The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

October 14, 1901

Jesus shows Himself like a flash and makes her comprehend something about the divine attributes.

Blessed Jesus comes in passing, almost like a flash, and in that flash He releases from His interior, now a special distinction of one of His attributes, now another. How many things He makes me comprehend in that flash! But once the flash has withdrawn, my mind remains in the dark, and is unable to adapt itself to repeating what it has comprehended in that flash of light; more so, since it is about things that touch on the Divinity, and the human tongue struggles in trying to repeat them, and the more it tries, the more mute it remains. Even more, in these things it is always a newborn little girl. But obedience wants me to try to say the little I can; and here it is:

It seemed to me that God contains all goods within Himself, in such a way that, finding all goods which God contains within Him, one does not need to go anywhere else to see the vastness of His boundaries – no; but He alone is enough to find everything that is His. Now, in one flash He showed a special distinction of His beauty – but who can say how beautiful He is? I can only say that all the angelic and human beauties, the beauties of the variety of flowers and fruits, the splendid azure and starry heavens which seem to enchant us and speak to us of a supreme beauty as we look at them, compared to His beauty, are shadows, or a breath that God has sent forth from His beauty which He contains within Himself. That is, they are little drops of dew compared to the immense waters of the sea. I move on for my mind begins to get lost. In another flash He showed a special distinction of the attribute of charity – but how can I, miserable one, open my mouth about this attribute, Trice Holy, which is the fount from which all other attributes derive? I will only say what I understood with regard to the human nature.

So, I understood that as God creates us, this attribute of charity pours into us and fills us completely of itself, in such a way that if the soul corresponded, being filled with the breath of the charity of God, her very nature should be transmuted into charity toward God. But as the soul keeps diffusing herself in the love of creatures, or of pleasures, or of interests, or of any other thing, that divine breath keeps going out of the soul; and if the soul arrives at diffusing herself in everything, she becomes empty of divine charity. But since the soul cannot enter into Heaven if she is not a complex of most pure charity, fully divine, if the soul is saved, this breath which she received in being created, she will acquire again by dint of fire in the purging flames, and only when she comes to the point of overflowing with it, then will she go out. So, who knows what an extremely long stop she has to make in that expiatory place! Now, if the creature should be so, what must God be? I believe I am speaking much nonsense, but I am not surprised, because I am not at all some learned one – I am always an ignorant one, and if there is anything of truth in these writings, it is not mine, but God’s, while I remain always the little ignorant one that I am.