Him, I rendered Him alone of all mankind entire fidelity and true attachment, even to the grave.

The Servant. Oh, affectionate and tender Lady, for this do all hearts greet you, all tongues praise you, since all the good that the Fatherly heart has vouchsafed to give us, flowed through your hands. You are the beginning, you are the means, you will also be the end. Alas, pure and tender Mother, let me remind you today of your miserable separation; think of your bitter separating from your tender Child, and help me that I may not be separated either from you or from His joyous countenance.

Yes, pure Mother, even as my soul now stands by you with compassionate sympathy, and embraces you with ardent desire, and, in contemplation with heartfelt desire, with thanksgiving and praise, leads you from the sepuchre through the gate of Jerusalem back again to your house, so do I crave that, at my last departure, my soul may be again led by you, O pure and tender Mother, to its Fatherland, and there be confirmed in everlasting bliss.

Amen.

The Servant. Eternal Wisdom! if any one were to give me the whole earth for my own, it would not be so agreeable to me as the truth and the advantage which I have found in Your sweet doctrines. Therefore, do I desire from the very bottom of my heart that You, the Eternal Wisdom, would teach me still more. Lord, what is that which belongs, above all things, to a servant of Eternal Wisdom, who is desirous to live for You alone? Lord, I should like to hear about the union of pure reason with the Holy Trinity, when, in the true reflection of the eternal birth of the Word, and in the regeneration of her own Spirit, reason is ravished from herself and stands face to face with God.

Eternal Wisdom. Let not him ask about what is highest in doctrine, who still stands on what is lowest in a good life. I will teach you what will profit you more.

The Servant. Lord, what will You teach me?

Eternal Wisdom. I will teach you to die and will teach you to live.

I will teach you to receive Me lovingly, and will teach you to praise Me lovingly. Behold, this is what properly belongs to you.

The Servant. Eternal Wisdom, if I had the power to fulfill my wishes,

I know not whether, in this temporal state, I ought to wish anything else, as to doctrine, than how to die to myself and all the world, how to live wholly for You, to cherish Your love with all my heart, to receive You lovingly, and to praise You lovingly. O God, how blessed is that man who is able to do this, and who consumes in it his whole life. But, Lord, do You mean a spiritual dying or a bodily dying?

Eternal Wisdom. I mean both one and the other.

The Servant. What need have I, Lord, of being taught to die bodily?

Surely it teaches itself when it comes.

Eternal Wisdom. He who puts his teaching off till then, will find it too late.

The Servant. O Lord, it is still somewhat bitter for me to hear about death.

Eternal Wisdom. Behold, even this is the source of those unprovided and terrible deaths whereof the towns and convents now are full. Behold, death has often bridled you secretly, and had fain ridden you from hence, in the same way as he does the countless multitude, one of whom I will now show you. Open, therefore, your interior sense, and see and listen; see what grim death is like in the person of your neighbour, do but mark the lamentable voice you will hear.

The Servant heard with his understanding the voice of an unprepared dying man cry aloud and speak as follows: The sorrows of death have surrounded me.[11] Woe is me, You God of Heaven, that ever I was born into the world. The beginning of my life was with crying and weeping, and now my departure from it is also with bitter crying and weeping. Alas, the sorrows of death have surrounded me, the pains of hell have encompassed me! O death,

O furious death, what an unwelcome guest you are to my young and joyous heart! How little was I prepared for your coming! You have attacked me from behind, you have run me down. You leadest me away in your chains like one that leads a condemned man bound and fettered to the place where he is to be slain. I clasp my hands above my head, I wring them with anguish in each other, for gladly would I escape from him. I look around me into all the ends of the earth to see if any one will give me advice or help, and it cannot be. Death I hear thus fatally speaking within me: Neither learning, nor money, nor friends can avail you; you are mine by right. Alas, and must it be so? O God, and must I then depart from hence? Is a last separation really at hand? Woe is me that ever I was born! O death, what are you going to do with me?

The Servant. Dear man, why do you take it so hard? This is the common lot of rich and poor, young and old. Many more have died in their youth than in their old age. Or would you, perhaps, alone escape death?

This would prove a great want of understanding in you.

The unprepared dying man. O Lord, what bitter consolation is this! I am not without understanding. Those are without understanding who have not lived for Him, and who are not frightened at death. Such persons are blind; they die like cattle; they know not what they have before them. I do not complain that I must die; I complain that I must die unprepared. I do not merely lament the end of my life, I lament and weep over the delightful days which are so utterly lost and vanished without any profit. For truly I am like an untimely and rejected abortion, like a blossom torn off in May. My days have sped swifter than an arrow from the bow. I am forgotten as though I had never been, like a track which a bird makes through the air, which closes behind it and is unknown to all men. Therefore are my words so full of bitterness, therefore is my speech so full of woe! Oh, who will enable me to be as I once was, to have again those pleasant times before me, and to know then what I know now! When those times were mine I did not rightly estimate them; I, foolish man, let them pass swiftly away; now are they vanished from me; I cannot recall them, I cannot overtake them. No hour so short but I ought to have valued it more preciously and thankfully than a poor man about to receive a kingdom as a gift. Lo, this is why my eyes shed salt tears, because they cannot restore what I have lost. Woe is me, O God; that I should have feasted so many day away, and that it profits me now so little. Why did not I learn to die all the time? O ye blooming roses, that have still your days before you, look at me and learn wisdom; turn your youth to God, and with Him alone occupy your time, so that what has happened to me may not happen to you. Ah, me! how have I consumed my youth! No one would I believe; my wayward spirit would listen to no one. Alas, now am I fallen into the snare of bitter death! My days have vanished, my youth has sped. Better were it for me had my mother's womb become my grave than that I should so have squandered away my time.

The Servant. Be converted to God; repent of your sins; if your end be well, then will all be well.

Unprepared dying man. Alas, what do I hear? How shall I do penance?

Seest you not how terrified I am, how exceeding great is my distress? Even as a little bird caught in the claws of a cruel falcon, and become senseless in the agony of dying, I am unconscious of everything except that I would gladly escape and cannot. Death and the bitterness of separation oppress me.

Alas, the repentance and free conversion of him who is capable of right doing, what a sure thing you are! He who puts you off will hardly fail of being himself put off. O long protraction of my amendment, how much too protracted have you not proved! My good intentions without works, my good promises without performance, have ruined me. I have said to God, Tomorrow and tomorrow, till I am fallen into the night of death. O You Almighty God, is it not a misery above all miseries, ought it not deeply to afflict me, that I should thus have lost the whole of my life, my thirty, my forty years? I know not that I ever spent a day wholly according to God's will, or that I ever rendered to God, as in reason I ought to have done, a truly acceptable service. Oh, how the thought cuts me to the heart! O God, how wretchedly shall I not stand before You and the whole heavenly host! Lo, now I am departing hence; and now, even at this hour, a single Pater Noster, uttered with devotion, would rejoice me more than if anyone were to put into my hands a thousand pounds of gold. Ah, my God, what have I not eternally neglected, what evil have I not inflicted on myself in not having seen this while it was in my power! What hours upon hours have escaped me! How have I allowed myself to be led wrong by small things in the great affair of my salvation! It would now be more agreeable to me, and would procure me more eternal reward if, from divine love, I had foregone the pleasure I took at the sight of a friend, when such pleasure was contrary to God's will, than if that friend were to demand a reward for me from God thirty years long on his knees. Hear, hear, all men, a lamentable thing: I go begging round and round, because my time is short, and beg a small alms out of the merits of good people as an expiation for myself, and it is refused me; for they are all afraid lest they should want oil in their lamps. Alas, You God of Heaven, let this move Your compassion, that with my healthy body I could have earned such great reward and wealth on so many a day when I went about idle, and that now this small alms, begged only as an expiation, not as a reward, for which, moreover, I should stand indebted, no one will give me. Oh, let this, ye old and young, go to your hearts, and hoard up in the good season while ye can, so that ye may not become beggars, and be denied in an hour like this.

The Servant. Alas, my dear friend, your distress rends my very heart.

By the living God, I conjure you, give me some advice so that I may not come into trouble.

The unprepared dying man. The best advice I can give you, the greatest wisdom and prudence on earth, is this: That you prepare yourself by a full confession of and an abstinence from all those things with which you know yourself to be infected, and that you hold yourself at all times ready, as though you should have to depart hence in a day, or at latest in a week. Imagine now, in your heart, that your soul is in Purgatory, and doomed to remain there ten years for her evil deeds, and that this year alone is granted you to help her in. Look at her very often, see how woefully she calls out to you and speaks to you: O you my best beloved friend, reach me your hand, have pity on me, and help me to pray that I may speedily come out of this raging fire of Purgatory, for I am so miserable, that there is nobody, except you alone, to help me ;with charitable works.

I am forgotten by all the world, because every one is busy about himself.

The Servant. This were a choice doctrine for whoever might actually feel it like You in their hearts. But though Your words are so piercing, yet do people sit here and give little heed to them; they have ears and hear not; they have eyes and see not; no one will really die before his soul departs out of him.

The unprepared dying man. Wherefore, when at last they are caught on the hook of death, and cry aloud in woeful distress and cruel pain, they are not heard. Lo, even as among a hundred persons who wear the appearance of holiness (of others I will say nothing), not one pays attention to my words, that he may be converted and reform his life, so is it come to that pass that among a hundred, not one but falls into the snare of death unprepared; as also certainly happens to those who die suddenly, or in an unconscious state; for the comforts of the body, perishable love, and the greedy pursuits of sustenance, blind the multitude. But if you would be delivered from this miserable and unprovided death, then follow my advice.

Behold, diligent meditation on death, and faithful assistance given to your poor soul, who appeals so piteously to You, will advance you so far that you will not only be without fear, but more, you will expect death with all the ardour of your heart. Think of me every day, and write down my words in the bottom of your heart. In my bitter distress see what your future lot will be; look what a night this is. Oh, happy the man, that ever he was born, who arrives well prepared at this hour, for his passage will be a good one, however bitter his death; behold the bright angels will guard him, the saints escort him, the celestial court receive him; his final marching forth will be a glorious entry into his everlasting fatherland. But me, alas! where will my soul lodge this very night in that strange, mysterious country? Oh, my soul, how are you utterly forsaken! O God, how very miserable she will be among all miserable souls! Who is there that will help her with entire fidelity? And now let me put an end to my sad complaints; for my hour is come. I see now that it cannot be otherwise. My hands begin to grow cold, my face to turn livid, my eyes to lose their sight. Alas, the shocks of furious death wrestle with my poor heart. I begin to fetch my breath very hard. The light of this world begins to vanish from me. I begin to see into the next world. O God, my God, what a sight! The horrible forms of black Moors assemble together; the wild beasts of hell surround me. They gloat over my poor soul to see if it will be theirs. O You just judge of the severe judgment seat, how very heavy in Your scales are those things which in ours are so light! The cold sweat of death bursts, from very anxiety, through my flesh. Oh, the wrathful aspect of the severe judge, how very sharp Your judgments are! Now let me turn in spirit to that world where I am led by the hand into Purgatory, and where, in the land of torments, I see anguish and distress. O God, I see the wild, hot flames dart up on high, and meet over the heads of suffering souls. They wander up and down amid the dark flames, and great is their affliction. What heart would like to contemplate our pangs, the bitterness of our woe? Many a sad cry is heard.

Help! help! ah, where is all the help of our false friends? Where are the fair promises of our false friends? How have they deserted us, how have they utterly forgotten us? Oh, have pity on us, some little pity; at least you our best beloved friends! What services have we not rendered you, and how are we now repaid. Oh that we should not have warded off these sufferings when we could have done so with things so trifling! Is not the least torment here greater, much greater, indeed, than any torment ever was on earth? One hour in Purgatory lasts a hundred years. Lo! now we boil, now we burn, now we shriek aloud for help; but, more than all it is our misfortune to be deprived so long of the joy of His countenance; this it is that cuts through the heart, the sense, the soul! And thus I expire.

The Servant. O Eternal Wisdom, how have You forsaken me! O God, how has death all at once become present before me! Alas, you soul of mine, are you still in my body? Lord of Heaven, do I still live? Ah, Lord, now will I praise You, and vow reformation to You till death. Oh, how very terrified I am! I did not think death was so near me. Truly, Lord, this sight shall not fail to profit me; every day I will be on the watch for death, and will look about me that he take me not by surprise. I will learn how to die; I will turn my thoughts to yonder world. Lord, I see that there is no remaining here; Lord, in sooth, I will not save up my sorrow and repentance till death. Oh, how terrified I am at this spectacle, I marvel that my soul is still in my body! Begone, begone, from me, soft reclining, long sleeping, good eating and drinking, perishable honours, delicateness and luxury! If but a little suffering here is so painful to me, how shall I ever endure immeasurable agony? O God, it indeed I were now to die thus, how would it be with me? What a load have I not still upon me! Lord, this very day I will set a poor man[12] to pray for my poor soul, and since all her friends have forsaken her I will befriend her.

Eternal Wisdom. See; this should you diligently look to whilst you are in your youth, and whilst you have still time to make things better. But when, in truth, you have reached this hour, and you can not make things better, then should you look at nothing on earth, except My death and My infinite mercy; so that Your trust may repose wholly in Me.

The Servant. O Lord, I prostrate myself at Your feet, and I beseech You with bitter tears to chastise me here as You will, only keep it not in store for me in the next world. Woe is me, Lord, the fire of Purgatory and its unspeakable torments, how could I ever be so foolish as to think lightly of them, and how do I now stand in such great fear of them!

Eternal Wisdom. Be of good heart, this your fear is the beginning of wisdom, and a path to salvation. Or have you forgotten how all the Scriptures declare what great salvation is contained in the fear and diligent contemplation of death? You should always praise God, for not to one in a thousand has it been granted to know Him, as to you. Listen to a lamentable thing: they hear it spoken of; they know of it beforehand, and yet they allow it to pass by, and heed it not till they be swallowed up by it, and then they howl and weep when it is too late. Open your eyes, count upon your fingers, see how many of them have died around you in your own times; talk with them a little in your heart; join your old man to them as though it were dead; question them together; see with what fathomless sighs, with what bitter tears they will say: Oh, blessed is he that ever he was born, who follows sweet counsel and, in the misfortunes of others, learns wisdom! Prepare yourself well for your departure hence; for truly you sit as a bird on the bough, and art as a man who stands on the water's edge, and looks at the swift sailing ship in which he will presently take his seat, and sail away for a strange land whence he will never more return.

Therefore, so regulate your life that when the ship comes for you you mayest be ready, and mayest joyfully take your departure hence.

The Servant.�Lord, many are the rules, many the ways of a godly life, the one is so, the other so. Many and various are the ways. Lord, the Scriptures are inexhaustible, their precepts innumerable. Teach me, O

Eternal Wisdom, in a few words, out of the abyss of all the things they contain, to what I ought chiefly to hold fast in the way of a truly pious life.

Eternal Wisdom.�The truest, most useful, and most practical doctrine for you in all the Scriptures that, in a few words, will more than amply convince you of all the truth requisite for the attainment of the summit of perfection in a godly life, is this doctrine: Keep yourself secluded from all mankind, keep yourself free from the influence of all external things, disenthrall yourself from all that depends on chance or accident, and direct your mind at all times on high in secret and divine contemplation, wherein, with a steady gaze from which you never swervest, you have Me before your eyes. And as to other exercises, such as poverty, fasting, watching, and every other castigation, bend them all to this as to their end, and use just so much and so many of them as may advance you to it. Behold, thus will you attain to the loftiest pitch of perfection, that not one person in a thousand comprehends, because, with their end in view, they all continue in other exercises, and so go astray the long years.

The Servant.�Lord, who can exist in the unswerving gaze of Your divine vision at all times?

Eternal Wisdom.�No one who lives here below in this temporal scene.

This has been said to you only that you mightest know at what you should aim, after what you should strive, to what you should turn your heart and mind. And if ever you losest sight of it, let it be to you as if your eternal salvation were taken away from you; and do you speedily turn to it again, so that you mayest again obtain possession of it; and then must you look carefully to yourself, for, if it escape from you, you are like a sailor from whose grasp the oars in a strong swell have slipped, and who does not know whither he shall direct his course. But if you mayest not as yet have a constant abiding place in divine contemplation, let the perpetually repeated collecting of your wandering thoughts, and the assiduous withdrawing of yourself to engage in it, procure you constancy so far as it is possible. Listen, listen, My child, to the faithful instructions of your faithful Father. O give heed to them! Shut them up in the bottom of your heart; think Who it is that teaches you all this, and how very much in earnest He is. Dost you wish to become ever more and more faithful? Then set My precepts before your eyes. Wherever you sit, standest, or walkest, think that I am present to you, and that I either admonish or converse with you. O, My child, keep within yourself keep yourself pure, disengaged, and retired. See, in this way will you become conscious of My words; that good, too, will be made known to you which, as yet, is greatly hidden from you.

The Servant.�O, Eternal Wisdom, praised be You for ever! Ah, my Lord and most faithful friend, if I would not do it otherwise, You would yet force me to do it with Your sweet words and Your gentle teaching. Lord, I ought and will do my very best towards it.

The Servant. Eternal Wisdom, if my soul could only penetrate the heavenly shrine of Your divine mysteries, I would question You further about love. And this would be my question: Lord, You have so entirely poured out the abyss of Your divine love in Your Passion, that I wonder if You can show any more signs of Your love?

Eternal Wisdom. Yes. Even as the stars of heaven are countless, so the love-tokens of My unfathomable love are uncounted.

The Servant. Ah, sweet Love of mine! ah, tender Lord elect! how my soul languishes for Your love! Turn Your mild countenance towards me, outcast creature that I am; see how everything vanishes and passes away in me except only the one treasure of Your ardent love, and therefore tell me something further of this rich and hidden treasure. Lord, You know well that it is love's right never to be satisfied with what concerns the Beloved; that the more it has the more it desires, how unworthy soever it may acknowledge itself to be, for such is the effect of the omnipotent power of love. O, beautiful Wisdom, now tell me the greatest and dearest mark of Your love that in Your adopted human nature You didst ever manifest, without taking into account the unfathomable love-token of Your bitter death.

Eternal Wisdom. Answer Me now a question. What is that of all lovely things which is most agreeable to a loving heart?

The Servant. Lord, to my understanding nothing is so agreeable to a loving heart as the beloved Himself and His sweet presence.

Eternal Wisdom. Even so. See, and on this account, that nothing which belongs to true love might be wanting to those who love Me, did My unfathomable love, as soon as I had resolved to depart by death out of this world to My Father, compel Me to give Myself and My loving presence at the table of the last supper to My dear disciples, and in all future times to My elect, because I knew beforehand the misery which many a languishing heart would suffer for My sake.

The Servant. Oh, dearest Lord, and are You Thyself, Your very Self, really here?

Eternal Wisdom. You have Me in the sacrament, before you and with you, as truly and really God and Man, according to soul and body, with flesh and blood, as truly as My pure Mother carried Me in her arms, and as truly as I am in heaven in My perfect glory.

The Servant. Ah, gentle Wisdom, there is yet something in My heart, may I be allowed to utter it to You? Lord, it does not proceed from unbelief, I believe that what You willest You can do; but, tender Lord, it is a marvel to me (if I may venture to say so) how the beautiful, the delightful and glorified body of my Lord in all its greatness, in all its divinity, can thus essentially conceal itself under the little shape of the bread which, relatively considered, is so out of all relation. Gentle Lord, be nor angry with me on this account, for, as You are my Wisdom elect, I should be glad by Your favour to hear something on this head out of Your sweet mouth.

Eternal Wisdom. In what manner My glorified body and My soul, according to the whole truth, are in the Sacrament, this can no tongue express, nor any mind conceive, for it is a work of My omnipotence.

Therefore oughtest you to believe it in all simplicity, and not pry much into it. And yet I must say a little to you about it. I will thrust this wonder aside for you with another wonder. Tell Me how it can be in nature that a great house should shape itself in a small mirror, or in every fragment of a mirror, when the mirror is broken? Or, how can this be, that the vast heavens should compress themselves into so small a space as your small eye, the two being so very unequal to each other in greatness?

The Servant. Truly, Lord, I cannot tell, it is a strange thing, for my eye is to the heavens but as a small point.

Eternal Wisdom. Behold, though neither your eye nor anything else in nature is equal to the heavens, yet nature can do this thing, why should not I, the Lord of nature, be able to do many more things above nature? But now, tell me further, is it not just as great a miracle to create heaven and earth, and all creatures out of nothing, as to change bread invisibly into My body?

The Servant. Lord, it is just as possible for You, so far as I can understand, to change something into something, as to create something out of nothing.

Eternal Wisdom. Dost you wonder then at that, and not at this? Tell Me further, you believest that I fed five thousand persons with five loaves, where was the hidden matter which obeyed My words?

The Servant. Lord, I know not.

Eternal Wisdom. Or do you believe you have a soul?

The Servant. This I do not believe, because I know it, for otherwise I should not be alive.

Eternal Wisdom. And yet you can not see your soul with your bodily eyes.

The Servant. Lord, I know that there are many more beings invisible to human eyes than such as we can see.

Eternal Wisdom. Now listen: many a person there is of senses so gross as hardly to believe that anything which he cannot perceive with his senses really exists, concerning which the learned know that it is false. In like manner does the human understanding stand related to divine knowledge. Had I asked you how the portals of the abyss are constructed, or how the waters in the firmament are held together, you would perhaps have answered thus:

It is a question too deep for me, I cannot go into it: I never descended into the abyss, nor ever mounted up to the firmament. Well, I have only asked you about earthly things which you see and hear, and understandest not. Why should you wish, then, to understand what surpasses all the earth, all the heavens, and all the senses? Or why will you needs inquire into it? Behold, all such wondering and prying thoughts proceed alone from grossness of sense, which takes divine and supernatural things after the likeness of things earthly and natural, and such is not the case. If a woman were to give birth to a child in a dark tower, and it were to be brought up there, and its mother were to tell it of the sun and the stars, the child would marvel greatly, and would think it all against reason and incredible, which its mother, nevertheless, knows so well to be true.

The Servant. Indeed, Lord, I have nothing more to say, for You have so enlightened my faith that I ought to think of marvelling in my heart again, or why should I seek to enquire into the highest, who cannot comprehend the lowest? You are the truth which cannot lie; You are the highest wisdom that can do all things; You are the omnipotent who can dispose of all things. Oh, noble and loving Lord, I have often desired in my heart that, like holy Simeon in the temple, I might have received You bodily in my arms, might have pressed You to my heart and soul, so that the spiritual kiss of Your presence might have been as truly mine as it was his.

But now, Lord, I see that I receive You as truly as he, and so much the more nobly as Your tender body is now glorified, and impassible, which then was passible. Wherefore, dearest Lord, if my heart had the love of all hearts, my conscience the purity of all the angels, and my soul the beauty of all souls so that by Your grace I should be worthy of You, I would fain receive You today so affectionately, and so bury and sink You in the bottom of my heart and soul, that neither joy nor sorrow, neither life nor death, could separate You from me. Ah, sweet Lord, hadst You, my chosen love, only sent me Your messenger, I should not have known, for all this world, how I ought to offer him a sufficient welcome. How then ought I to behave myself towards Him whom my soul loveth? Truly are You the only one thing in which everything is included, that, in time and eternity, my heart can desire. Or is there any thing else that my soul can desire of that which is contrary to You, or which is without You, for that would be repugnant to me. Truly are You the comeliest of all to the eyes, the sweetest of all to the mouth, the tenderest of all to the touch, the most beloved of all to the heart! Lord, my soul neither sees nor hears, nor feels aught of all that is here below, but she finds it severally a thousand times lovelier in You my chosen love. Ah, Eternal Lord, how am I to restrain myself in Your regard from wonder and delight? Your presence inflames me, but Your greatness terrifies me. My reason will needs do honour to its Lord, but my heart desires to love its only good, and lovingly to embrace it. You are my Lord and my God, but You are also my Brother, and, if I may venture to say so, my beloved Spouse. Oh, what love, what rapture, and what great joy, what dignity do I not possess in You alone! Ah, sweet Lord, methinks that had I only been vouchsafed the grace to receive out of Your open wounds, from Your heart, one single drop of blood into my mouth, if I could have had my desire, it would have given me the fullness of joy. Ah, heartfelt, inconceivable wonder, now I have not only received one or two drops, but I have received all Your hot, rose-coloured blood through my mouth into my heart and soul. Is not this a great thing? Ought I not to appreciate this which to the exalted angels is precious? Lord, would that all my limbs, and all that I am, were transformed into an unfathomable love for the sake of this sign of Your love. Lord, what is there else in all this world that could rejoice my heart, or that it could desire, when You give Thyself thus cordially to me to enjoy and love! Truly is it called a SACRAMENT OF LOVE.

When was there anything lovelier seen or heard of than to embrace love itself; than to be changed by grace into love itself? Lord, I see no difference except that Simeon received You visibly, and I receive You invisibly. But as little as my bodily eyes can see Your true humanity, just as little could his bodily eyes contemplate Your divinity, except through faith, as I do now. Lord, what new power is lodged in this bodily sight? He whose spiritual eyes are opened, has not much to see with his bodily eyes, for the eyes of the spirit see far more really and truly. Lord, I know by faith, so far as one can know it, that I have You here; what do I wish for more? Lord, it is a thousand times better for me that I am unable to see You; how could I ever have the heart thus visibly to partake of You! As it is, that which is lovely and delightful remains, while that which is inhuman falls away. Lord, when I truly reflect how inscrutably well, how lovingly and wisely You have regulated all things, my heart with a loud voice, exclaims: Oh, the great treasure of the abyss of Divine Wisdom, what must You not be in Thyself, if You are so much in Your fair emanations! Now, O glorious Lord, look at the great and sincere desire of my heart. Lord, never was king or emperor so worthily received, never dear strange guest so cordially embraced, never bride so beautifully and tenderly taken home, nor so honourably maintained, as my soul desires to receive You, my most honoured emperor, my soul's most lovely Bridegroom, this day, and to introduce You to the innermost and the very best that my heart and soul are able to afford, and to offer it You as worthily as ever it was offered You by any creature. Wherefore, Lord, teach me how I should behave myself towards You, how, with due honour and love, I should receive You.

Eternal Wisdom. You should receive Me worthily, you should partake of Me with humility, you should keep Me earnestly, you should embrace Me with conjugal love, and have Me in My godly dignity before your eyes. Spiritual hunger and actual devotion must impel you to Me more than custom. The soul that wishes to feel Me interiorly in the recesses of a secluded life, and sweetly to enjoy Me, must, first of all, be cleansed from sin, must be adorned with virtue, encircled with self-denial, decked out with the red roses of ardent love, strewn over with the fair violets of humble submission, and the white lilies of perfect purity. She should pray to Me with peace of heart, for in peace is My dwelling-place. She should clasp Me in her arms to the exclusion of all strange affections; for these I avoid, and flee as the free bird avoids and flees the cage. She should sing Me the song of Sion, which is a song of fervent, loving, and measureless praise; then will I embrace her, and she shall incline herself on My breast.

There, if she finds a calm repose, a pure vision, unusual fruition, a foretaste of eternal bliss, let her preserve it, let her keep it for herself, and, with a sighing heart, let her speak as follows: Truly are you the hidden God, the secret good which no one can know that has not felt it.

The Servant. Alas, the great blindness in which I have hitherto lived!

I have plucked the red roses and have not smelt them; I have wandered among the blooming flowers and have not seen them; I have been as a dry branch amid the fresh dews of May. Never, O never can I sufficiently repent Your having been for many a day so near me, and my having been so far from You.

O, You sweet guest of pure souls, what a sorry welcome have I hitherto given You, what an ill return have I so frequently made You! How little desirous have I not shown myself of the sweet bread of angels! I had the precious balsam in my mouth, and felt it not. Ah, You delight of all angelic eyes, never as yet did I feel true delight in You! If it were announced to me that a bodily friend would visit me in the morning should I not rejoice at it all the night before? And yet, never did I prepare myself for the reception of You, as in reason I ought, You worthy guest, whom heaven and earth equally honour. Alas! how have I been wont to turn quickly away from You, how to drive You out of Your own! O Eternal God, You even You Thyself, art here so truly present, and the angelic host is here, and yet I have approached so shyly and sluggishly. Of You I will say nothing; but, truly, Lord, I know of no spot within many miles, whither, if I had known for certain of the presence of blessed angels, those high and noble guests who at all times behold You, I should not have repaired of my own accord, and even if I had not seen them, still my heart, on their account, would have leapt in my body for joy. O sweet Lord and God, that You Thyself, the Lord of all angels, should have been present here, and should have had with You so many angelic choirs, and that I should not have given more heed to the place; this, this must ever be a sore affliction for me! I ought, at all events, to have approached the place where I knew You to be thus present, even though nothing else might have come of it. O

God, how often have I stood distracted and without devotion on the very spot where You wast before me, and with me in the Blessed Sacrament; my body indeed stood there, but my heart was elsewhere. How often have I thought so little of You in Your presence, that my heart has not even offered You an affectionate salutation, with a devout inclination. Gentle Lord, my eyes ought to have looked at You with joyous delight, my heart ought to have loved You with the fullness of desire, my mouth ought to have praised You with heartfelt, fervent jubilee; all my strength ought to have melted in Your glad service. What did not Your servant David do who leapt so joyously with all his might before the ark, in which there was nothing but corporal bread of heaven, nothing but corporal things! Lord, now do I stand here before You, and before all Your angels, and with bitter tears fall at Your feet.

Remember, O, remember, tender Lord, that here, before me, You are my flesh and my brother, and forego Your displeasure. O, forgive me all the dishonour that ever I offered You, for I am sorry for it, and must ever be sorry for it; for the light of Your wisdom begins only now to enlighten me; and the place where You are, not only according to Your divinity, but according to Your humanity, shall be honoured by me evermore. Ah, You sweetest good, You worthy Lord and lovely guest of my soul, another question would I gladly ask: Tell me, gentle Lord, what is it You give Your beloved with Your real presence in the Sacrament, provided she receives You with love and desire?

Eternal Wisdom. Is that a fitting question for a lover? What have I better than Myself? He who possesses the object of his love, what else has he to ask for? He who gives himself, what has he refused? I give Myself to you, and take you from yourself, and unite you to Me. You loseth yourself, and art wholly transformed into Me. What does the sun in his brightest reflection bestow on the unclouded sky? Yes, what does the bright star of the morning dawn bestow on the dark night? Or what do the fair and ravishing adornments of summer bestow after the cold, wintry, melancholy season?

The Servant. O Lord, they bestow precious gifts.

Eternal Wisdom. They seem precious to you because they are visible to you. Behold, the smallest gift that flows from Me in the Blessed Sacrament reflects more splendour in eternity than any sunny brightness; it sheds more light than any morning star; it adorns you more ravishingly in eternal beauty than ever did any adornment of summer the earth. Or is not My bright divinity more radiant than any sun, My noble soul more resplendent than any star, My glorified body more ravishing than any ravishment of summer? And yet all these things have you truly received here.

The Servant. O Lord, why then are they not more sensibly felt? Lord, I often approach in such dryness that all light, all grace and sweetness are as strange to me, methinks, as to a man born blind, who never saw the sun.

Lord, if I may venture to say so, I could indeed wish that, in Your real presence, You hadst given testimony of Thyself.

Eternal Wisdom. The less the testimony, the purer your faith and the greater your reward. The Lord of nature operates with such secrecy a blessed increase in many a fair tree, that no eye nor other sense can perceive it till it is accomplished. Now, I am not an exteriorly working good, but an interiorly shining light; an interiorly working good which is so much the nobler as it is the more spiritual.

The Servant. Alas! how few men there are who perceive this, who weigh thoroughly what they receive. They draw near like the rest generally, in an ill and inconsiderate manner, and, therefore, as they go up empty, they come away without grace. They do not ruminate their food so as to ponder what they have received.

Eternal Wisdom. To the well prepared I am the bread of eternal life, to the little prepared the bread of dryness, but to the unprepared I am a deadly blow, an eternal curse.

The Servant. O Lord, what a terrible thing is this! Lord, whom do You call the well prepared, the little prepared, and the unprepared?

Eternal Wisdom. The well prepared are the purified, the little prepared such as cleave to temporal things, but the unprepared are the sinful who continue by will and by deed in mortal sin.

The Servant. But, tender Lord, if at the time a person is heartily sorry for his sins, and strives, to the best of his ability, to rid himself wholly of them, conformably to Christian precept, how is it then with him?

Eternal Wisdom. In such a case a man is, for the time, no longer in sin.

The Servant. Lord, in my opinion, it were one of the greatest things this world could accomplish, if any person, while living in this temporal state, was able to prepare himself worthily enough for Your reception.

Eternal Wisdom. That person was never yet born; nay, if a man had the native purity of all the angels, the sanctity of all the saints, and the good works of all mankind, he would yet be unworthy.

The Servant. Ah, beloved Lord, with what trembling hearts ought not persons so unworthy, so deprived of grace, as we are, to approach You.

Eternal Wisdom. If a man only does his best, nothing more is required of him, for God completes what is left incomplete. A sick man should cast aside all reserve, and should approach the physician whose attendance is his cure.

The Servant. Lord, beloved Lord, which is better, OFTEN, or SELDOM, to receive You in the Blessed Sacrament?

Eternal Wisdom. For him whose grace and devotion perceptibly increase by it, to receive Me often is profitable.

The Servant. But, Lord, if a man in his own opinion remains the same, and cannot prove that he either increases or decreases by it in holiness, or if he is often visited by spiritual dryness, how should he then behave himself?

Eternal Wisdom. A man, provided only he does his part, should not withdraw himself because of spiritual dryness. For the salvation of that soul which by God's will suffers from spiritual dryness is often accomplished as nobly in the light of pure faith alone, as in great sweetness. I am a boon which, turned to account, increases, but which, saved up, wastes away. It is better to approach once a week with a deep sense of real humility, than once a year with an overweening self-approbation.

The Servant. Lord, at what time does the influence of grace from the Blessed Sacrament take place?

Eternal Wisdom. In the very moment of actual reception.

The Servant. Lord, but what if a man have a fervent desire for Your bodily presence in the Sacrament, and he must yet be deprived of it?

Eternal Wisdom. Many a man after being filled with Me, goes away hungry, and many a man obtains Me, though the table be empty; the former merely receives Me bodily, the latter enjoys Me spiritually.

The Servant. Lord, has that man any advantage who receives You bodily and spiritually, over him who only receives You spiritually?

Eternal Wisdom. Tell me whether that man has more who has Me and My grace, or he who has only My grace alone?

The Servant. Lord, how long do You remain in Your real presence with a man who has received You?

Eternal Wisdom. As long as the image and likeness of the Sacrament remain.

O You living fruit, You sweet blossom, You delicious paradise apple of the blooming fatherly heart, You sweet vine of Cyprus in the vineyard of Engaddi, who will give me to receive You so worthily this day that You will desire to come to me, to dwell with me, and never to separate from me!

O unfathomable good, that fillest heaven and earth, incline Thyself graciously this day, and despise not Your poor creature. Lord, if I am not worthy of You, yet do I stand in need of You. Ah, gentle Lord, are You not He who with one word created heaven and earth? Lord, with one word can You restore health to my sick soul. O Lord, do to me according to Your grace, according to Your infinite mercy, and not according to my deserts.

Yes, You are the innocent Paschal Lamb, which at this day is still offered up for the sins of all mankind. Ah, You sweet-tasting bread of heaven, which contains all sweet tastes according to the desire of everyone's heart, make the hungry mouth of my soul to rejoice in You this day; give me to eat and to drink; strengthen, adorn, and unite me interiorly to You. Ah,

Eternal Wisdom, come down so powerfully this day into my soul, that all my enemies may be driven out of her, all my crimes be melted away, and all my sins be forgiven. Enlighten my understanding with the light of true faith.

Inflame my will with Your sweet love. Cheer up my mind with Your glad presence, and give virtue and perfection to all my powers. Watch over me at my death, that I may enjoy Your beatific vision in eternal bliss. Amen.