The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

March 9, 1903

Jesus speaks about humility and about correspondence to grace.

Continuing in my usual state, I could hear blessed Jesus praying in my interior, saying: "Holy Father, glorify your Name; confuse the proud and hide Yourself from them, and manifest Yourself to the humble, because only one who is humble recognizes You as his Creator, and recognizes himself as your creature." Having said this, He no longer let Himself be heard, though I comprehended the power of humility before God. It seemed to me that God has no restraint in entrusting the most precious treasures to the humble; on the contrary, everything is open for them, nothing is under lock and key. All the opposite for the proud; even more, it seems that He puts a cord around their feet to confuse them at each step.

Then, a little later, He made Himself seen again, and told me: "My daughter, one can know whether a body is alive from its continuous internal heat. It can also be warmed through some external heat, but since this heat does not come from true life, the body quickly cools down again. The same with the soul: it can be known whether she is alive to grace, whether her internal life is alive in operating, in loving Me, if she feels the strength of my very life within hers. If then it is because of some external cause that she warms up, does some good and then cools down again, returning to vices and committing the usual weaknesses, there is great certainty that she is dead to grace, or is at the last extremes of life. In this way one can know whether it is truly I who go to the soul: if she feels my grace in her interior, and all of her good is founded within her interior. If then it is all external and she perceives nothing good in her interior, it can be the work of the devil." While saying this, He disappeared; but after a little while He came back and added: "My daughter, how terrible it can be for those souls who have been much fecundated by my grace, but have not corresponded to it. The Jewish nation was the favorite one, the most fecundated, and yet, the most sterile; and the whole of my Person could not obtain that fruit which Paul obtained in other nations, less fecundated, but more corresponding. In fact, lack of correspondence to grace blinds the soul, it makes her deceive herself, and disposes her to obstinacy, even in the face of any miracle."