✞ Signs to know whether the soul is in Grace.
I felt all abandoned by Heaven and by the earth, and I thought to myself that Jesus had told me a long time before that I was to live in the hard exile of life as if there were no one else but Jesus and I; everyone was to disappear from my mind and from my heart. And now, after everything has disappeared from me and I am used to living only with Jesus, He too has run away, leaving me alone, prey to unspeakable bitternesses, in this hard state of isolation. Oh! God, what pain. Have pity on me - come back to the one who feels the need of your Life, more than of her own life.
Now, while I was thinking of this, and of other yet more harrowing things, which it would be too long to say, my sweet Jesus moved in my interior, and sighing, told me: “Daughter of my Supreme Volition, courage in your isolation. This serves as company for my Will, abandoned by creatures. The sorrow of Its isolation – oh! how harder than yours it is. My Will is the Mother of all the wills of creatures. As most tender Mother, She left Herself in the center of Creation in order to deliver the human wills and keep them all around Herself, to raise them upon Her knees, nourish them with the milk of Her celestial teachings, and make them grow in Her likeness, giving them all Creation in which to amuse themselves. And since my Will is center of each created thing, wherever the creatures would go, She, as center of all things, would remain always near them, more than affectionate Mother, that they might never lack Her maternal cares, nor descend from Her nobility and likeness.
But, alas!, these daughters, the human wills, delivered by this Celestial Mother, my Will, despising and neglecting all Her maternal cares, Her love, Her tendernesses and attentions, even though my Will is near them - these human wills are far away from this Mother; many of them don’t even know Her; others despise Her and make fun of Her. Poor Mother, which is my Will, in the midst of so many daughters delivered by Her - She remains isolated, abandoned; and while all of them take from Her own in order to live, they use it to grow in dissimilarity from Her, and to offend Her. Can there be greater sorrow for a mother than the abandonment of her children? Not to be known by the fruit of her own womb, which, turning into enemies, offend the one who brought them to the light? Therefore, the sorrow of isolation of my Will is great and inconceivable. So, may your isolation be the company of this isolated Mother, who cries and searches for Her children; but as much as She cries, shouts, and calls Her children, whether with the most tender voices, with the most bitter tears, with the most ardent sighs, or with the most thundering voices of chastisements, these unruly children keep far away from the womb of She who generated them. My daughter, do you not want to share, as true faithful daughter of my Will, in Her sorrow and in Her isolation?”
Then, after this, I began to do the adoration to my Crucified Good; but before my mind passed a long line of soldiers, all armed up, which never ended. I would have wanted to think about my Crucified Jesus, rather than see soldiers, but, against my will, I was forced to see these soldiers, equipped for anything. So I prayed my sweet Jesus to take that sight away from me, that I might be free to be with Him; and Jesus, all afflicted, told me: “My daughter, the more it seems that the world is apparently in peace, and they sing the praises of peace, the more they hide wars, revolutions and tragic scenes for poor humanity, under that ephemeral and masked peace. And the more it seems that they favor my Church, and sing hymns of victories and triumphs, and practices of union between State and Church, the closer the brawl is which they are preparing against Her. The same was for Me. Up until they acclaimed Me as King and received Me in triumph, I was able to live in the midst of the peoples; but after my triumphant entrance into Jerusalem, they no longer let Me live; and after a few days they shouted at Me: ‘Crucify Him!’; and all taking arms against Me, they made Me die. When things do not start from a foundation of truth, they have no strength to reign for a long time, because, since truth is missing, love is missing, and the life that sustains it is missing. Therefore, what they were hiding easily comes out, and they turn peace into war, and favors into revenges. Oh! how many unexpected things they are preparing.”
Jesus disappeared, and I remained all afflicted, thinking to myself: ‘My beloved Jesus has told me many times that I was the little newborn of the Divine Will – just newly born, without having formed my little life in this Supreme Volition. And now that I am most in need in order to form my growth, Jesus leaves me alone. So, I will be like an aborted birth in the Divine Will, without having existence. Don’t You see, then, my Love, in what pitiful state I find myself, and how your very designs upon Me are reduced to nothing? O please! if You do not want to have pity on me, have pity on Yourself, on your designs and on your works which You have made for my poor soul.’ But while my poor mind wanted to go further into the sorrowful state I was in, my beloved Good came out from within my interior, and looking at me thoroughly, from head to foot, told me: “My daughter, in my Will there are neither deaths nor abortions, and one who lives in It contains, as life, the Life of my Will; and even if she feels herself dying, or even dead, she is in my Will which, containing Life, makes her rise again, in every instant, to new light, to new beauty, grace and happiness, delighting in preserving her always little within Itself, so as to have her great with Itself – little but strong, little but beautiful, just newly born, so that she might have nothing human, but everything divine. So, her life is my Will alone, which will carry out all my designs, without dispersing anything. You will be like the drop of water submerged within the great sea; like the grain of wheat amidst the great masses of grains: as much as the drop of water seems as though disappeared within the sea, just as the grain amidst the innumerable grains, no one can deny or take away from them the right that their life exists. Therefore, do not fear, and make it so that you lose your life, in order to acquire the right to have my Will alone as life.”