The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

April 19, 1901

The whole being of Luisa suffers the privation of Jesus. Jesus consoles her and explains to her something about Grace.

As I continue to pass my days without my adorable Jesus – at the most, He comes like shadow and flashes – my poor heart is extremely embittered. I feel His privation so much, that all of my fibers, my nerves, my bones, and even the drops of my blood, writhe continuously, and say to me: "Where is Jesus? How is it – you have lost Him? What have you done that He is no longer coming? How can we be without Him? Who else will console us, since we have lost the fount of all consolation? Who will fortify us in weakness? Who will correct us and uncover our defects, since we have been deprived of that light which, more than electric filament, penetrated into the most intimate hiding places, and with the most ineffable sweetness corrected and healed our wounds? Everything is misery, everything is squalor, everything is gloom without Him! How shall we go on?’ And even though in the depth of my will I feel resigned, and I keep offering His very privation as the greatest sacrifice for love of Him, everything else wages a continuous war against me, and puts me in a torture. Ah, Lord, how much it costs me to have known You, and at how high a price You make me pay for your past visits!

Now, while I was in this state, He made Himself seen for short instants, and He told me: "Since Grace is part of Me, as you possess It, with reason and by strict necessity everything that forms your being cannot be without Me. This is the reason why everything asks you for Me and you are tortured continuously. Since you are soaked with Me and filled with part of Me, only when they possess Me, not only in part, but completely - then do they find peace and remain content." And as I lamented about my hard position, He added: "I too experienced extreme abandonment in the course of my Passion, even though my Will was always united with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. And I wanted to suffer this in order to divinize the cross completely; so much so, that in looking at Me and in looking at the cross, you will find the same splendor, the same lessons, and the same mirror in which you can reflect yourself continuously, with no difference between the two."