The Book of Heaven
—Unofficial Version—

May 1, 1904

The eye that delights only in the things of Heaven has the virtue of seeing Jesus, while one who delights in the things of the earth has the virtue of seeing the things of the earth.

As I was in my usual state, I was thinking about Our Lord at the moment when, as He reached the top of mount Calvary, He was completely stripped and was embittered with gall; and I was praying to Him, saying:  ‘My adorable Lord, I see in You but a garment of blood adorned with wounds; for taste and pleasure, I see bitternesses of gall, and for honor and glory, I see confusion, opprobriums and crosses.  O please! do not permit, after You have suffered so much, that I look at the things of this earth as anything other than dung and mud, that I take any other pleasure but in You alone, and that all my honor be anything else but the cross.”  And He, making Himself seen, told me:  “My daughter, if you did otherwise you would lose the purity of eye, and as a veil would form before your sight, you would lose the good of seeing Me.  In fact, the eye that delights only in the things of Heaven has the virtue of seeing Me, while one who delights in the things of the earth has the virtue of seeing the things of the earth, because his eye, in seeing them as different from what they are, sees them and loves them.”