Translated by Algar Thorold

Man is placed above all creatures, and not beneath them, and he cannot be
satisfied or content except in something greater than himself. Greater than
himself there is nothing but Myself, the Eternal God. Therefore I alone can
satisfy him, and, because he is deprived of this satisfaction by his guilt,
he remains in continual torment and pain. Weeping follows pain, and when he
begins to weep, the wind strikes the tree of self-love, which he has made
the principle of all his being. (Page 203). This work was dictated by Saint
Catherine of Siena during a state of ecstasy while in dialogue with God the
Father. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) was declared a Doctor of the
Church on October 4, 1970.
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THE DIALOGUE OF THE SERAPHIC VIRGIN CATHERINE OF SIENA

DICTATED BY HER, WHILE IN A STATE OF ECSTASY,

TO HER SECRETARIES, AND COMPLETED

IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1370

TOGETHER WITH

AN ACCOUNT OF HER DEATH BY AN EYE-WITNESS

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN, AND PRECEDED BY AN INTRODUCTION
ON THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE SAINT, BY

ALGAR THOROLD

A NEW AND ABRIDGED EDITION

Originally published in 1907 by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd.,
London.

This etext is in the public domain.
_________________________________________________________________

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A TREATISE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE

A TREATISE OF DISCRETION

A TREATISE OF PRAYER

A TREATISE OF OBEDIENCE
_________________________________________________________________

THE DIALOGUE OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA
_________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

It would be hard to say whether the Age of the Saints, le moyen°ge Žnorme
et dŽlicat, has suffered more at the hands of friends or foes. It is at
least certain that the medieval period affects those who approach it in the
manner of a powerful personality who may awaken love or hatred, but cannot
be passed over with indifference. When the contempt of the eighteenth
century for the subject, the result of that century™s lack of historic
imagination, was thawed by the somewhat rhetorical enthusiasm of
Chateaubriand and of the Romanticists beyond the Rhine, hostility gave place
to an undiscriminating admiration. The shadows fell out of the picture; the
medieval time became a golden age when heaven and earth visibly mingled,
when Christian society reached the zenith of perfection which constituted it
a model for all succeeding ages. Then came the German professors with all
the paraphernalia of scientific history, and, looking through their
instruments, we, who are not Germans, have come to take a more critical and,
perhaps, a juster view of the matter. The Germans, too, have had disciples
of other nations, and though conclusions on special points may differ, in
every country now at a certain level of education, the same views prevail as
to the principles on which historical investigation should be conducted. And
yet, while no one with a reputation to lose would venture on any personal
heresy as to the standards of legitimate evidence, the same facts still seem
to lead different minds to differing appreciations. For history, written
solely ad narrandum, is not history; the historian™s task is not over when
he has disinterred facts and established dates: it is then that the most
delicate part of his work begins. History, to be worthy of the name, must
produce the illusion of living men and women, and, in order to do this
successfully, must be based, not only upon insight into human nature in
general, but also upon personal appreciation of the particular men and women
engaged in the episodes with which it deals. With facts as such, there can
indeed be no tampering; but for the determination of their significance, of
their value, as illustrative of a course of policy or of the character of
those who were responsible for their occurrence, we have to depend in great
measure on the personality of the historian. It is evident that a man who
lacks the sympathetic power to enter into the character that he attempts to
delineate, will hardly be able to make that character live for us. For in
Art as well as Life, sympathy is power.

Now, while this is true of all history whatever, it is perhaps truer of the
history of the middle ages than of that of any more recent period, nor is
the reason of this far to seek. The middle ages were a period fruitful in
great individuals who molded society, to an extent that perhaps no
succeeding period has been. In modern times the formula, an abstraction such
asCapital or theRights of Man has largely taken the place of the
individual as a plastic force. The one great Tyrant of the nineteenth
century found his opportunity in the anarchy which followed the French
Revolution. The spoil was then necessarily to the strong. But even Napoleon
was conquered at last rather by a conspiracy of the slowly developing
anonymous forces of his time than by the superior skill or strength of an
individual rival. The lion could hardly have been caught in such meshes in
the trecento. Then, the fate of populations was bound up with the
animosities of princes, and, in order to understand the state of Europe at
any particular moment of that period, it is necessary to understand the
state of soul of the individuals who happened, at the time, to be the
political stakeholders.

It must not be thought, however, that the personality of the prince was the
only power in the medieval state, for the prince himself was held to be
ultimately amenable to an idea, which so infinitely transcended earthly
distinctions as to level them all in relation to itself. Religion was in
those days a mental and social force which we, in spite of the petulant
acerbity of modern theological controversies, have difficulty in realizing.
Prince and serf would one day appear as suppliants before the Judgment-seat
of Christ, and the theory of medieval Christianity was considerably in favor
of the serf. The Father of Christendom, at once Priest and King, anointed
and consecrated as the social exponent of the Divine Justice, could not, in
his own person, escape its rigors, but must, one day, render an account of
his stewardship. Nor did the medieval mind, distinguishing between the
office and the individual, by any means shrink from contemplating the fate
of the faithless steward. In aLast Judgment by Angelico at Florence, the
ministers of justice seem to have a special joy in hurrying off to the pit
popes and cardinals and other ecclesiastics.

For it is an insufficient criticism that has led some to suppose that the
medieval Church weighed on the conscience of Christendom solely, or even
primarily, as an arbitrary fact: that the priesthood, aided by the ignorance
of the people, succeeded in establishing a monstrous claim to control the
destinies of the soul by quasi-magical agencies and the powers of
excommunication. Nothing can be further from the truth. Probably at no
period has the Christian conscience realized more profoundly that the whole
external fabric of Catholicism, its sacraments, its priesthood, its
discipline, was but the phenomenal expression, necessary and sacred in its
place, of the Idea of Christianity, that the vitality of that Idea was the
life by which the Church lived, and that by that Idea all Christians,
priests as well as laymen, rulers as well as subjects, would at the last be
judged. When Savonarola replied to the Papal Legate, who, in his confusion,
committed the blunder of adding to the formula of excommunication from the
Church Militant, a sentence of exclusion from the Church Triumphant,You
cannot do it, he was in the tradition of medieval orthodoxy. Moreover, even
though the strict logic of her theory might have required it, the
hierarchical Church was not considered as the sole manifestation of the
Divine Will to Christendom. The unanimity with which the Christian idea was
accepted in those times made the saint a well-known type of human character
just as nowadays we have the millionaire or the philanthropist. Now the
saint, although under the same ecclesiastical dispensation as other
Christians, was conceived to have his own special relations with God, which
amounted almost to a personal revelation. In particular he was held to be
exempt from many of the limitations of fallen humanity. His prayers were of
certain efficacy; the customary uniformities of experience were thought to
be constantly transcended by the power that dwelt within him; he was often
accepted by the people as the bearer to Christendom of a Divine message over
and above the revelation of which the hierarchy was the legitimate guardian.
Not infrequently indeed that message was one of warning or correction to the
hierarchy. Sabatier points out truly that the medieval saints occupied much
the same relation to the ecclesiastical system as the Prophets of Israel had
done, under the older dispensation, to the Jewish Priesthood. They came out
of their hermitages or cloisters, and with lips touched by coal from the
altar denounced iniquity wherever they found it, even in the highest places.
It is needless to say that they were not revolutionaries”had they been so
indeed the state of Europe might have been very different today; for them,
as for other Christians, the organization of the Church was Divine; it was
by the sacred responsibilities of his office that they judged the unworthy
pastor.

An apt illustration of this attitude occurs in the life of the Blessed
Colomba of Rieti. Colomba, who was a simple peasant, was called to the
unusual vocation of preaching. The local representatives of the Holy Office,
alarmed at the novelty, imprisoned her and took the opportunity of a visit
of Alexander VI. to the neighboring town of Perugia to bring her before his
Holiness for examination. When the saint was brought into the Pope™s
presence, she reverently kissed the hem of his garment, and, being overcome
with devotion at the sight of the Vicar of Christ, fell into an ecstasy,
during which she invoked the Divine judgment on the sins of Rodrigo Borgia.
It was useless to attempt to stop her; she was beyond the control of
inquisitor or guards; the Pope had to hear her out. He did so; proclaimed
her complete orthodoxy, and set her free with every mark of reverence. In
this highly characteristic episode scholastic logic appears, for once, to
have been justified, at perilous odds, of her children. . . .

* * *

Midway between sky and earth hangs a City Beautiful: Siena, Vetus Civitas
Virginis. The town seems to have descended as a bride from airy regions, and
lightly settled on the summits of three hills which it crowns with domes and
clustering towers. As seen from the vineyards which clothe the slopes of the
hills or with its crenellated wall and slender-necked Campanile silhouetted
against the evening sky from the neighboring heights of Belcaro, the city is
familiar to students of the early Italian painters. It forms the fantastic
and solemn background of many a masterpiece of the trecentisti, and seems
the only possible home, if home they can have on earth, of the glorified
persons who occupy the foreground. It would create no surprise to come,
while walking round the ancient walls, suddenly, at a turn in the road, on
one of the sacred groups so familiarly recurrent to the memory in such an
environment: often indeed one experiences a curious illusion when a passing
friar happens for a moment tocompose with cypress and crumbling archway.

Siena, once the successful rival of Florence in commerce, war, and politics,
has, fortunately for the more vital interests which it represents, long
desisted from such minor matters. Its worldly ruin has been complete for
more than five hundred years; in truth the town has never recovered from the
plague which, in the far-off days of 1348, carried off 80,000 of its
population. Grassy mounds within the city walls mark the shrinking of the
town since the date of their erection, and Mr. Murray gives its present
population at less than 23,000. The free Ghibelline Republic which, on that
memorable 4th of September 1260, defeated, with the help of Pisa, at Monte
Aperto, the combined forces of the Guelf party in Tuscany, has now, after
centuries of servitude to Spaniard and Austrian, to be content with the
somewhat pinchbeck dignity of an Italian Prefettura. At least the
architectural degradation which has overtaken Florence at the hands of her
modern rulers has been as yet, in great measure, spared to Siena. Even the
railway has had the grace to conceal its presence in the folds of olive
which enwrap the base of the hill on which the city is set.

Once inside the rose-colored walls, as we pass up the narrow, roughly paved
streets between lines of palaces, some grim and massive like Casa Tolomei,
built in 1205, others delicate specimens of Italian Gothic like the Palazzo
Saracini, others again illustrating the combination of grace and strength
which marked the domestic architecture of the Renaissance at its prime, like
the Palazzo Piccolomini, we find ourselves in a world very remote indeed
from anything with which the experience of our own utilitarian century makes
us familiar. And yet, as we rub our eyes, unmistakably a world of facts,
though of facts, as it were, visibly interpreted by the deeper truth of an
art whose insistent presence is on all sides of us. Here is Casa Tolomei, a
huge cube of rough-hewn stone stained to the color of tarnished silver with
age, once the home of that Madonna Pia whose story lives forever in the
verse of Dante. Who shall distinguish between her actual tale of days and
the immortal life given her by the poet? In her moment of suffering at least
she has been made eternal. And not far from that ancient fortress-home, in a
winding alley that can hardly be called a street, is another house of
medieval Siena”no palace this time, but a small tradesman™s dwelling. In the
fourteenth century it belonged to Set Giacomo Benincasa, a dyer. Part of it
has now been converted into a chapel, over the door of which are inscribed
the words: Sponsae Xti Katerinae Domus. Here, on March 5, 1347, being Palm
Sunday, was born Giacomo™s daughter Caterina, who still lives one of the
purest glories of the Christian Church under the name of St. Catherine of
Siena. More than 500 years have passed since the daughter of the Siennese
dyer entered into the rest of that sublime and touching symbolism under
which the Church half veils and half reveals her teaching as to the destiny
of man. Another case, but how profoundly more significant than that of poor
Madonna Pia, of the intertwining of the world of fact with the deeper truth
of art.

St. Catherine was born at the same time as a twin-sister, who did not
survive. Her parents, Giacomo and Lapa Benincasa, were simple townspeople,
prosperous, and apparently deserving their reputation for piety. Lapa, the
daughter of one Mucio Piagenti, a now wholly forgotten poet, bore
twenty-five children to her husband, of whom thirteen only appear to have
grown up. This large family lived together in the manner still obtaining in
Italy, in the little house, till the death of Giacomo in 1368.

There are stirring pages enough in Christian hagiology. Who can read unmoved
of the struggles towards his ideal of an Augustine or a Loyola, or of the
heroic courage of a Theresa, affirming against all human odds the divinity
of her mission, and justifying, after years of labor, her incredible
assertions by the steadfastness of her will? There are other pages in the
lives of the saints, less dramatic, it may be, but breathing, nevertheless,
a na¢ve grace and poetry all their own: the childhood of those servants of
Christ who have borne His yoke from the dawn of their days forms their
charming theme. Here the blasting illuminations of the Revelation are toned
down to a soft and tender glow, in which the curves and lines of natural
humanity do but seem more pathetically human. The hymn at Lauds for the
Feast of the Holy Innocents represents those unconscious martyrs as playing
with their palms and crowns under the very altar of Heaven:”


Vos prima Christi victima

Grex immolatorum tener

Aram sub ipsam simplices

Palma et coronis luditis!

And so these other saintly babies play at hermits or monasteries instead of
the soldiers and housekeeping beloved of more secular-minded infants. Heaven
condescends to their pious revels: we are told of the Blessed Hermann
Joseph, the Premonstratensian, that his infantile sports were joyously
shared by the Divine Child Himself. He would be a morose pedant indeed who
should wish to rationalize this white mythology. The tiny Catherine was no
exception to the rest of her canonized brothers and sisters. At the age of
five it was her custom on the staircase to kneel and repeat aHail Mary at
each step, a devotion so pleasing to the angels, that they would frequently
carry her up or down without letting her feet touch the ground, much to the
alarm of her mother, who confided to Father Raymond of Capua, the Dominican
confessor of the family, her fears of an accident. Nor were these phenomena
the only reward of her infant piety. From the day that she could walk she
became very popular among her numerous relatives and her parents™ friends,
who gave her the pet name of Euphrosyne, to signify the grief-dispelling
effect of her conversation, and who were constantly inviting her to their
houses on some pretext or other. Sent one morning on an errand to the house
of her married sister Bonaventura, she was favored with a beautiful vision
which, as it has an important symbolical bearing on the great task of her
after-life, I will relate in Father Raymond™s words, slightly abridging
their prolixity.

So it happened that Catherine, being arrived at the age of six, went one
day with her brother Stephen, who was a little older than herself, to the
house of their sister Bonaventura, who was married to one Niccol˜, as has
been mentioned above, in order to carry something or give some message from
their mother Lapa. Their mother™s errand accomplished, while they were on
the way back from their sister™s house to their own and were passing along a
certain valley, called by the people Valle Piatta, the holy child, lifting
her eyes, saw on the opposite side above the Church of the Preaching Friars
a most beautiful room, adorned with regal magnificence, in which was seated,
on an imperial throne, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, clothed in
pontifical vestments, and wearing on His head a papal tiara; with Him were
the princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, and the holy evangelist John.
Astounded at such a sight, Catherine stood still, and with fixed and
immovable look, gazed, full of love, on her Savior, who, appearing in so
marvelous a manner, in order sweetly to gain her love to Himself, fixed on
her the eyes of His Majesty, and, with a tender smile, lifted over her His
right hand, and, making the sign of the Holy Cross in the manner of a
bishop, left with her the gift of His eternal benediction. The grace of this
gift was so efficacious, that Catherine, beside herself, and transformed
into Him upon whom she gazed with such love, forgetting not only the road
she was on, but also herself, although naturally a timid child, stood still
for a space with lifted and immovable eyes in the public road, where men and
beasts were continually passing, and would certainly have continued to stand
there as long as the vision lasted, had she not been violently diverted by
others. But while the Lord was working these marvels, the child Stephen,
leaving her standing still, continued his way down hill, thinking that she
was following, but, seeing her immovable in the distance and paying no heed
to his calls, he returned and pulled her with his hands, saying:˜What are
you doing here? why do you not come?™ Then Catherine, as if waking from a
heavy sleep, lowered her eyes and said:˜Oh, if you had seen what I see, you
would not distract me from so sweet a vision!™ and lifted her eyes again on
high; but the vision had entirely disappeared, according to the will of Him
who had granted it, and she, not being able to endure this without pain,
began with tears to reproach herself for having turned her eyes to earth.
Such was thecall of St. Catherine of Siena, and, to a mind intent on
mystical significance, the appearance of Christ, in the semblance of His
Vicar, may fitly appear to symbolize the great mission of her after-life to
the Holy See.

* * *

Much might be said of the action of Catherine on her generation. Few
individuals perhaps have ever led so active a life or have succeeded in
leaving so remarkable an imprint of their personality on the events of their
time. Catherine the Peacemaker reconciles warring factions of her native
city and heals an international feud between Florence and the Holy See.
Catherine the Consoler pours the balm of her gentle spirit into the
lacerated souls of the suffering wherever she finds them, in the condemned
cell or in the hospital ward. She is one of the most voluminous of
letter-writers, keeping up a constant correspondence with a band of
disciples, male and female, all over Italy, and last, but not least, with
the distant Pope at Avignon.

Her lot was cast on evil days for the Church and the Peninsula. The
trecento, the apogee of the middle ages was over. Francis and Dominic had
come and gone, and though Franciscans and Dominicans remained and numbered
saints among their ranks, still the first fervor of the original inspiration
was a brightness that had fled. The moral state of the secular clergy was,
according to Catherine herself, too often one of the deepest degradation,
while, in the absence of the Pontiff, the States of the Church were governed
by papal legates, mostly men of blood and lust, who ground the starving
people under their heel. Assuredly it was not from Christian bishops who
would have disgraced Islam that their subjects could learn the path of
peace. The Pope™s residence at Avignon, the Babylonish Captivity, as it was
called, may have seemed, at the time when his departure from Rome was
resolved upon, a wise measure of temporary retreat before the anarchy which
was raging round the city of St. Peter. But not many years passed before it
became evident that Philip the Fair, the astute adviser to whose counsel”and
possibly more than counsel”Clement had submitted in leaving Rome, was the
only one who profited by the exile of the Pope. Whatever the truth may be
about the details of Clement™s election, so far as his subservience to the
French king went, he might have remained Archbishop of Bordeaux to the end
of his days. He accepted for his relations costly presents from Philip; he
placed the papal authority at his service in the gravely suspicious matter
of the suppression of the Templars. Gradually the Holy See in exile lost its
ecumenical character and became more and more the vassal of the French
crown. Such a decline in its position could not fail to affect even its
doctrinal prestige. It was well enough in theory to apply to the situation
such maxims as Ubi Petrus ibi Ecclesia, or, as the Avignonese doctors
paraphrased it, Ubi Papa ibi Roma; but, in practice, Christendom grew shy of
a French Pope, living under the eye and power of the French king. The
Romans, who had always treated the Pope badly, were furious when at last
they had driven him away, and gratified their spite by insulting their
exiled rulers. Nothing could exceed their contempt for the Popes of Avignon,
who, as a matter of fact, though weak and compliant, were in their personal
characters worthy ecclesiastics. They gave no credit to John XXII. for his
genuine zeal in the cause of learning, or the energy with which he restored
ecclesiastical studies in the Western Schools. For Benedict XII., a retiring
and abstemious student, they invented the phrase: bibere papaliter”to drink
like the Pope. Clement VI. they called poco religioso, forgetting his noble
charity at the time of the plague, and also the fact that Rome herself had
produced not a few popes whose lives furnished a singular commentary on the
ethics of the Gospel.

The real danger ahead to Christendom was the possibility of an Italian
anti-Pope who should fortify his position by recourse to the heretical
elements scattered through the peninsula. Those elements were grave and
numerous. The Fraticelli or Spiritual Franciscans, although crushed for the
time by the iron hand of Pope Boniface, rather flourished than otherwise
under persecution. These dangerous heretics had inherited a garbled version
of the mysticism of Joachim of Flora, which constituted a doctrine perhaps
more radically revolutionary than that of any heretics before or since. It
amounted to belief in a new revelation of the Spirit, which was to supersede
the dispensation of the Son as that had taken the place of the dispensation
of the Father. According to the Eternal Gospel of Gerard of San Domino, who
had derived it, not without much adroit manipulation, from the writings of
Abbot Joachim, the Roman Church was on the eve of destruction, and it was
the duty of the Spirituali, the saints who had received the new
dispensation, to fly from the contamination of her communion. An anti-Pope
who should have rallied to his allegiance these elements of schism would
have been a dangerous rival to a French Pope residing in distant Avignon,
however legitimate his title. Nor was there wanting outside Italy matter for
grave anxiety. Germs of heresy were fermenting north of the Alps; the
preaching of Wycliffe, the semi-Islamism of the Hungarian Beghards, the
Theism of the Patarini of Dalmatia, the erotic mysticism of the Adamites of
Paris, indicated a widespread anarchy in the minds of Christians. Moreover,
the spiritual difficulties of the Pope were complicated by his temporal
preoccupations. For good or ill, it had come to be essential to the action
of the Holy See that the successor of the penniless fisherman should have
his place among the princes of the earth.

The papal monarchy had come about, as most things come about in this world,
by what seems to have been the inevitable force of circumstances. The decay
of the Imperial power in Italy due to the practical abandonment of the
Western Empire”for the ruler of Constantinople lived at too great a distance
to be an effective Emperor of the West”had resulted in a natural increase of
secular importance to the See of Rome. To the genius of Pope Gregory I., one
of the few men whom their fellows have named both Saint and Great, was due
the development of the political situation thus created in Italy.

Chief and greatest of bishops in his day was St. Gregory the Great. Seldom,
if ever, has the papal dignity been sustained with such lofty enthusiasm,
such sagacious political insight. Himself a Roman of Rome, Romano di Roma,
as those who possess that privilege still call themselves today, the
instinct of government was his by hereditary right. He had the defects as
well as the qualities of the statesman. His theological writings, which are
voluminous and verbose, are marked rather by a sort of canonized common
sense than by exalted flights of spirituality. His missionary enterprise was
characterized by a shrewd and gracious condescension to the limitations of
human nature. Thus he counsels St. Augustine, who had consulted him as to
the best means of extirpating the pagan customs of our English forefathers,
to deal gently with these ancient survivals. He ruled that the celebration
of the Festivals of the Sabots should if possible be held at the times and
places at which the people had been in the habit of meeting together to
worship the gods. They would thus come to associate the new religion with
their traditional merry-makings, and their conversion would be gradually,
and as it were unconsciously, effected. It was a kindly and statesmanlike
thought. In this way Gregory may truly be looked upon as the founder of
popular Catholicism, thatpensive use and wont religion, not assuredly in
the entirety of its details Christian, but at least profoundly Catholic, as
weaving together in the web of its own secular experience of man so large a
proportion of the many-colored threads that have at any time attached his
hopes and fears to the mysterious unknown which surrounds him. No miracle is
needed to explain the political ascendancy which such a man inevitably came
to acquire in an Italy deserted by the Empire, and, but for him and the
organization which depended on him, at the mercy of the invading Lombard.
More and more, people came to look on the Pope as their temporal ruler no
less than as their spiritual father. In many cases, indeed, his was the only
government they knew. Kings and nobles had conferred much property on the
Roman Church. By the end of the sixth century the Bishop of Rome held, by
the right of such donations to his See, large tracts of country, not only in
Italy, but also in Sicily, Corsica, Gaul, and even Asia and Africa. Gregory
successfully defended his Italian property against the invaders, and came to
the relief of the starving population with corn from Sicily and Africa, thus
laying deep in the hearts of the people the foundations of the secular power
of the Papacy.

It would be an unnecessary digression from our subject to work out in detail
the stages by which the Pope came to take his place first as the Italian
vicar of a distant emperor, and at length, as the result of astute
statecraft and the necessities of the case, among the princes of Europe, as
their chief and arbiter. So much as has been said was, however, necessary
for the comprehension of the task with which Catherine measured, for the
time, successfully her strength. It was given to the Popolana of Siena, by
the effect of her eloquence in persuading the wavering will of the Pope to
return to his See, to bring about what was, for the moment, the only
possible solution of that Roman question, which, hanging perpetually round
the skirts of the Bride of Christ, seems at every step to impede her
victorious advance.

* * *

Nevertheless, it is neither the intrinsic importance nor the social
consequences of her actions that constitute the true greatness of St.
Catherine. Great ends may be pursued by essentially small means, in an
aridity and narrowness of temper that goes far to discount their actual
achievement. History, and in particular the history of the Church, is not
wanting in such instances. Savonarola set great ends before himself”the
freedom of his country and the regeneration of the state; but the spirit in
which he pursued them excludes him from that Pantheon of gracious souls in
which humanity enshrines its true benefactors.Soul, as a quality of style,
is a fact, and the soul of St. Catherine™s gesta expressed itself in a
style so winning, so sweetly reasonable, as to make her the dearest of
friends to all who had the privilege of intimate association with her, and a
permanent source of refreshment to the human spirit. She intuitively
perceived life under the highest possible forms, the forms of Beauty and
Love. Truth and Goodness were, she thought, means for the achievement of
those two supreme ends. The sheer beauty of the soulin a state of Grace
is a point on which she constantly dwells, hanging it as a bait before those
whom she would induce to turn from evil. Similarly the ugliness of sin, as
much as its wickedness, should warn us of its true nature. Love, that love
of man for man which, in deepest truth, is, in the words of the writer of
the First Epistle of St. John, God Himself, is, at once, the highest
achievement of man and his supreme and satisfying beatitude. The Symbols of
Catholic theology were to her the necessary and fitting means of transit, so
to speak. See, in the following pages, the fine allegory of the Bridge of
the Sacred Humanity, of the soul in vi° on its dusty pilgrimage towards
those gleaming heights of vision.Truth was to her the handmaid of the
spiritualized imagination, not, as too often in these days of the twilight
of the soul, its tyrant and its gaoler. Many of those who pass lives of
unremitting preoccupation with the problems of truth and goodness are
wearied and cumbered with much serving. We honor them, and rightly; but if
they have nothing but this to offer us, our hearts do not run to meet them,
as they fly to the embrace of those rare souls who inhabit a serener, more
pellucid atmosphere. Among these spirits of the air, St. Catherine has taken
a permanent and foremost place. She is among the few guides of humanity who
have the perfect manner, the irresistible attractiveness, of that positive
purity of heart, which not only sees God, but diffuses Him, as by some
natural law of refraction, over the hearts of men. The Divine nuptials,
about which the mystics tell us so much, have been accomplished in her,
Nature and Grace have lain down together, and the mysteries of her religion
seem but the natural expression of a perfectly balanced character, an
unquenchable love and a deathless will.

* * *

The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena was dictated to her secretaries by
the Saint in ecstasy. Apart from the extraordinary circumstances of its
production, this work has a special interest.

The composition of the Siennese dyer™s daughter, whose will, purified and
sublimated by prayer, imposed itself on popes and princes, is an almost
unique specimen of what may be calledecclesiastical mysticism; for its
special value lies in the fact that from first to last it is nothing more
than a mystical exposition of the creeds taught to every child in the
Catholic poor-schools. Her insight is sometimes very wonderful. How subtle,
for instance, is the analysis of the state of theworldly man who loves
God for his own pleasure or profit! The special snares of the devout are cut
through by the keen logic of one who has experienced and triumphed over
them. Terrible, again, is the retribution prophesied to theunworthy
ministers of the Blood.

And so every well-known form of Christian life, healthy or parasitic, is
treated of, detailed, analyzed incisively, remorselessly, and then subsumed
under the general conception of God™s infinite loving-kindness and mercy.

The great mystics have usually taken as their starting-point what, to most,
is the goal hardly to be reached; their own treatment of the preliminary
stages of spirituality is frequently conventional and jejune. Compare, for
instance, the first book with the two succeeding ones, of Ruysbrock™s
Ornement des Noces spirituelles, that unique breviary of the Christian
Platonician. Another result of their having done so is that, with certain
noble exceptions, the literature of this subject has fallen into the hands
of a class of writers, or rather purveyors, well-intentioned no doubt, but
not endowed with the higher spiritual and mental faculties, whom it is not
unfair to describe as the feuilletonistes of piety. Such works, brightly
bound, are appropriately exposed for sale in the Roman shop-windows, among
the gaudy objets de religion they so much resemble. To keep healthy and
raise the tone of devotional literature is surely an eighth spiritual work
of mercy. St. Philip Neri™s advice in the matter was to prefer those writers
whose names were preceded by the title of Saint. In the Dialogo we have a
great saint, one of the most extraordinary women who ever lived, treating,
in a manner so simple and familiar as at times to become almost colloquial,
of the elements of practical Christianity. Passages occur frequently of
lofty eloquence, and also of such literary perfection that this book is held
by critics to be one of the classics of the age and land which produced
Boccaccio and Petrarch. To-day, in the streets of Siena, the same Tuscan
idiom can be heard, hardly altered since the days of St. Catherine.

One word as to the translation. I have almost always followed the text of
Gigli, a learned Siennese ecclesiastic, who edited the complete works of St.
Catherine in the last century. His is the latest edition printed of the
Dialogo. Once or twice I have preferred the cinquecento Venetian editor. My
aim has been to translate as literally as possible, and at the same time to
preserve the characteristic rhythm of the sentences, so suggestive in its
way of the sing-song articulation of the Siennese of today. St. Catherine
has no style as such; she introduces a metaphor and forgets it; the sea, a
vine, and a plough will often appear in the same sentence, sometimes in the
same phrase. In such cases I have occasionally taken the liberty of adhering
to the first simile when the confusion of metaphor in the original involves
hopeless obscurity of expression.

Viareggio, September 1906.
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A TREATISE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE
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How a soul, elevated by desire of the honor of God, and of the salvation
of her neighbors, exercising herself in humble prayer, after she had seen
the union of the soul, through love, with God, asked of God four
requests.

The soul, who is lifted by a very great and yearning desire for the honor of
God and the salvation of souls, begins by exercising herself, for a certain
space of time, in the ordinary virtues, remaining in the cell of
self-knowledge, in order to know better the goodness of God towards her.
This she does because knowledge must precede love, and only when she has
attained love, can she strive to follow and to clothe herself with the
truth. But, in no way, does the creature receive such a taste of the truth,
or so brilliant a light therefrom, as by means of humble and continuous
prayer, founded on knowledge of herself and of God; because prayer,
exercising her in the above way, unites with God the soul that follows the
footprints of Christ Crucified, and thus, by desire and affection, and union
of love, makes her another Himself. Christ would seem to have meant this,
when He said: To him who will love Me and will observe My commandment, will
I manifest Myself; and he shall be one thing with Me and I with him. In
several places we find similar words, by which we can see that it is,
indeed, through the effect of love, that the soul becomes another Himself.
That this may be seen more clearly, I will mention what I remember having
heard from a handmaid of God, namely, that, when she was lifted up in
prayer, with great elevation of mind, God was not wont to conceal, from the
eye of her intellect, the love which He had for His servants, but rather to
manifest it; and, that among other things, He used to say:Open the eye of
your intellect, and gaze into Me, and you shall see the beauty of My
rational creature. And look at those creatures who, among the beauties which
I have given to the soul, creating her in My image and similitude, are
clothed with the nuptial garment (that is, the garment of love), adorned
with many virtues, by which they are united with Me through love. And yet I
tell you, if you should ask Me, who these are, I should reply (said the
sweet and amorous Word of God)they are another Myself, inasmuch as they
have lost and denied their own will, and are clothed with Mine, are united
to Mine, are conformed to Mine. It is therefore true, indeed, that the soul
unites herself with God by the affection of love.

So, that soul, wishing to know and follow the truth more manfully, and
lifting her desires first for herself”for she considered that a soul could
not be of use, whether in doctrine, example, or prayer, to her neighbor, if
she did not first profit herself, that is, if she did not acquire virtue in
herself”addressed four requests to the Supreme and Eternal Father. The first
was for herself; the second for the reformation of the Holy Church; the
third a general prayer for the whole world, and in particular for the peace
of Christians who rebel, with much lewdness and persecution, against the
Holy Church; in the fourth and last, she besought the Divine Providence to
provide for things in general, and in particular, for a certain case with
which she was concerned.
_________________________________________________________________

How the desire of this soul grew when God showed her the neediness of the
world.

This desire was great and continuous, but grew much more, when the First
Truth showed her the neediness of the world, and in what a tempest of
offense against God it lay. And she had understood this the better from a
letter, which she had received from the spiritual Father of her soul, in
which he explained to her the penalties and intolerable dolor caused by
offenses against God, and the loss of souls, and the persecutions of Holy
Church.

All this lighted the fire of her holy desire with grief for the offenses,
and with the joy of the lively hope, with which she waited for God to
provide against such great evils. And, since the soul seems, in such
communion, sweetly to bind herself fast within herself and with God, and
knows better His truth, inasmuch as the soul is then in God, and God in the
soul, as the fish is in the sea, and the sea in the fish, she desired the
arrival of the morning (for the morrow was a feast of Mary) in order to hear
Mass. And, when the morning came, and the hour of the Mass, she sought with
anxious desire her accustomed place; and, with a great knowledge of herself,
being ashamed of her own imperfection, appearing to herself to be the cause
of all the evil that was happening throughout the world, conceiving a hatred
and displeasure against herself, and a feeling of holy justice, with which
knowledge, hatred, and justice, she purified the stains which seemed to her
to cover her guilty soul, she said:O Eternal Father, I accuse myself
before You, in order that You may punish me for my sins in this finite life,
and, inasmuch as my sins are the cause of the sufferings which my neighbor
must endure, I implore You, in Your kindness, to punish them in my
person.
_________________________________________________________________

How finite works are not sufficient for punishment or recompense without
the perpetual affection of love.

Then, the Eternal Truth seized and drew more strongly to Himself her desire,
doing as He did in the Old Testament, for when the sacrifice was offered to
God, a fire descended and drew to Him the sacrifice that was acceptable to
Him; so did the sweet Truth to that soul, in sending down the fire of the
clemency of the Holy Spirit, seizing the sacrifice of desire that she made
of herself, saying:Do you not know, dear daughter, that all the
sufferings, which the soul endures, or can endure, in this life, are
insufficient to punish one smallest fault, because the offense, being done
to Me, who am the Infinite Good, calls for an infinite satisfaction?
However, I wish that you should know, that not all the pains that are given
to men in this life are given as punishments, but as corrections, in order
to chastise a son when he offends; though it is true that both the guilt and
the penalty can be expiated by the desire of the soul, that is, by true
contrition, not through the finite pain endured, but through the infinite
desire; because God, who is infinite, wishes for infinite love and infinite
grief. Infinite grief I wish from My creature in two ways: in one way,
through her sorrow for her own sins, which she has committed against Me her
Creator; in the other way, through her sorrow for the sins which she sees
her neighbors commit against Me. Of such as these, inasmuch as they have
infinite desire, that is, are joined to Me by an affection of love, and
therefore grieve when they offend Me, or see Me offended, their every pain,
whether spiritual or corporeal, from wherever it may come, receives infinite
merit, and satisfies for a guilt which deserved an infinite penalty,
although their works are finite and done in finite time; but, inasmuch as
they possess the virtue of desire, and sustain their suffering with desire,
and contrition, and infinite displeasure against their guilt, their pain is
held worthy. Paul explained this when he said: If I had the tongues of
angels, and if I knew the things of the future and gave my body to be
burned, and have not love, it would be worth nothing to me. The glorious
Apostle thus shows that finite works are not valid, either as punishment or
recompense, without the condiment of the affection of love.
_________________________________________________________________

How desire and contrition of heart satisfies, both for the guilt and the
penalty in oneself and in others; and how sometimes it satisfies for the
guilt only, and not the penalty.

I have shown you, dearest daughter, that the guilt is not punished in this
finite time by any pain which is sustained purely as such. And I say, that
the guilt is punished by the pain which is endured through the desire, love,
and contrition of the heart; not by virtue of the pain, but by virtue of the
desire of the soul; inasmuch as desire and every virtue is of value, and has
life in itself, through Christ crucified, My only begotten Son, in so far as
the soul has drawn her love from Him, and virtuously follows His virtues,
that is, His Footprints. In this way, and in no other, are virtues of value,
and in this way, pains satisfy for the fault, by the sweet and intimate love
acquired in the knowledge of My goodness, and in the bitterness and
contrition of heart acquired by knowledge of one™s self and one™s own
thoughts. And this knowledge generates a hatred and displeasure against sin,
and against the soul™s own sensuality, through which, she deems herself
worthy of pains and unworthy of reward.

The sweet Truth continued:See how, by contrition of the heart, together
with love, with true patience, and with true humility, deeming themselves
worthy of pain and unworthy of reward, such souls endure the patient
humility in which consists the above-mentioned satisfaction. You ask me,
then, for pains, so that I may receive satisfaction for the offenses, which
are done against Me by My Creatures, and you further ask the will to know
and love Me, who am the Supreme Truth. Wherefore I reply that this is the
way, if you will arrive at a perfect knowledge and enjoyment of Me, the
Eternal Truth, that you should never go outside the knowledge of yourself,
and, by humbling yourself in the valley of humility, you will know Me and
yourself, from which knowledge you will draw all that is necessary. No
virtue, my daughter, can have life in itself except through charity, and
humility, which is the foster-mother and nurse of charity. In
self-knowledge, then, you will humble yourself, seeing that, in yourself,
you do not even exist; for your very being, as you will learn, is derived
from Me, since I have loved both you and others before you were in
existence; and that, through the ineffable love which I had for you, wishing
to re-create you to Grace, I have washed you, and re-created you in the
Blood of My only-begotten Son, spilt with so great a fire of love. This
Blood teaches the truth to him, who, by self-knowledge, dissipates the cloud
of self-love, and in no other way can he learn. Then the soul will inflame
herself in this knowledge of Me with an ineffable love, through which love
she continues in constant pain; not, however, a pain which afflicts or dries
up the soul, but one which rather fattens her; for since she has known My
truth, and her own faults, and the ingratitude of men, she endures
intolerable suffering, grieving because she loves Me; for, if she did not
love Me, she would not be obliged to do so; whence it follows immediately,
that it is right for you, and My other servants who have learnt My truth in
this way, to sustain, even unto death, many tribulations and injuries and
insults in word and deed, for the glory and praise of My Name; thus will you
endure and suffer pains. Do you, therefore, and My other servants, carry
yourselves with true patience, with grief for your sins, and with love of
virtue for the glory and praise of My Name. If you act thus, I will satisfy
for your sins, and for those of My other servants, inasmuch as the pains
which you will endure will be sufficient, through the virtue of love, for
satisfaction and reward, both in you and in others. In yourself you will
receive the fruit of life, when the stains of your ignorance are effaced,
and I shall not remember that you ever offended Me. In others I will satisfy
through the love and affection which you have to Me, and I will give to them
according to the disposition with which they will receive My gifts. In
particular, to those who dispose themselves, humbly and with reverence, to
receive the doctrine of My servants, will I remit both guilt and penalty,
since they will thus come to true knowledge and contrition for their sins.
So that, by means of prayer, and their desire of serving Me, they receive
the fruit of grace, receiving it humbly in greater or less degree, according
to the extent of their exercise of virtue and grace in general. I say then,
that, through your desires, they will receive remission for their sins. See,
however, the condition, namely, that their obstinacy should not be so great
in their despair as to condemn them through contempt of the Blood, which,
with such sweetness, has restored them.

What fruit do they receive?

The fruit which I destine for them, constrained by the prayers of My
servants, is that I give them light, and that I wake up in them the hound of
conscience, and make them smell the odor of virtue, and take delight in the
conversation of My servants.

Sometimes I allow the world to show them what it is, so that, feeling its
diverse and various passions, they may know how little stability it has, and
may come to lift their desire beyond it, and seek their native country,
which is the Eternal Life. And so I draw them by these, and by many other
ways, for the eye cannot see, nor the tongue relate, nor the heart think,
how many are the roads and ways which I use, through love alone, to lead
them back to grace, so that My truth may be fulfilled in them. I am
constrained to do so by that inestimable love of Mine, by which I created
them, and by the love, desire, and grief of My servants, since I am no
despiser of their tears, and sweat, and humble prayers; rather I accept
them, inasmuch as I am He who give them this love for the good of souls and
grief for their loss. But I do not, in general, grant to these others, for
whom they pray, satisfaction for the penalty due to them, but, only for
their guilt, since they are not disposed, on their side, to receive, with
perfect love, My love, and that of My servants. They do not receive their
grief with bitterness, and perfect contrition for the sins they have
committed, but with imperfect love and contrition, wherefore they have not,
as others, remission of the penalty, but only of the guilt; because such
complete satisfaction requires proper dispositions on both sides, both in
him that gives and him that receives. Wherefore, since they are imperfect,
they receive imperfectly the perfection of the desires of those who offer
them to Me, for their sakes, with suffering; and, inasmuch as I told you
that they do receive remission, this is indeed the truth, that, by that way
which I have told you, that is, by the light of conscience, and by other
things, satisfaction is made for their guilt; for, beginning to learn, they
vomit forth the corruption of their sins, and so receive the gift of grace.

These are they who are in a state of ordinary charity, wherefore, if they
have trouble, they receive it in the guise of correction, and do not resist
over much the clemency of the Holy Spirit, but, coming out of their sin,
they receive the life of grace. But if, like fools, they are ungrateful, and
ignore Me and the labors of My servants done for them, that which was given
them, through mercy, turns to their own ruin and judgment, not through
defect of mercy, nor through defect of him who implored the mercy for the
ingrate, but solely through the man™s own wretchedness and hardness, with
which, with the hands of his free will, he has covered his heart, as it
were, with a diamond, which, if it be not broken by the Blood, can in no way
be broken. And yet, I say to you, that, in spite of his hardness of heart,
he can use his free will while he has time, praying for the Blood of My Son,
and let him with his own hand apply It to the diamond over his heart and
shiver it, and he will receive the imprint of the Blood which has been paid
for him. But, if he delays until the time be past, he has no remedy, because
he has not used the dowry which I gave him, giving him memory so as to
remember My benefits, intellect, so as to see and know the truth, affection,
so that he should love Me, the Eternal Truth, whom he would have known
through the use of his intellect. This is the dowry which I have given you
all, and which ought to render fruit to Me, the Father; but, if a man
barters and sells it to the devil, the devil, if he choose, has a right to
seize on everything that he has acquired in this life. And, filling his
memory with the delights of sin, and with the recollection of shameful
pride, avarice, self-love, hatred, and unkindness to his neighbors (being
also a persecutor of My servants), with these miseries, he has obscured his
intellect by his disordinate will. Let such as these receive the eternal
pains, with their horrible stench, inasmuch as they have not satisfied for
their sins with contrition and displeasure of their guilt. Now, therefore,
you have understood how suffering satisfies for guilt by perfect contrition,
not through the finite pain; and such as have this contrition in perfection
satisfy not only for the guilt, but also for the penalty which follows the
guilt, as I have already said when speaking in general; and if they satisfy
for the guilt alone, that is, if, having abandoned mortal sin, they receive
grace, and have not sufficient contrition and love to satisfy for the
penalty also, they go to the pains of Purgatory, passing through the second
and last means of satisfaction.

So you see that satisfaction is made, through the desire of the soul united
to Me, who am the Infinite Good, in greater or less degree, according to the
measure of love, obtained by the desire and prayer of the recipient.
Wherefore, with that very same measure with which a man measures to Me, do
he receive in himself the measure of My goodness. Labor, therefore, to
increase the fire of your desire, and let not a moment pass without crying
to Me with humble voice, or without continual prayers before Me for your
neighbors. I say this to you and to the father of your soul, whom I have
given you on earth. Bear yourselves with manful courage, and make yourselves
dead to all your own sensuality.
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How very pleasing to God is the willing desire to suffer for Him.

Very pleasing to Me, dearest daughter, is the willing desire to bear every
pain and fatigue, even unto death, for the salvation of souls, for the more
the soul endures, the more she shows that she loves Me; loving Me she comes
to know more of My truth, and the more she knows, the more pain and
intolerable grief she feels at the offenses committed against Me. You asked
Me to sustain you, and to punish the faults of others in you, and you did
not remark that you were really asking for love, light, and knowledge of the
truth, since I have already told you that, by the increase of love, grows
grief and pain, wherefore he that grows in love grows in grief. Therefore, I
say to you all, that you should ask, and it will be given you, for I deny
nothing to him who asks of Me in truth. Consider that the love of divine
charity is so closely joined in the soul with perfect patience, that neither
can leave the soul without the other. For this reason (if the soul elect to
love Me) she should elect to endure pains for Me in whatever mode or
circumstance I may send them to her. Patience cannot be proved in any other
way than by suffering, and patience is united with love as has been said.
Therefore bear yourselves with manly courage, for, unless you do so, you
will not prove yourselves to be spouses of My Truth, and faithful children,
nor of the company of those who relish the taste of My honor, and the
salvation of souls.
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How every virtue and every defect is obtained by means of our neighbor.

I wish also that you should know that every virtue is obtained by means of
your neighbor, and likewise, every defect; he, therefore, who stands in
hatred of Me, does an injury to his neighbor, and to himself, who is his own
chief neighbor, and this injury is both general and particular. It is
general because you are obliged to love your neighbor as yourself, and
loving him, you ought to help him spiritually, with prayer, counseling him
with words, and assisting him both spiritually and temporally, according to
the need in which he may be, at least with your goodwill if you have nothing
else. A man therefore, who does not love, does not help him, and thereby
does himself an injury; for he cuts off from himself grace, and injures his
neighbor, by depriving him of the benefit of the prayers and of the sweet
desires that he is bound to offer for him to Me. Thus, every act of help
that he performs should proceed from the charity which he has through love
of Me. And every evil also, is done by means of his neighbor, for, if he do
not love Me, he cannot be in charity with his neighbor; and thus, all evils
derive from the soul™s deprivation of love of Me and her neighbor; whence,
inasmuch as such a man does no good, it follows that he must do evil. To
whom does he evil? First of all to himself, and then to his neighbor, not
against Me, for no evil can touch Me, except in so far as I count done to Me
that which he does to himself. To himself he does the injury of sin, which
deprives him of grace, and worse than this he cannot do to his neighbor. Him
he injures in not paying him the debt, which he owes him, of love, with
which he ought to help him by means of prayer and holy desire offered to Me
for him. This is an assistance which is owed in general to every rational
creature; but its usefulness is more particular when it is done to those who
are close at hand, under your eyes, as to whom, I say, you are all obliged
to help one another by word and doctrine, and the example of good works, and
in every other respect in which your neighbor may be seen to be in need;
counseling him exactly as you would yourselves, without any passion of
self-love; and he (a man not loving God) does not do this, because he has no
love towards his neighbor; and, by not doing it, he does him, as you see, a
special injury. And he does him evil, not only by not doing him the good
that he might do him, but by doing him a positive injury and a constant
evil. In this way sin causes a physical and a mental injury. The mental
injury is already done when the sinner has conceived pleasure in the idea of
sin, and hatred of virtue, that is, pleasure from sensual self-love, which
has deprived him of the affection of love which he ought to have towards Me,
and his neighbor, as has been said. And, after he has conceived, he brings
forth one sin after another against his neighbor, according to the diverse
ways which may please his perverse sensual will. Sometimes it is seen that
he brings forth cruelty, and that both in general and in particular.

His general cruelty is to see himself and other creatures in danger of
death and damnation through privation of grace, and so cruel is he that he
reminds neither himself nor others of the love of virtue and hatred of vice.
Being thus cruel he may wish to extend his cruelty still further, that is,
not content with not giving an example of virtue, the villain also usurps
the office of the demons, tempting, according to his power, his
fellow-creatures to abandon virtue for vice; this is cruelty towards his
neighbors, for he makes himself an instrument to destroy life and to give
death. Cruelty towards the body has its origin in cupidity, which not only
prevents a man from helping his neighbor, but causes him to seize the goods
of others, robbing the poor creatures; sometimes this is done by the
arbitrary use of power, and at other times by cheating and fraud, his
neighbor being forced to redeem, to his own loss, his own goods, and often
indeed his own person.

Oh, miserable vice of cruelty, which will deprive the man who practices it
of all mercy, unless he turn to kindness and benevolence towards his
neighbor!

Sometimes the sinner brings forth insults on which often follows murder;
sometimes also impurity against the person of his neighbor, by which he
becomes a brute beast full of stench, and in this case he does not poison
one only, but whoever approaches him, with love or in conversation, is
poisoned.

Against whom does pride bring forth evils? Against the neighbor, through
love of one™s own reputation, whence comes hatred of the neighbor, reputing
one™s self to be greater than he; and in this way is injury done to him. And
if a man be in a position of authority, he produces also injustice and
cruelty and becomes a retailer of the flesh of men. Oh, dearest daughter,
grieve for the offense against Me, and weep over these corpses, so that, by
prayer, the bands of their death may be loosened!

See now, that, in all places and in all kinds of people, sin is always
produced against the neighbor, and through his medium; in no other way could
sin ever be committed either secret or open. A secret sin is when you
deprive your neighbor of that which you ought to give him; an open sin is
where you perform positive acts of sin, as I have related to you. It is,
therefore, indeed the truth that every sin done against Me, is done through
the medium of the neighbor.
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How virtues are accomplished by means of our neighbor, and how it is that
virtues differ to such an extent in creatures.

I have told you how all sins are accomplished by means of your neighbor,
through the principles which I exposed to you, that is, because men are
deprived of the affection of love, which gives light to every virtue. In the
same way self-love, which destroys charity and affection towards the
neighbor, is the principle and foundation of every evil. All scandals,
hatred, cruelty, and every sort of trouble proceed from this perverse root
of self-love, which has poisoned the entire world, and weakened the mystical
body of the Holy Church, and the universal body of the believers in the
Christian religion; and, therefore, I said to you, that it was in the
neighbor, that is to say in the love of him, that all virtues were founded;
and, truly indeed did I say to you, that charity gives life to all the
virtues, because no virtue can be obtained without charity, which is the
pure love of Me.

Wherefore, when the soul knows herself, as we have said above, she finds
humility and hatred of her own sensual passion, for she learns the perverse
law, which is bound up in her members, and which ever fights against the
spirit. And, therefore, arising with hatred of her own sensuality, crushing
it under the heel of reason, with great earnestness, she discovers in
herself the bounty of My goodness, through the many benefits which she has
received from Me, all of which she considers again in herself. She
attributes to Me, through humility, the knowledge which she has obtained of
herself, knowing that, by My grace, I have drawn her out of darkness and
lifted her up into the light of true knowledge. When she has recognized My
goodness, she loves it without any medium, and yet at the same time with a
medium, that is to say, without the medium of herself or of any advantage
accruing to herself, and with the medium of virtue, which she has conceived
through love of Me, because she sees that, in no other way, can she become
grateful and acceptable to Me, but by conceiving, hatred of sin and love of
virtue; and, when she has thus conceived by the affection of love, she
immediately is delivered of fruit for her neighbor, because, in no other
way, can she act out the truth she has conceived in herself, but, loving Me
in truth, in the same truth she serves her neighbor.

And it cannot be otherwise, because love of Me and of her neighbor are one
and the same thing, and, so far as the soul loves Me, she loves her
neighbor, because love towards him issues from Me. This is the means which I
have given you, that you may exercise and prove your virtue therewith;
because, inasmuch as you can do Me no profit, you should do it to your
neighbor. This proves that you possess Me by grace in your soul, producing
much fruit for your neighbor and making prayers to Me, seeking with sweet
and amorous desire My honor and the salvation of souls. The soul, enamored
of My truth, never ceases to serve the whole world in general, and more or
less in a particular case according to the disposition of the recipient and
the ardent desire of the donor, as I have shown above, when I declared to
you that the endurance of suffering alone, without desire, was not
sufficient to punish a fault.

When she has discovered the advantage of this unitive love in Me, by means
of which, she truly loves herself, extending her desire for the salvation of
the whole world, thus coming to the aid of its neediness, she strives,
inasmuch as she has done good to herself by the conception of virtue, from
which she has drawn the life of grace, to fix her eye on the needs of her
neighbor in particular. Wherefore, when she has discovered, through the
affection of love, the state of all rational creatures in general, she helps
those who are at hand, according to the various graces which I have
entrusted to her to administer; one she helps with doctrine, that is, with
words, giving sincere counsel without any respect of persons, another with
the example of a good life, and this indeed all give to their neighbor, the
edification of a holy and honorable life. These are the virtues, and many
others, too many to enumerate, which are brought forth in the love of the
neighbor; but, although I have given them in such a different way, that is
to say not all to one, but to one, one virtue, and to another, another, it
so happens that it is impossible to have one, without having them all,
because all the virtues are bound together. Wherefore, learn, that, in many
cases I give one virtue, to be as it were the chief of the others, that is
to say, to one I will give principally love, to another justice, to another
humility, to one a lively faith, to another prudence or temperance, or
patience, to another fortitude. These, and many other virtues, I place,
indifferently, in the souls of many creatures; it happens, therefore, that
the particular one so placed in the soul becomes the principal object of its
virtue; the soul disposing herself, for her chief conversation, to this
rather than to other virtues, and, by the effect of this virtue, the soul
draws to herself all the other virtues, which, as has been said, are all
bound together in the affection of love; and so with many gifts and graces
of virtue, and not only in the case of spiritual things but also of
temporal. I use the word temporal for the things necessary to the physical
life of man; all these I have given indifferently, and I have not placed
them all in one soul, in order that man should, perforce, have material for
love of his fellow. I could easily have created men possessed of all that
they should need both for body and soul, but I wish that one should have
need of the other, and that they should be My ministers to administer the
graces and the gifts that they have received from Me. Whether man will or
no, he cannot help making an act of love. It is true, however, that that
act, unless made through love of Me, profits him nothing so far as grace is
concerned. See then, that I have made men My ministers, and placed them in
diverse stations and various ranks, in order that they may make use of the
virtue of love.

Wherefore, I show you that in My house are many mansions, and that I wish
for no other thing than love, for in the love of Me is fulfilled and
completed the love of the neighbor, and the law observed. For he, only, can
be of use in his state of life, who is bound to Me with this love.
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How virtues are proved and fortified by their contraries.

Up to the present, I have taught you how a man may serve his neighbor, and
manifest, by that service, the love which he has towards Me.

Now I wish to tell you further, that a man proves his patience on his
neighbor, when he receives injuries from him.

Similarly, he proves his humility on a proud man, his faith on an infidel,
his true hope on one who despairs, his justice on the unjust, his kindness
on the cruel, his gentleness and benignity on the irascible. Good men
produce and prove all their virtues on their neighbor, just as perverse men
all their vices; thus, if you consider well, humility is proved on pride in
this way. The humble man extinguishes pride, because a proud man can do no
harm to a humble one; neither can the infidelity of a wicked man, who
neither loves Me, nor hopes in Me, when brought forth against one who is
faithful to Me, do him any harm; his infidelity does not diminish the faith
or the hope of him who has conceived his faith and hope through love of Me,
it rather fortifies it, and proves it in the love he feels for his neighbor.
For, he sees that the infidel is unfaithful, because he is without hope in
Me, and in My servant, because he does not love Me, placing his faith and
hope rather in his own sensuality, which is all that he loves. My faithful
servant does not leave him because he does not faithfully love Me, or
because he does not constantly seek, with hope in Me, for his salvation,
inasmuch as he sees clearly the causes of his infidelity and lack of hope.
The virtue of faith is proved in these and other ways. Wherefore, to those,
who need the proof of it, My servant proves his faith in himself and in his
neighbor, and so, justice is not diminished by the wicked man™s injustice,
but is rather proved, that is to say, the justice of a just man. Similarly,
the virtues of patience, benignity, and kindness manifest themselves in a
time of wrath by the same sweet patience in My servants, and envy, vexation,
and hatred demonstrate their love, and hunger and desire for the salvation
of souls. I say, also, to you, that, not only is virtue proved in those who
render good for evil, but, that many times a good man gives back fiery coals
of love, which dispel the hatred and rancor of heart of the angry, and so
from hatred often comes benevolence, and that this is by virtue of the love
and perfect patience which is in him, who sustains the anger of the wicked,
bearing and supporting his defects. If you will observe the virtues of
fortitude and perseverance, these virtues are proved by the long endurance
of the injuries and detractions of wicked men, who, whether by injuries or
by flattery, constantly endeavor to turn a man aside from following the road
and the doctrine of truth. Wherefore, in all these things, the virtue of
fortitude conceived within the soul, perseveres with strength, and, in
addition proves itself externally upon the neighbor, as I have said to you;
and, if fortitude were not able to make that good proof of itself, being
tested by many contrarieties, it would not be a serious virtue founded in
truth.
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A TREATISE OF DISCRETION
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How the affection should not place reliance chiefly on penance, but
rather on virtues; and how discretion receives life from humility, and
renders to each man his due.

These are the holy and sweet works which I seek from My servants; these are
the proved intrinsic virtues of the soul, as I have told you. They not only
consist of those virtues which are done by means of the body, that is, with
an exterior act, or with diverse and varied penances, which are the
instruments of virtue; works of penance performed alone without the
above-mentioned virtues would please Me little; often, indeed, if the soul
perform not her penance with discretion, that is to say, if her affection be
placed principally in the penance she has undertaken, her perfection will be
impeded; she should rather place reliance on the affection of love, with a
holy hatred of herself, accompanied by true humility and perfect patience,
together with the other intrinsic virtues of the soul, with hunger and
desire for My honor and the salvation of souls. For these virtues
demonstrate that the will is dead, and continually slays its own sensuality
through the affection of love of virtue. With this discretion, then, should
the soul perform her penance, that is, she should place her principal
affection in virtue rather than in penance. Penance should be but the means
to increase virtue according to the needs of the individual, and according
to what the soul sees she can do in the measure of her own possibility.
Otherwise, if the soul place her foundation on penance she will contaminate
her own perfection, because her penance will not be done in the light of
knowledge of herself and of My goodness, with discretion, and she will not
seize hold of My truth; neither loving that which I love, nor hating that
which I hate. This virtue of discretion is no other than a true knowledge
which the soul should have of herself and of Me, and in this knowledge is
virtue rooted. Discretion is the only child of self-knowledge, and, wedding
with charity, has indeed many other descendants, as a tree which has many
branches; but that which gives life to the tree, to its branches, and its
root, is the ground of humility, in which it is planted, which humility is
the foster-mother and nurse of charity, by whose means this tree remains in
the perpetual calm of discretion. Because otherwise the tree would not
produce the virtue of discretion, or any fruit of life, if it were not
planted in the virtue of humility, because humility proceeds from
self-knowledge. And I have already said to you, that the root of discretion
is a real knowledge of self and of My goodness, by which the soul
immediately, and discreetly, renders to each one his due. Chiefly to Me in
rendering praise and glory to My Name, and in referring to Me the graces and
the gifts which she sees and knows she has received from Me; and rendering
to herself that which she sees herself to have merited, knowing that she
does not even exist of herself, and attributing to Me, and not to herself,
her being, which she knows she has received by grace from Me, and every
other grace which she has received besides.

And she seems to herself to be ungrateful for so many benefits, and
negligent, in that she has not made the most of her time, and the graces she
has received, and so seems to herself worthy of suffering; wherefore she
becomes odious and displeasing to herself through her guilt. And this founds
the virtue of discretion on knowledge of self, that is, on true humility,
for, were this humility not in the soul, the soul would be indiscreet,
indiscretion being founded on pride, as discretion is on humility.

An indiscreet soul robs Me of the honor due to Me, and attributes it to
herself, through vainglory, and that which is really her own she imputes to
Me, grieving and murmuring concerning My mysteries, with which I work in her
soul and in those of My other creatures; wherefore everything in Me and in
her neighbor is cause of scandal to her. Contrariwise those who possess the
virtue of discretion. For, when they have rendered what is due to Me and to
themselves, they proceed to render to their neighbor their principal debt of
love, and of humble and continuous prayer, which all should pay to each
other, and further, the debt of doctrine, and example of a holy and
honorable life, counseling and helping others according to their needs for
salvation, as I said to you above. Whatever rank a man be in, whether that
of a noble, a prelate, or a servant, if he have this virtue, everything that
he does to his neighbor is done discreetly and lovingly, because these
virtues are bound and mingled together, and both planted in the ground of
humility which proceeds from self-knowledge.
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A parable showing how love, humility, and discretion are united; and how
the soul should conform herself to this parable.

Do you know how these three virtues stand together? It is, as if a circle
were drawn on the surface of the earth, and a tree, with an off-shoot joined
to its side, grew in the center of the circle. The tree is nourished in the
earth contained in the diameter of the circle, for if the tree were out of
the earth it would die, and give no fruit. Now, consider, in the same way,
that the soul is a tree existing by love, and that it can live by nothing
else than love; and, that if this soul have not in very truth the divine
love of perfect charity, she cannot produce fruit of life, but only of
death. It is necessary then, that the root of this tree, that is the
affection of the soul, should grow in, and issue from the circle of true
self-knowledge which is contained in Me, who have neither beginning nor end,
like the circumference of the circle, for, turn as you will within a circle,
inasmuch as the circumference has neither end nor beginning, you always
remain within it.

This knowledge of yourself and of Me is found in the earth of true
humility, which is as wide as the diameter of the circle, that is as the
knowledge of self and of Me (for, otherwise, the circle would not be without
end and beginning, but would have its beginning in knowledge of self, and
its end in confusion, if this knowledge were not contained in Me). Then the
tree of love feeds itself on humility, bringing forth from its side the
off-shoot of true discretion, in the way that I have already told you, from
the heart of the tree, that is the affection of love which is in the soul,
and the patience, which proves that I am in the soul and the soul in Me.
This tree then, so sweetly planted, produces fragrant blossoms of virtue,
with many scents of great variety, inasmuch as the soul renders fruit of
grace and of utility to her neighbor, according to the zeal of those who
come to receive fruit from My servants; and to Me she renders the sweet odor
of glory and praise to My Name, and so fulfills the object of her creation.

In this way, therefore, she reaches the term of her being, that is Myself,
her God, who am Eternal Life. And these fruits cannot be taken from her
without her will, inasmuch as they are all flavored with discretion, because
they are all united, as has been said above.
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How penance and other corporal exercises are to be taken as instruments
for arriving at virtue, and not as the principal affection of the soul;
and of the light of discretion in various other modes and operations.

These are the fruits and the works which I seek from the soul, the proving,
namely, of virtue in the time of need. And yet some time ago, if you
remember, when you were desirous of doing great penance for My sake, asking,
˜What can I do to endure suffering for You, oh Lord?™ I replied to you,
speaking in your mind,˜I take delight in few words and many works.™ I
wished to show you that he who merely calls on me with the sound of words,
saying:˜Lord, Lord, I would do something for You,™ and he, who desires for
My sake to mortify his body with many penances, and not his own will, did
not give Me much pleasure; but that I desired the manifold works of manly
endurance with patience, together with the other virtues, which I have
mentioned to you above, intrinsic to the soul, all of which must be in
activity in order to obtain fruits worthy of grace. All other works, founded
on any other principle than this, I judge to be a mere calling with words,
because they are finite works, and I, who am Infinite, seek infinite works,
that is an infinite perfection of love.

I wish therefore that the works of penance, and of other corporal
exercises, should be observed merely as means, and not as the fundamental
affection of the soul. For, if the principal affection of the soul were
placed in penance, I should receive a finite thing like a word, which, when
it has issued from the mouth, is no more, unless it have issued with
affection of the soul, which conceives and brings forth virtue in truth;
that is, unless the finite operation, which I have called a word, should be
joined with the affection or love, in which case it would be grateful and
pleasant to Me. And this is because such a work would not be alone, but
accompanied by true discretion, using corporal works as means, and not as
the principal foundation; for it would not be becoming that that principal
foundation should be placed in penance only, or in any exterior corporal
act, such works being finite, since they are done in finite time, and also
because it is often profitable that the creature omit them, and even that
she be made to do so.

Wherefore, when the soul omits them through necessity, being unable through
various circumstances to complete an action which she has begun, or, as may
frequently happen, through obedience at the order of her director, it is
well; since, if she continued then to do them, she not only would receive no
merit, but would offend Me; thus you see that they are merely finite. She
ought, therefore, to adopt them as a means, and not as an end. For, if she
takes them as an end she will be obliged, some time or other, to leave them,
and will then remain empty. This, My trumpeter, the glorious Paul, taught
you when he said in his epistle, that you should mortify the body and
destroy self-will, knowing, that is to say, how to keep the rein on the
body, macerating the flesh whenever it should wish to combat the spirit, but
the will should be dead and annihilated in everything, and subject to My
will, and this slaying of the will is that due which, as I told you, the
virtue of discretion renders to the soul, that is to say, hatred and disgust
of her own offenses and sensuality, which are acquired by self-knowledge.
This is the knife which slays and cuts off all self-love founded in
self-will. These then are they who give Me not only words but manifold
works, and in these I take delight. And then I said that I desired few
words, and many actions; by the use of the word˜many™ I assign no
particular number to you, because the affection of the soul, founded in
love, which gives life to all the virtues and good works, should increase
infinitely, and yet I do not, by this, exclude words, I merely said that I
wished few of them, showing you that every actual operation, as such, was
finite, and therefore I called them of little account; but they please Me
when they are performed as the instruments of virtue, and not as a principal
end in themselves.

However, no one should judge that he has greater perfection, because he
performs great penances, and gives himself in excess to the slaying of his
body, than he who does less, inasmuch as neither virtue nor merit consists
therein; for otherwise he would be in an evil case, who, from some
legitimate reason, was unable to do actual penance. Merit consists in the
virtue of love alone, flavored with the light of true discretion, without
which the soul is worth nothing. And this love should be directed to Me
endlessly, boundlessly, since I am the Supreme and Eternal Truth. The soul
can therefore place neither laws nor limits to her love for Me; but her love
for her neighbor, on the contrary, is ordered in certain conditions. The
light of discretion (which proceeds from love, as I have told you) gives to
the neighbor a conditioned love, one that, being ordered aright, does not
cause the injury of sin to self in order to be useful to others, for, if one
single sin were committed to save the whole world from Hell, or to obtain
one great virtue, the motive would not be a rightly ordered or discreet
love, but rather indiscreet, for it is not lawful to perform even one act of
great virtue and profit to others, by means of the guilt of sin. Holy
discretion ordains that the soul should direct all her powers to My service
with a manly zeal, and, that she should love her neighbor with such devotion
that she would lay down a thousand times, if it were possible, the life of
her body for the salvation of souls, enduring pains and torments so that her
neighbor may have the life of grace, and giving her temporal substance for
the profit and relief of his body.

This is the supreme office of discretion which proceeds from charity. So
you see how discreetly every soul, who wishes for grace, should pay her
debts, that is, should love Me with an infinite love and without measure,
but her neighbor with measure, with a restricted love, as I have said, not
doing herself the injury of sin in order to be useful to others. This is St.
Paul™s counsel to you when he says that charity ought to be concerned first
with self, otherwise it will never be of perfect utility to others. Because,
when perfection is not in the soul, everything which the soul does for
itself and for others is imperfect. It would not, therefore, be just that
creatures, who are finite and created by Me, should be saved through offense
done to Me, who am the Infinite Good. The more serious the fault is in such
a case, the less fruit will the action produce; therefore, in no way should
you ever incur the guilt of sin.

And this true love knows well, because she carries with herself the light
of holy discretion, that light which dissipates all darkness, takes away
ignorance, and is the condiment of every instrument of virtue. Holy
discretion is a prudence which cannot be cheated, a fortitude which cannot
be beaten, a perseverance from end to end, stretching from Heaven to earth,
that is, from knowledge of Me to knowledge of self, and from love of Me to
love of others. And the soul escapes dangers by her true humility, and, by
her prudence, flies all the nets of the world and its creatures, and, with
unarmed hands, that is through much endurance, discomfits the devil and the
flesh with this sweet and glorious light; knowing, by it, her own fragility,
she renders to her weakness its due of hatred.

Wherefore she has trampled on the world, and placed it under the feet of
her affection, despising it, and holding it vile, and thus becoming lord of
it, holding it as folly. And the men of the world cannot take her virtues
from such a soul, but all their persecutions increase her virtues and prove
them, which virtues have been at first conceived by the virtue of love, as
has been said, and then are proved on her neighbor, and bring forth their
fruit on him. Thus have I shown you, that, if virtue were not visible and
did not shine in the time of trial, it would not have been truly conceived;
for, I have already told you, that perfect virtue cannot exist and give
fruit except by means of the neighbor, even as a woman, who has conceived a
child, if she do not bring it forth, so that it may appear before the eyes
of men, deprives her husband of his fame of paternity. It is the same with
Me, who am the Spouse of the soul, if she do not produce the child of
virtue, in the love of her neighbor, showing her child to him who is in
need, both in general and in particular, as I have said to you before, so I
declare now that, in truth, she has not conceived virtue at all; and this is
also true of the vices, all of which are committed by means of the
neighbor.
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How this soul grew by means of the divine response, and how her sorrows
grew less, and how she prayed to God for the Holy Church, and for her own
people.

Then that soul, thirsting and burning with the very great desire that she
had conceived on learning the ineffable love of God, shown in His great
goodness, and, seeing the breadth of His charity, that, with such sweetness,
He had deigned to reply to her request and to satisfy it, giving hope to the
sorrow which she had conceived, on account of offenses against God, and the
damage of the Holy Church, and through His own mercy, which she saw through
self-knowledge, diminished, and yet, at the same time, increased her sorrow.

For, the Supreme and Eternal Father, in manifesting the way of perfection,
showed her anew her own guilt, and the loss of souls, as has been said more
fully above. Also because in the knowledge which the soul obtains of
herself, she knows more of God, and knowing the goodness of God in herself,
the sweet mirror of God, she knows her own dignity and indignity. Her
dignity is that of her creation, seeing that she is the image of God, and
this has been given her by grace, and not as her due. In that same mirror of
the goodness of God, the soul knows her own indignity, which is the
consequence of her own fault. Wherefore, as a man more readily sees spots on
his face when he looks in a mirror, so, the soul who, with true knowledge of
self, rises with desire, and gazes with the eye of the intellect at herself
in the sweet mirror of God, knows better the stains of her own face, by the
purity which she sees in Him.

Wherefore, because light and knowledge increased in that soul in the
aforesaid way, a sweet sorrow grew in her, and at the same time, her sorrow
was diminished by the hope which the Supreme Truth gave her, and, as fire
grows when it is fed with wood, so grew the fire in that soul to such an
extent that it was no longer possible for the body to endure it without the
departure of the soul; so that, had she not been surrounded by the strength
of Him who is the Supreme Strength, it would not have been possible for her
to have lived any longer. This soul then, being purified by the fire of
divine love, which she found in the knowledge of herself and of God, and her
hunger for the salvation of the whole world, and for the reformation of the
Holy Church, having grown with her hope of obtaining the same, rose with
confidence before the Supreme Father, showing Him the leprosy of the Holy
Church, and the misery of the world, saying, as if with the words of Moses,
˜My Lord, turn the eyes of Your mercy upon Your people, and upon the
mystical body of the Holy Church, for You will be the more glorified if You
pardon so many creatures, and give to them the light of knowledge, since all
will render You praise when they see themselves escape through Your infinite
goodness from the clouds of mortal sin, and from eternal damnation; and then
You will not only be praised by my wretched self, who have so much offended
You, and who am the cause and the instrument of all this evil, for which
reason I pray Your divine and eternal love to take Your revenge on me, and
to do mercy to Your people, and never will I depart from before Your
presence until I see that you grant them mercy. For what is it to me if I
have life, and Your people death, and the clouds of darkness cover Your
spouse, when it is my own sins, and not those of Your other creatures, that
are the principal cause of this? I desire, then, and beg of You, by Your
grace, that You have mercy on Your people, and I adjure You that You do this
by Your uncreated love which moved You Yourself to create man in Your image
and similitude, saying,Let us make man in our own image, and this You
did, oh eternal Trinity, that man might participate in everything belonging
to You, the most high and eternal Trinity.™

Wherefore You gave him memory in order to receive Your benefits, by which
he participates in the power of the Eternal Father; and intellect that he
might know, seeing Your goodness, and so might participate in the wisdom of
Your only-begotten Son; and will, that he might love that which his
intellect has seen and known of Your truth, thus participating in the
clemency of Your Holy Spirit. What reason had You for creating man in such
dignity? The inestimable love with which You saw Your creature in Yourself,
and became enamored of him, for You created him through love, and destined
him to be such that he might taste and enjoy Your Eternal Good. I see
therefore that through his sin he lost this dignity in which You originally
placed him, and by his rebellion against You, fell into a state of war with
Your kindness, that is to say, we all became Your enemies.

Therefore, You, moved by that same fire of love with which You created him,
willingly gave man a means of reconciliation, so that after the great
rebellion into which he had fallen, there should come a great peace; and so
You gave him the only-begotten Word, Your Son, to be the Mediator between us
and You. He was our Justice, for He took on Himself all our offenses and
injustices, and performed Your obedience, Eternal Father, which You imposed
on Him, when You clothed Him with our humanity, our human nature and
likeness. Oh, abyss of love! What heart can help breaking when it sees such
dignity as Yours descend to such lowliness as our humanity? We are Your
image, and You have become ours, by this union which You have accomplished
with man, veiling the Eternal Deity with the cloud of woe, and the corrupted
clay of Adam. For what reason?”Love. Wherefore, You, O God, have become man,
and man has become God. By this ineffable love of Yours, therefore, I
constrain You, and implore You that You do mercy to Your creatures.
_________________________________________________________________

How God grieves over the Christian people, and particularly over His
ministers; and touches on the subject of the Sacrament of Christ™s Body,
and the benefit of the Incarnation.

Then God, turning the eye of His mercy towards her, allowing Himself to be
constrained by her tears, and bound by the chain of her holy desire, replied
with lamentation”My sweetest daughter, your tears constrain Me, because
they are joined with My love, and fall for love of Me, and your painful
desires force Me to answer you; but marvel, and see how My spouse has
defiled her face, and become leprous, on account of her filthiness and
self-love, and swollen with the pride and avarice of those who feed on their
own sin.

What I say of the universal body and the mystical body of the Holy Church
(that is to say the Christian religion) I also say of My ministers, who
stand and feed at the breasts of Holy Church; and, not only should they feed
themselves, but it is also their duty to feed and hold to those breasts the
universal body of Christian people, and also any other people who should
wish to leave the darkness of their infidelity, and bind themselves as
members to My Church. See then with what ignorance and darkness, and
ingratitude, are administered, and with what filthy hands are handled this
glorious milk and blood of My spouse, and with what presumption and
irreverence they are received. Wherefore, that which really gives life,
often gives, through the defects of those who receive it, death; that is to
say, the precious Blood of My only-begotten Son, which destroyed death and
darkness, and gave life and truth, and confounded falsehood. For I give this
Blood and use It for salvation and perfection in the case of that man who
disposes himself properly to receive it, for It gives life and adorns the
soul with every grace, in proportion to the disposition and affection of him
who receives It; similarly It gives death to him who receives It unworthily,
living in iniquity and in the darkness of mortal sin; to him, I say, It
gives death and not life; not through defect of the Blood, nor through
defect of the minister, though there might be great evil in him, because his
evil would not spoil nor defile the Blood nor diminish Its grace and virtue,
nor does an evil minister do harm to him to whom he gives the Blood, but to
himself he does the harm of guilt, which will be followed by punishment,
unless he correct himself with contrition and repentance. I say then that
the Blood does harm to him who receives it unworthily, not through defect of
the Blood, nor of the minister, but through his own evil disposition and
defect inasmuch as he has befouled his mind and body with such impurity and
misery, and has been so cruel to himself and his neighbor. He has used
cruelty to himself, depriving himself of grace, trampling under the feet of
his affection the fruit of the Blood which he had received in Holy Baptism,
when the stain of original sin was taken from him by virtue of the Blood,
which stain he drew from his origin, when he was generated by his father and
mother.

Wherefore I gave My Word, My only-begotten Son, because the whole stuff of
human generation was corrupted through the sin of the first man Adam.
Wherefore, all of you, vessels made of this stuff, were corrupted and not
disposed to the possession of eternal life”so I, with My dignity, joined
Myself to the baseness of your human generation, in order to restore it to
grace which you had lost by sin; for I was incapable of suffering, and yet,
on account of guilt, My divine justice demanded suffering. But man was not
sufficient to satisfy it, for, even if he had satisfied to a certain extent,
he could only have satisfied for himself, and not for other rational
creatures, besides which, neither for himself, nor for others, could man
satisfy, his sin having been committed against Me, who am the Infinite Good.
Wishing, however, to restore man, who was enfeebled, and could not satisfy
for the above reason, I sent My Word, My own Son, clothed in your own very
nature, the corrupted clay of Adam, in order that He might endure suffering
in that self-same nature in which man had offended, suffering in His body
even to the opprobrious death of the Cross, and so He satisfied My justice
and My divine mercy. For My mercy willed to make satisfaction for the sin of
man and to dispose him to that good for which I had created him. This human
nature, joined with the divine nature, was sufficient to satisfy for the
whole human race, not only on account of the pain which it sustained in its
finite nature, that is in the flesh of Adam, but by virtue of the Eternal
Deity, the divine and infinite nature joined to it. The two natures being
thus joined together, I received and accepted the sacrifice of My
only-begotten Son, kneaded into one dough with the divine nature, by the
fire of divine love which was the fetter which held him fastened and nailed
to the Cross in this way. Thus human nature was sufficient to satisfy for
guilt, but only by virtue of the divine nature. And in this way was
destroyed the stain of Adam™s sin, only the mark of it remaining behind,
that is an inclination to sin, and to every sort of corporeal defect, like
the cicatrice which remains when a man is healed of a wound. In this way the
original fault of Adam was able still to cause a fatal stain; wherefore the
coming of the great Physician, that is to say, of My only-begotten Son,
cured this invalid, He drinking this bitter medicine, which man could not
drink on account of his great weakness, like a foster-mother who takes
medicine instead of her suckling, because she is grown up and strong, and
the child is not fit to endure its bitterness. He was man™s foster-mother,
enduring, with the greatness and strength of the Deity united with your
nature, the bitter medicine of the painful death of the Cross, to give life
to you little ones debilitated by guilt. I say therefore that the mark alone
of original sin remains, which sin you take from your father and your mother
when you were generated by them. But this mark is removed from the soul,
though not altogether, by Holy Baptism, which has the virtue of
communicating the life of grace by means of that glorious and precious
Blood. Wherefore, at the moment that the soul receives Holy Baptism,
original sin is taken away from her, and grace is infused into her, and that
inclination to sin, which remains from the original corruption, as has been
said, is indeed a source of weakness, but the soul can keep the bridle on it
if she choose. Then the vessel of the soul is disposed to receive and
increase in herself grace, more or less, according as it pleases her to
dispose herself willingly with affection, and desire of loving and serving
Me; and, in the same way, she can dispose herself to evil as to good, in
spite of her having received grace in Holy Baptism. Wherefore when the time
of discretion is come, the soul can, by her free will, make choice either of
good or evil, according as it pleases her will; and so great is this liberty
that man has, and so strong has this liberty been made by virtue of this
glorious Blood, that no demon or creature can constrain him to one smallest
fault without his free consent. He has been redeemed from slavery, and made
free in order that he might govern his own sensuality, and obtain the end
for which he was created. Oh, miserable man, who delights to remain in the
mud like a brute, and does not learn this great benefit which he has
received from Me! A benefit so great, that the poor wretched creature full
of such ignorance could receive no greater.
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How sin is more gravely punished after the Passion of Christ than before;
and how God promises to do mercy to the world, and to the Holy Church, by
means of the prayers and sufferings of His servants.

And I wish you to know, My daughter, that, although I have re-created and
restored to the life of grace, the human race, through the Blood of My
only-begotten Son, as I have said, men are not grateful, but, going from bad
to worse, and from guilt to guilt, even persecuting Me with many injuries,
taking so little account of the graces which I have given them, and continue
to give them, that, not only do they not attribute what they have received
to grace, but seem to themselves on occasion to receive injuries from Me, as
if I desired anything else than their sanctification.

I say to you that they will be more hard-hearted, and worthy of more
punishment, and will, indeed, be punished more severely, now that they have
received redemption in the Blood of My Son, than they would have been before
that redemption took place”that is, before the stain of Adam™s sin had been
taken away. It is right that he who receives more should render more, and
should be under great obligations to Him from whom he receives more.

Man, then, was closely bound to Me through his being which I have given
him, creating him in My own image and similitude; for which reason, he was
bound to render Me glory, but he deprived Me of it, and wished to give it to
himself. Thus he came to transgress My obedience imposed on him, and became
My enemy. And I, with My humility, destroyed his pride, humiliating the
divine nature, and taking your humanity, and, freeing you from the service
of the devil, I made you free. And, not only did I give you liberty, but, if
you examine, you will see that man has become God, and God has become man,
through the union of the divine with the human nature. This is the debt
which they have incurred”that is to say, the treasure of the Blood, by which
they have been procreated to grace. See, therefore, how much more they owe
after the redemption than before. For they are now obliged to render Me
glory and praise by following in the steps of My Incarnate Word, My
only-begotten Son, for then they repay Me the debt of love both of Myself
and of their neighbor, with true and genuine virtue, as I have said to you
above, and if they do not do it, the greater their debt, the greater will be
the offense they fall into, and therefore, by divine justice, the greater
their suffering in eternal damnation.

A false Christian is punished more than a pagan, and the deathless fire of
divine justice consumes him more, that is, afflicts him more, and, in his
affliction, he feels himself being consumed by the worm of conscience,
though, in truth, he is not consumed, because the damned do not lose their
being through any torment which they receive. Wherefore I say to you, that
they ask for death and cannot have it, for they cannot lose their being; the
existence of grace they lose, through their fault, but not their natural
existence. Therefore guilt is more gravely punished after the Redemption of
the Blood than before, because man received more; but sinners neither seem
to perceive this, nor to pay any attention to their own sins, and so become
My enemies, though I have reconciled them, by means of the Blood of My Son.
But there is a remedy with which I appease My wrath”that is to say, by means
of My servants, if they are jealous to constrain Me by their desire. You
see, therefore, that you have bound Me with this bond which I have given
you, because I wished to do mercy to the world.

Therefore I give My servants hunger and desire for My honor, and the
salvation of souls, so that, constrained by their tears, I may mitigate the
fury of My divine justice. Take, therefore, your tears and your sweat, drawn
from the fountain of My divine love, and, with them, wash the face of My
spouse.

I promise you, that, by this means, her beauty will be restored to her,