The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

April 20, 1900

The Cross gives us the features and the likeness of Jesus.

My adorable Jesus continues to come, for just a little and like a shadow, and even when He comes He does not say anything.  This morning, after He renewed in me the pains of the cross as many as two times, looking at me with tenderness while I was suffering the spasm of the piercings of the nails, He told me:  “The cross is a mirror in which the soul admires the Divinity, and by reflecting herself in it, she acquires the features and the likeness which most resembles God.  The cross must not only be loved and desired, but one must consider it an honor and a glory.  This is to operate as God and to become like God by participation, because I alone gloried in the cross and considered suffering an honor, and I loved it so much that in my whole life I did not want to be one moment without the cross.”

Who can say what I understood about the cross from this speaking of blessed Jesus?  But I feel mute in expressing it with words.  Ah, Lord, I pray You to keep me always nailed to the cross, so that, having this divine mirror ever before me, I may clean all my stains and embellish myself ever more in your likeness.