Prologue

In the Name of Christ Crucified and of Gentle Mary

1.

A soul rises up, restless with tremendous desire for God’s honor and the salvation of souls. She has forPage 39 → some time exercised herself in virtue and has become accustomed to dwelling in the cell of self-knowledge in order to know better God’s goodness toward her, since upon knowledge follows love. And loving, she seeks to pursue truth and clothe herself in it.

But there is no way she can so savor and be enlightened by this truth as in continual humble prayer, grounded in the knowledge of herself and of God. For by such prayer the soul is united with God, following in the footsteps of Christ crucified, and through desire and affection and the union of love he makes of her another himself. So Christ seems to have meant when he said, "If you will love me and keep my word, I will show myself to you, and you will be one thing with me and I with you.” And we find similar words in other places from which we can see it is the truth that by love’s affection the soul becomes another himself.

To make this clearer still, I remember having heard from a certain servant of God that, when she was at prayer, lifted high in spirit, God would not hide from her mind’s eye his love for his servants. No, he would reveal it, saying among other things, "Open your mind’s eye and look within me, and you will see the dignity and beauty of my reasoning creature. But beyond the beauty I have given the soul by creating her in my image and likeness, look at those who are clothed in the wedding garment of charity, adorned with many true virtues: They are united with me through love. So I say, if you should ask me who they are, I would answer,” said the gentle loving Word, "that they are another me; for they have lost and drowned their own will and have clothed themselves and united themselves and conformed themselves with mine.”

It is true, then, that the soul is united to God through love’s affection.

Now this soul’s will was to know and follow truth more courageously. So she addressed four petitions to the most high and eternal Father, holding up her desire for herself first of all—for she knew that she could be of no service to her neighbors in teaching or example or prayer without first doing herself the service of attaining and possessing virtue.

Her first petition, therefore, was for herself. The second was for the reform of holy Church. The third was for the whole world in general, and in particular for the peace of Christians who are rebelling against holy Church with great disrespect and persecution. In her fourth petition she asked divine providence to supply in general and in particular for a certain case which had arisen.

2.

This desire of hers was great and continuous. But it grew even more when First Truth showed her the world’s need and how storm-tossed and offensive to God it is. And she had on her mind, besides, a letter she had received from her spiritual father, a letter in which he expressed pain and unbearable sadness over the offense against God, the damnation of souls, and persecutions against holy Church. All of this stirred up the flame of her holy desire with grief for the offense but with gladness in the hope by which she waited for God to provide against such great evils....

From her deep knowledge of herself, a holy justice gave birth to hatred and displeasure against herself, ashamed as she was of her imperfection, which seemed to her to be the cause of all the evils in the world. In this knowledge and hatred and justice she washed away the stains of guilt, which it seemed to her were, and which indeed were, in her own soul, saying, "O eternal Father, I accuse myself before you, asking that you punish my sins in this life. And since I by my sins am the cause of the sufferings my neighbors must endure, I beg you in mercy to punish me for them.”

The Way of Perfection

3.

Then eternal Truth seized her desire and drew it more strongly to himself. Just as in the Old Testament when sacrifice was offered to God a fire came and drew to himself the sacrifice that was acceptable to him, so gentle Truth did to that soul. He sent the fiery mercy of the Holy Spirit and seized the sacrifice of desire she had made of herself to him, saying:

Do you not know, my daughter, that all the sufferings the soul bears or can bear in this life are not enough to punish one smallest sin? For an offense against me, infinite Good, demands infinite satisfaction. So I want you to know that not all sufferings given in this life are given for punishment, but rather for correction, to chastise the child who offends. However, it is true that a soul’s desire, that is, true contrition and sorrow for sin, can make satisfaction. True contrition satisfies for sin and its penalty not by virtue of any finite suffering you may bear, but by virtue of your infinite desire. For God, who is infinite, would have infinite love and infinite sorrow....

So the glorious apostle Paul taught: "If I had an angelic tongue, knew the future, gave what is mine to the poor, and gave my body to be burned, but did not have charity, it would be worth nothing to me.” Finite works are not enough either to punish or to atone unless they are seasoned with loving charity....

5.

The willing desire to suffer every pain and hardship even to the point of death for the salvation of souls Page 40 →is very pleasing to me. The more you bear, the more you show your love for me. In loving me you come to know more of my truth, and the more you know, the more intolerable pain and sorrow you will feel when I am offended.

You asked for suffering, and you asked me to punish you for the sins of others. What you were not aware of was that you were, in effect, asking for love and light and knowledge of the truth. For I have already told you that suffering and sorrow increase in proportion to love: When love grows, so does sorrow. So I say to you: Ask and it shall be given to you; I will not say no to anyone who asks in truth. Consider that the soul's love in divine charity is so joined with perfect patience that the one cannot leave without the other. The soul, therefore, who chooses to love me must also choose to suffer for me anything at all that I give her. Patience is not proved except in suffering, and patience is one with charity, as has been said. Endure courageously, then. Otherwise you will not show yourselves to be— nor will you be—faithful spouses and children of my Truth, nor will you show that your delight is in my honor and in the salvation of souls.

6.

I would have you know that every virtue of yours and every vice is put into action by means of your neighbors. If you hate me, you harm your neighbors and yourself as well (for you are your chief neighbor), and the harm is both general and particular.

I say general because it is your duty to love your neighbors as your own self. In love you ought to help them spiritually with prayer and counsel, and assist them spiritually and materially in their need—at least with your good will if you have nothing else. If you do not love me you do not love your neighbors, nor will you help those you do not love. But it is yourself you harm most, because you deprive yourself of grace. And you harm your neighbors by depriving them of the prayer and loving desires you should be offering to me on their behalf. Every help you give them ought to come from the affection you bear them for love of me.

In the same way, every evil is done by means of your neighbors, for you cannot love them if you do not love me. This lack of charity for me and for your neighbors is the source of all evils, for if you are not doing good you are necessarily doing evil. And to whom is this evil shown and done? First of all to yourself and then to your neighbors—not to me, for you cannot harm me except insofar as I count whatever you do to them as done to me. You do yourself the harm of sin itself, depriving yourself of grace, and there is nothing worse you can do. You harm your neighbors by not giving them the pleasure of the love and charity you owe them, the love with which you ought to be helping them by offering me your prayer and holy desire on their behalf. Such is the general help that you ought to give to every reasoning creature.

More particular are the services done to those nearest you, under your very eyes. Here you owe each other help in word and teaching and good example, indeed in every need of which you are aware, giving counsel as sincerely as you would to yourself, without selfishness. If you do not do this because you have no love for your neighbors, you do them special harm, and this as persistently as you refuse them the good you could do. How? In this Way:

Sin is both in the mind and in the act. You have already sinned in your mind when you have conceived a liking for sin and hatred for virtue. (This is the fruit of that sensual selfishness which has driven out the loving charity you ought to have for me and your neighbors.) And once you have conceived you give birth to one sin after another against your neighbors, however it pleases your perverse sensual will. Sometimes we see cruelty, general or particular, born. It is a general sort of cruelty to see yourself and others damned and in danger of death for having lost grace. What cruelty, to refuse to help either oneself or others by loving virtue and hating vice! But some actually extend their cruelty even further, not only refusing the good example of virtue but in their wickedness assuming the role of the devil by dragging others as much as they can from virtue and leading them to vice. This is spiritual cruelty: to make oneself the instrument for depriving others of life and dealing out death.

Bodily cruelty springs from greed, which not only refuses to share what is one’s own but takes what belongs to others, robbing the poor, playing the over-lord, cheating, defrauding, putting up one’s neighbors’ goods—and often their very persons—for ransom.

O wretched cruelty! You will find yourself deprived of my mercy unless you turn to compassion and kindness! At times you give birth to hurtful words, followed often enough by murder. At other times you give birth to indecency toward others, and the sinner becomes a stinking beast, poisoning not only one or two but anyone who might approach in love or fellowship.

And who is hurt by the offspring of pride? Only your neighbors. For you harm them when your exalted opinion of yourself leads you to consider yourself superior and therefore to despise them. And if pride is in a position of authority, it gives birth to injustice and cruelty, and becomes a dealer in human flesh.

O dearest daughter, grieve that I am so offended, and weep over these dead so that your prayer may destroy their death! For you see that everywhere, on every level of society, all are giving birth to sin on their Page 41 →neighbors' heads. For there is no sin that does not touch others, whether secretly by refusing them what is due them, or openly by giving birth to the vices of which I have told you.

It is indeed true, then, that every sin committed against me is done by means of your neighbors.

7.

I have told you how every sin is done by means of your neighbors, because it deprives them of your lov-ing charity, and it is charity that gives life to all virtue. So that selfish love which deprives your neighbors of your charity and affection is the principle and foundation of all evil.

Every scandal, hatred, cruelty, and everything un-becoming springs from this root of selfish love. It has poisoned the whole world and sickened the mystic body of holy Church and the universal body of Christianity. For all virtues are built on charity for your neighbors. So I have told you, and such is the truth: Charity gives life to all the virtues, nor can any virtue exist without charity. In other words, virtue is attained only through love of me.

After the soul has come to know herself she finds humility and hatred for her selfish sensual passion, recognizing the perverse law that is bound up in her members and is always fighting against the spirit. So she rises up with hatred and contempt for that sensuality and crushes it firmly under the foot of reason. And through all the blessings she has received from me she discovers within her very self the breadth of my goodness. She humbly attributes to me her discovery of this self-knowledge, because she knows that my grace has drawn her from darkness and carried her into the light of true knowledge. Having come to know my goodness, the soul loves it both with and without intermediary. I mean she loves it without the intermediary of herself or her own advantage. But she does have as intermediary that virtue which is conceived through love of me, for she sees that she cannot be pleasing or acceptable to me except by conceiving hatred of sin and love of virtue.

Virtue, once conceived, must come to birth. Therefore, as soon as the soul has conceived through loving affection, she gives birth for her neighbors’ sake. And just as she loves me in truth, so also she serves her neighbors in truth. Nor could she do otherwise, for love of me and love of neighbor are one and the same thing: Since love of neighbor has its source in me, the more the soul loves me, the more she loves her neighbors.

Such is the means I have given you to practice and prove your virtue. The service you cannot render me you must do for your neighbors. Thus it will be evident that you have me within your soul by grace, when with tender loving desire you are looking out for my honor and the salvation of your neighbors by bearing fruit for them in many holy prayers.

I showed you earlier how suffering alone, without desire, cannot atone for sin. Just so, the soul in love with my truth never ceases doing service for all the world, universally and in particular, in proportion to her own burning desire and to the disposition of those who receive. Her loving charity benefits herself first of all, as I have told you, when she conceives that virtue from which she draws the life of grace. Blessed with this unitive love she reaches out in loving charity to the whole world’s need for salvation. But beyond a general love for all people she sets her eye on the specific needs of her neighbors and comes to the aid of those nearest her according to the graces I have given her for ministry: Some she teaches by word, giving sincere and impartial counsel; others she teaches by her example—as everyone ought to—edifying her neighbors by her good, holy, honorable life.

These are the virtues, with innumerable others, that are brought to birth in love of neighbor. But why have I established such differences? Why do I give this person one virtue and that person another, rather than giving them all to one person? It is true that all the virtues are bound together, and it is impossible to have one without having them all. But I give them in different ways so that one virtue might be, as it were, the source of all the others. So to one person I give charity as the primary virtue, to another justice, to another humility, to another a lively faith or prudence or temperance or patience, and to still another courage.

These and many other virtues I give differently to different souls, and the soul is most at ease with that vir-tue which has been made primary for her. But through her love of that virtue she attracts all the other virtues to herself, since they are all bound together in loving charity.

The same is true of many of my gifts and graces, virtue and other spiritual gifts, and those things necessary for the body and human life. I have distributed them all in such a way that no one has all of them. Thus have I given you reason—necessity, in fact—to practice mutual charity. For I could well have supplied each of you with all your needs, both spiritual and material. But I wanted to make you dependent on one another so that each of you would be my minister, dispensing the graces and gifts you have received from me. So whether you will it or not, you cannot escape the exercise of charity! Yet, unless you do it for love of me, it is worth nothing to you in the realm of grace.

So you see, I have made you my ministers, setting you in different positions and in different ranks to Page 42 →exercise the virtue of charity. For there are many rooms in my house. All I want is love. In loving me you will realize love for your neighbors, and if you love your neighbors you have kept the law. If you are bound by this love you will do everything you can to be of service wherever you are....

10.

Do you know how these three virtues [charity, humility, discernment] exist?

Imagine a circle traced on the ground, and in its center a tree sprouting with a shoot grafted into its side. The tree finds its nourishment in the soil within the expanse of the circle, but uprooted from the soil it would die fruitless. So think of the soul as a tree made for love and living only by love. Indeed, without this divine love, which is true and perfect charity, death would be her fruit instead of life. The circle in which this tree's root, the soul's love, must grow is true knowledge of herself, knowledge that is joined to me, who like the circle have neither beginning nor end. You can go round and round within this circle, finding neither end nor beginning, yet never leaving the circle. This knowledge of yourself, and of me within yourself, is grounded in the soil of true humility, which is as great as the expanse of the circle (which is the knowledge of yourself united with me, as I have said). But if your knowledge of yourself were isolated from me there would be no full circle at all. Instead, there would be a beginning in self-knowledge, but apart from me it would end in confusion.

So the tree of charity is nurtured in humility and branches out in true discernment. The marrow of the tree (that is, loving charity within the soul) is patience, a sure sign that I am in her and that she is united with me.

This tree, so delightfully planted, bears many-fragranced blossoms of virtue. Its fruit is grace for the soul herself and blessing for her neighbors in proportion to the conscientiousness of those who would share my servants’ fruits. To me this tree yields the fragrance of glory and praise to my name, and so it does what I created it for and comes at last to its goal, to me, everlasting Life, life that cannot be taken from you against your will.

And every fruit produced by this tree is seasoned with discernment, and this unites them all, as I have told you....

Dialogue

13.

Then the soul was restless and aflame with tremendous desire because of the unspeakable love she had conceived in God’s great goodness when she had come to see and know the expanse of his charity. How tenderly he had deigned to answer her petition and give her hope in her bitterness—bitterness over God’s being offended and holy Church’s being ravaged, and bitterness over her own wretchedness, which she saw through knowledge of herself! Her bitterness was softened and at the same time grew, for the supreme eternal Father, now that he had shown her the way of perfection, was showing her in a new light how he was being offended and souls were being harmed.

As the soul comes to know herself she also knows God better, for she sees how good he has been to her. In the gentle mirror of God she sees her own dignity: that through no merit of hers but by his creation she is the image of God. And in the mirror of God’s goodness she sees as well her own unworthiness, the work of her own sin. For just as you can better see the blemish on your face when you look at yourself in a mirror, so the soul who in true self-knowledge rises up with desire to look at herself in the gentle mirror of God with the eye of understanding sees all the more clearly her own defects because of the purity she sees in him.

Now as light and knowledge grew more intense in this soul, a sweet bitterness was both heightened and mellowed. The hope that first Truth had given her mellowed it. But as a flame bums higher the more fuel is fed it, the fire in this soul grew so great that her body could not have contained it. She could not, in fact, have survived had she not been encircled by the strength of him who is strength itself.

Thus cleansed by the fire of divine charity, which she had found in coming to know herself and God, and more hungry than ever in her hope for the salvation of the whole world and the reform of holy Church, she stood up with confidence in the presence of the supreme Father. She showed him the leprosy of holy Church and the wretchedness of the world, speaking to him as with the words of Moses:

My Lord, turn the eye of your mercy on your people and on your mystic body, holy Church. How much greater would be your glory if you would pardon so many and give them the light of knowledge! For then they would surely all praise you, when they see that your infinite goodness has saved them from deadly sin and eternal damnation. How much greater this than to have praise only from my wretched self, who have sinned so much and am the cause and instrument of every evil! So I beg you, divine eternal Love, to take your revenge on me, and be merciful to your people. I will not leave your presence till I see that you have been merciful to them.

For what would it mean to me to have eternal life if death were the lot of your people, or if my faultsPage 43 → especially and those of your other creatures should bring darkness upon your bride, who is light itself? It is my will, then, and I beg it as a favor, that you have mercy on your people with the same eternal love that led you to create us in your image and likeness. You said, “Let us make humankind in our image and likeness.” And this you did, eternal Trinity, willing that we should share all that you are, high eternal Trinity! You, eternal Father, gave us memory to hold your gifts and share your power. You gave us understanding so that, seeing your goodness, we might share the wisdom of your only-begotten Son. And you gave us free will to love what our understanding sees and knows of your truth, and so share the mercy of your Holy Spirit.

Why did you so dignify us? With unimaginable love you looked upon your creatures within your very self, and you fell in love with us. So it was love that made you create us and give us being just so that we might taste your supreme eternal good.

Then I see how by our sin we lost the dignity you had given us. Rebels that we were, we declared war on your mercy and became your enemies. But stirred by the same fire that made you create us, you decided to give this warring human race a way to reconciliation, bringing great peace out of our war. So you gave us your only-begotten Son, your Word, to be mediator between us and you. He became our justice taking on himself the punishment for our injustices. He offered you the obedience you required of him in clothing him with our humanity, eternal Father, taking on our likeness and our human nature!

O depth of love! What heart could keep from breaking at the sight of your greatness descending to the lowliness of our humanity? We are your image, and now by making yourself one with us you have become our image, veiling your eternal divinity in the wretched cloud and dung heap of Adam. And why? For love! You, God, became human and we have been made divine! In the name of this unspeakable love, then, I beg you—I would force you even!—to have mercy on your creatures.. . .

16.

Then that soul stood before the divine majesty deeply joyful and strengthened in her new knowledge. What hope she had found in the divine mercy! What unspeakable love she had experienced! For she had seen how God, in his love and his desire to be merciful to humankind in spite of their enmity toward him, had given his servants a way to force his goodness and calm his wrath. So she was glad and fearless in the face of the world's persecution, knowing that God was on her side. And the fire of her holy longing grew so strong that she would not rest there, but with holy confidence made her plea for the whole world.

In her second petition she had concerned herself with the good that both Christians and unbelievers would reap from the reform of holy Church. But as if that were not enough, she now stretched out her prayer, like one starved, to the whole world, and as if he himself were making her ask it, she cried out:

Have mercy, eternal God, on your little sheep, good shepherd that you are! Do not delay with your mercy for the world for already it almost seems they can no longer survive! Everyone seems bereft of any oneness in charity with you, eternal Truth, or even with each other: I mean, whatever love they have for each other has no grounding in you....

25.

O immeasurably tender love! Who would not be set afire with such love? What heart could keep from breaking? You, deep well of charity, it seems you are so madly in love with your creatures that you could not live without us! Yet you are our God, and have no need of us. Your greatness is no greater for our well-being, nor are you harmed by any harm that comes to us, for you are supreme eternal Goodness. What could move you to such mercy? Neither duty nor any need you have of us (we are sinful and wicked debtors!)—but only love!

If I see clearly at all, supreme eternal Truth, it is I who am the thief, and you have been executed in my place. For I see the Word, your Son, nailed to a cross. And you have made him a bridge for me, as you have shown me, wretched servant that I am! My heart is breaking and yet cannot break for the hungry longing it has conceived for you!

I remember that you wanted to show me who are those who cross over the bridge and those who do not. So, if it would please your goodness to show me, I would gladly see and hear this from you.

The Bridge

26.

Then God eternal, to stir up even more that soul's love for the salvation of souls, responded to her:

Before I show you what I want to show you, and what you asked to see, I want to describe the bridge for you. I have told you that it stretches from heaven to earth by reason of my having joined myself with your humanity, which I formed from the earths clay.

This bridge, my only-begotten Son, has three stairs. Two of them he built on the wood of the most holy cross, and the third even as he tasted the great bitterness Page 44 →of the gall and vinegar they gave him to drink. You will recognize in these three stairs three spiritual stages.

The first stair is the feet, which symbolize the affections. For just as the feet carry the body, the affections carry the soul. My Son's nailed feet are a stair by which you can climb to his side, where you will see revealed his inmost heart. For when the soul has climbed up on the feet of affection and looked with her mind’s eye into my Son’s opened heart, she begins to feel the love of her own heart in his consummate and unspeakable love. (I say consummate because it is not for his own good that he loves you; you cannot do him any good, since he is one with me.) Then the soul, seeing how tremendously she is loved, is herself filled to overflowing with love. So, having climbed the second stair, she reaches the third. This is his mouth, where she finds peace from the terrible war she has had to wage because of her sins.

At the first stair, lifting the feet of her affections from the earth, she stripped herself of sin. At the second she dressed herself in love for virtue. And at the third she tasted peace.

So the bridge has three stairs, and you can reach the last by climbing the first two. The last stair is so high that the flooding waters cannot strike it—for the venom of sin never touched my Son.

But though this bridge has been raised so high, it still is joined to the earth. Do you know when it was raised up? When my Son was lifted up on the wood of the most holy cross he did not cut off his divinity from the lowly earth of your humanity. So though he was raised so high he was not raised off the earth. In fact, his divinity is kneaded into the clay of your humanity like one bread. Nor could anyone walk on that bridge until my Son was raised up. This is why he said, “If I am lifted up high I will draw everything to myself.”

When my goodness saw that you could be drawn in no other way, I sent him to be lifted onto the wood of the cross. I made of that cross an anvil where this child of humankind could be hammered into an instrument to release humankind from death and restore it to the life of grace. In this way he drew everything to himself: for he proved his unspeakable love, and the human heart is always drawn by love. He could not have shown you greater love than by giving his life for you. You can hardly resist being drawn by love, then, unless you foolishly refuse to be drawn.

I said that, having been raised up, he would draw everything to himself. This is true in two ways: First, the human heart is drawn by love, as I said, and with all its powers: memory, understanding, and will. If these three powers are harmoniously united in my name, everything else you do, in fact or in intention, will be drawn to union with me in peace through the movement of love, because all will be lifted up in the pursuit of crucified love. So my Truth indeed spoke truly when he said, “If I am lifted up high, I will draw everything to myself.” For everything you do will be drawn to him when he draws your heart and its powers.

What he said is true also in the sense that everything was created for your use, to serve your needs. But you who have the gift of reason were made not for yourselves but for me, to serve me with all your heart and all your love. So when you are drawn to me, everything is drawn with you, because everything was made for you.

It was necessary, then, that this bridge be raised high. And it had to have stairs so that you would be able to mount it more easily....

31.

After thus expanding her heart a bit in singing the praises of God's mercy, the soul humbly waited for him to keep his promise. And in reply to her God said:

Dearest daughter, you have been carrying on about my mercy because I let you experience it when I said to you, “I beg you to pray to me on behalf of these people.” But know that my mercy toward you is incomparably more than you can see, because your sight is imperfect and limited, and my mercy is perfect and without limit. So there can be no comparison except that of the finite to the infinite.

I wanted you to experience this mercy as well as your own dignity as I showed you before, so that you would better understand the cruelty and baseness of the wicked who travel beneath the bridge. Open your mind’s eye and look at those who drown by their own choice, and see how low they have fallen by their sins.

First they became weak, and this is when they conceived deadly sin in their hearts. Then they gave birth to that sin and lost the life of grace. And now these who have drowned in the river of the world’s disordered love are dead to grace, and like the senseless dead they cannot make a move except as they are picked up by others. Because they are dead they remember nothing of my mercy. Their minds neither see nor know my truth (for their sensitivity is dead, and they see nothing but themselves, and that with the dead love of selfish sensuality). And so their wills also are dead to my will, for they love nothing but what is dead.

Because these three powers (memory, understanding, and will) are dead, everything they do in intention or in fact is dead so far as grace is concerned. They can no longer defend themselves against their enemies. They are helpless unless I help them. But they do still have their freedom of choice as long as they are in the flesh, and any time these dead will ask for my help they Page 45 →can have it—but that is the limit of what they can do for themselves.

They become unbearable to themselves. They who wanted to rule the world find themselves ruled by nothingness, that is, by sin—for sin is the opposite of being, and they have become servants and slaves of sin.

I made them trees of love through the life of grace, which they received in holy baptism. But they have become trees of death, because they are dead.

Do you know where this tree of death is rooted? In the height of pride, which is nourished by their sensual selfishness. Its core is impatience and its offshoot is the lack of any discernment. These are the four chief vices, which together kill the souls of those I have called trees of death, since they have failed to feed on the life of grace.

Within these trees a worm of conscience nibbles. But as long as a person lives in deadly sin the worm is blinded and so is little felt.

The fruits of such trees are full of death, for their juice comes from the root of pride. So their wretched little souls are filled with thanklessness, the source of all evils. Had they been grateful for the blessings they received from me, they would know me. And in knowing me they would know themselves, and so live in my love. But instead they go on groping their way through the river as if they were blind, not seeing how completely undependable the water is.

32.

There are as many different death-dealing fruits on these trees of death as there are sins. Some are food for beasts: These are people who live indecently, using their bodies and minds like pigs rolling in the mud, for that is how they roll about in the mud of lust. 0 brutish souls! What have you done with your dignity? You who were created kin to the angels have made ugly beasts of yourselves! You have stooped so low that even the demons whose friends and servants you have become cannot stand the sight of such indecency—and much less I, who am purity itself.

No other sin is so hateful and so darkens the hu-man mind as this. The philosophers knew this, not by the light of grace (since they did not have it) but by a natural light: that this sin beclouds the mind. So they were continent the better to be able to study. And they cast aside wealth so that the thought of material things would not clutter their hearts. But not so the foolish false Christians who have lost grace through their own fault.

33.

Others there are whose fruits are of clay. These are the greedy misers who act like the mole who feeds on nothing but dirt right up to the end. And when death comes where have they to turn? In their avarice they scorn my generosity, selling their time to their neighbors. They are usurers who become cruel robbers who blot my mercy from their memories. For if they did remember my mercy they would not be cruel either to themselves or their neighbors, but would rather be kind and merciful to themselves by living virtuously and to their neighbors by serving them with love.

How many evils come from this cursed sin of avarice! How many murders, thefts, and pillagings; how many unlawful profits and how much hard-heartedness and injustice toward others! It kills the spirit and makes people slaves to wealth who care nothing for God's commandments. Such people love no one except for their own profit.

This vice is born of pride and it feeds pride, be-cause it is always so concerned about its own reputation that it necessarily links up with pride. And so, with wretched self-opinionated pride, it goes from bad to worse. It is a flame that always generates the smoke of vanity and arrogance, taking pride in what is not its own. It is a root with many branches, chief of which is a self-conceit that always wants to be greater than others. Another of its branches is the deceitful heart that is not sincere and generous but double, that says one thing but thinks another, that hides the truth and tells lies for its own profit. And avarice breeds envy, a worm that is always gnawing, letting the avaricious enjoy neither their own nor anyone else's good.

How can these wretched evil people share their possessions with the poor when they are already stealing from them? How can they rescue others from indecency when they are the ones who shoved them into it? For sometimes they are such animals that they have no respect for their own daughters and other relatives, but stoop to the meanest things with them. And yet my mercy holds them up, and I refrain from ordering the earth to swallow them up, giving them a chance to repent.

But if they will not share their possessions, how will they ever give their lives for the salvation of souls? How will they give affection if they are being eaten up by envy?

O miserable vices that tear down the heaven of the soul! I call the soul “heaven” because I make heaven wherever I dwell by grace. I made the soul my hiding place and by my love turned her into a mansion. But now she has left me like an adulteress because she loves herself and other created persons and things more than me. In fact, she has made a god of herself and strikes out at me with all sorts of sins. And she does all this because she gives no thought to the blood shed for her with such burning love.

34.

There are others who are so bloated with the power in their hands that the standard they carry is injustice. They inflict their injustice on God and their neighbors and even on themselves.

They are unjust to themselves by not being virtuous as they owe it to themselves to be. They do not give me the honor that is my due, nor praise my name as is their duty, but like thieves they steal what is mine and put it to the service of their own sensuality. So they are being unjust both to me and to themselves, for like blinded fools they do not recognize me in themselves.

And it is all because of selfishness, like those Jews and ministers of the Law who were so blinded by envy and selfishness that they did not recognize the Truth, my only-begotten Son. Therefore they did not, as they should have, recognize eternal Life when he was in their midst. My Truth told them, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” But they failed to recognize it. Why? Because they had lost the light of reason and so they did not offer due honor and glory to me or to him who is one with me. And so they blindly committed the injustice of persecuting him shamefully even to death by crucifixion.

Such as these are unjust to themselves and to me and to their neighbors as well. They are unjust dealers in the flesh of their subjects and of anyone else who may fall into their hands....

86.

Now I, eternal Truth, have let you see with your mind's eye and hear with your feeling's ear how you must behave if you would serve yourself and your neighbors in the teaching and knowledge of my truth. For I told you in the beginning that one comes to knowledge of the truth through self-knowledge. But self-knowledge alone is not enough: It must be seasoned by and joined with knowledge of me within you. This is how you found humility and contempt for yourself along with the fire of my charity, and so came to love and affection for your neighbors and gave them the service of your teaching and your holy and honorable living.

I showed you the bridge as well. And I showed you the three ordinary stairs that are set up in the soul’s three powers, and how no one can have the life of grace without climbing all three stairs, without gathering all three powers in my name. Then I revealed to you how these stairs were in a special way a figure of the three spiritual stages, symbolized in the body of my only-begotten Son. I told you that he had made a stairway of his body, and showed it to you in his nailed feet, in his open side, and in his mouth where the soul tastes peace and calm.

I showed you the imperfection of slavish fear and the imperfection of love that loves me for the delight it feels. And I showed you the perfection of the third stage, of those who have attained peace at his mouth. These have run with eager longing across the bridge of Christ crucified. They have climbed the three ordinary stairs, have gathered their souls' three powers and all their works in my name (as I explained for you more in detail before), and they have climbed the three special stairs and passed from imperfection to perfection. So you have seen how they run on in truth. I also gave you a taste of the soul's perfection as she is adorned with the virtues, as well as the delusions she is subject to before she reaches perfection if she does not use her time well in coming to know herself and me.

I told you about the wretchedness of those who let themselves be drowned in the river because they will not keep to the bridge of my Truth’s teaching, the bridge I built for you so you would not drown. Like fools they have chosen to drown in the world’s wretched filth.

I have told you all this to make you shake up the fire of your holy longing and your compassion and grief over the damnation of souls. I want your sorrow and love to drive you to pressure me with sweat and tears—tears of constant humble prayer offered to me in the flames of burning desire. And not just for yourself, but for so many others of my creatures and servants who will hear you and be compelled by my love (together with you and my other servants) to beg and pressure me to be merciful to the world and to the mystic body of holy Church, the Church for which you so earnestly plead with me.

You will recall that I already told you I would fulfill your desires by giving you refreshment in your labors, that I would satisfy your anguished longings by reforming holy Church through good and holy shepherds. I will do this, as I told you, not through war, not with the sword and violence, but through peace and calm, through my servants' tears and sweat. I have set you as workers in your own and your neighbors' souls and in the mystic body of holy Church. In yourselves you must work at virtue; in your neighbors and in the Church you must work by example and teaching. And you must offer me constant prayer for the Church and for every creature, giving birth to virtue through your neighbors. For I have already told you that every virtue and every sin is realized and intensified through your neighbors. Therefore, I want you to serve your neighbors and in this way share the fruits of your own vineyard.

Never cease offering me the incense of fragrant Page 47 →prayers for the salvation of souls, for I want to be merciful to the world. With your prayers and sweat and tears I will wash the face of my bride, holy Church. I showed her to you earlier as a maiden whose face was all dirtied, as if she were a leper. The clergy and the whole of Christianity are to blame for this because of their sins, though they receive their nourishment at the breast of this bride! But I will tell you about those sins in another place....

Tears...

97.

Then that soul was restless with a tremendous longing because Truth had so tenderly satisfied herby telling her about these stages of tears. And in love as she was, she said:

Thanks, thanks to you, high eternal Father, fulfiller of holy desires and lover of our salvation! Out of love you gave us love in the person of your only-begotten Son when we were still at war with you. This abyss of your flaming charity lets me ask you for grace and mercy so that I may come to you in sincerity in the light, and not run along darksomely after the teaching of your Truth. You have clearly shown me his truth to make me see two other real or possible delusions I fear. Before I go on, eternal Father, I wish you would explain these to me.

Here is the first: Sometimes people will come to me or to another of your servants asking for counsel in their desire to serve you and wanting me to instruct them. I know, gentle eternal God, that you have already told me, "I am one who takes delight in few words and many deeds.” Still, if it would please your kindness to say a few more words on this, you would be doing me a great favor.

Also, sometimes when I am praying for your creatures and especially for your servants, it happens in the course of my prayer that I find this one spiritually well disposed, apparently rejoicing in you, and another seems to me to have a darksome spirit. Eternal Father, should I or can I judge the one to be in light and the other in darkness? Or if I should see one going the way of great penance and another not, should I judge that the one who does greater penance is more perfect than the other? I ask you, lest I be deluded by my own lack of insight, to be more specific about what you have told me in general terms.

Here is the second thing I want to ask you about: Be more clear to me about the sign you told me the soul receives to tell whether a spiritual visitation is from you, God eternal, or not.

If I remember well, you told me, eternal Truth, that [if the visitation is from you] it leaves the spirit glad and encouraged toward virtue. I would like to know whether this gladness can be disguised spiritual selfishness, for if that is the case I would hold only to the sign of virtue.

These are the things I am asking you so that I may be able to serve you and my neighbors in truth, and not fall into any false judgements about your creatures and your servants. For it seems to me that passing [rash] judgement alienates the soul from you, and I do not want to fall into that trap.

Truth

105.

. . . Now, dearest daughter, I have satisfied your desire by clarifying what you asked me to. I have told you how you should reprove your neighbors if you would not be deluded by the devil or your own meager insight, that is, that you should reprove in general terms, not specifically, unless you have had a clear revelation from me, and humbly reprove yourself along with them.

I also told you, and I will tell you again, that nothing in the world can make it right for you to sit in judgement on the intentions of my servants, either generally or in particular, whether you find them well or ill disposed.

And I told you the reason you cannot judge, and that if you do you will be deluded in your judgement. But compassion is what you must have, you and the others, and leave the judging to me.

I told you also the teaching and principal foundation you should give to those who come to you for counsel because they want to leave behind the darkness of deadly sin and follow the path of virtue. I told you to give them as principle and foundation an affectionate love fo. virtue through knowledge of themselves and of my goodness for them. And they should slay and annihilate their selfish will so that in nothing will they rebel against me. And give them penance as an instrument but not as their chief concern—not equally to everyone but according to their capacity for it and what their situation will allow, this one more and this one less, depending on their ability to manage these external instruments.

I told you that it is not right for you to reprove others except in general terms in the way I explained, and this is true. But I would not because of that have you believe that when you see something that is clearly sinful you may not correct it between that person and Page 48 →yourself, for you may. In fact, if that person is obstinate and refuses to change, you may reveal the matter to two or three others, and if this does not help, reveal it to the mystic body of holy Church. But I told you that it is not right for you to hand anyone over merely on the basis of what you see or feel within you or even what you see externally. Unless you have clearly seen the truth or have understood it through an explicit revelation from me, you are not to reprove anyone except in the manner I have already explained. Such is the more secure way for you because the devil will not be able to deceive you by using the cloak of neighborly charity.

Now, dearest daughter, I have finished telling you what is necessary if you would preserve and augment your soul’s perfection....

108.

Then that soul, truly like one drunk, seemed to be beside herself and separated from her bodily senses because of her loving union with her Creator. She lifted up her spirit and gazed into eternal Truth with her mind's eye. And as she had come to know the truth she was in love with truth, and she said:

O high eternal goodness of God! Who am I, wretched as I am, that you, high eternal Father, have revealed to me your truth and the hidden snares of the devil and the delusion of selfishness I and others can be subject to in this pilgrim life, so that we might not be deceived either by the devil or by ourselves? What moved you to this? Love. For you loved me without being loved by me. O fire of love! Thanks, thanks to you, eternal Father! ...

And I would make yet another request, for those two pillars, the fathers you have appointed for me on earth to guide and teach me, who am so wretchedly weak, from the beginning of my conversion until now. Unite them and make of their two bodies a single soul. Let neither of them be concerned for anything but to fulfill in themselves, and in the ministries you have put in their care, the glory and praise of your name through the salvation of souls. And let me, unworthy wretched slave more than daughter, treat them with due reverence and holy fear for love of you, for your honor, for their peace and calm, and for the edification of our neighbors.

I am certain, eternal Truth, that you will not spurn my desire and the petitions I have addressed to you. For I know from having seen what you have been pleased to reveal to me, and even more from experience, that you are receptive to holy desires. I, your unworthy servant, will try as you give me grace to be faithful to your command and your teaching.

O eternal Father, I remember your telling me once, when you were speaking of the ministers of holy Church, that at another time you would talk more at length about the sins these ministers are committing this very day. Therefore, if it would please your goodness, say something about this, so that I may have reason to intensify my sorrow and compassion and restless longing for their salvation. For I recall that you have already said that through the suffering and tears and sorrow, the sweat and constant prayers of your servants, you would refresh us by reforming the Church with good and holy ministers. Therefore, I make my petition so that this may grow in me.

109.

Then God eternal looked on her with mercy. He did not spurn her desire but accepted her petition. Wishing to fulfill this last request that she had made because of his promise, he said:

O dearest daughter whom I so love! I will fulfill your desire in what you have asked of me only if you for your part will not be foolish or indifferent. For that would be much more serious for you and worthy of greater reproach now than before, because you have come to know more of my truth. Make it your concern, then, to offer prayers for all people and for the mystic body of holy Church and for those I have given you to love with a special love. Do not be guilty of indifference about offering prayers and the example of your living and the word of teaching. Reprove vice and commend virtue. Do all this to the greatest extent of your power.

Concerning the two pillars I have given you and of whom you have spoken to me (and you spoke truly), make yourself a channel for giving each of them what he needs, according to their disposition and what I, your Creator, give to you, for without me none of you can do anything. I for my part will fulfill your desires. But never fail—neither you nor they—to trust me, for my providence will not fail you. Let each of them receive humbly what he is ready to receive, and let each of them administer what I gave him to administer, each in his own way, as they have received and will continue to receive from my goodness.

The Mystic Body of Holy Church ...

115.

This is how my gentle glorious ministers conduct themselves. I told you that I wanted you to see the excellence that is theirs beyond the dignity I have given them by making them my christs. When they exercise this dignity virtuously they are clothed in this gentle glorious Sun that I have entrusted to their ministry.

Consider those who have gone before them: the gentle Gregory, Sylvester, and the other successors of the chief pontiff Peter, to whom my Truth gave the keys of the heavenly kingdom when he said, "Peter, I am giving you the keys of the heavenly kingdom; whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”

Listen well, dearest daughter. By showing you the magnificence of their virtues I shall show you more fully the dignity to which I have appointed these ministers of mine. This is the key to the blood of my only-begotten Son, that key which unlocked eternal life, closed for so long a time because of Adam’s sin. But after I gave you my Truth, the Word, my only-begotten Son, he suffered and died, and by his death he destroyed your death by letting his blood be a cleansing bath for you. Thus his blood and his death, by the power of my divine nature joined with his human nature, unlocked eternal life.

And to whom did he leave the keys to this blood? To the glorious apostle Peter and to all the others who have come or will come from now until the final judgement day with the very same authority that Peter had. Nor is this authority lessened by any sinfulness on their part; nor can that sinfulness deprive the blood or any other sacrament of its perfection. I have already told you that no uncleanness can defile this Sun, nor is its light lost because of any darkness of deadly sin that may be in the minister or in those who receive it. Their sin cannot injure the sacraments of holy Church or lessen their power. But grace is lessened and sin increased in those who administer or receive them unworthily.

Christ on earth [the Pope], then, has the keys to the blood. If you remember, I showed you this in an image when I wanted to teach you the respect laypeople ought to have for these ministers of mine, regardless of how good or evil they may be, and how displeased I am with disrespect. You know that I set before you the mystic body of holy Church under the image of a wine cellar. In this wine cellar was the blood of my only-begotten Son, and from this blood all the sacraments derive their life-giving power.

Christ on earth stood at the door of this wine cellar. He had been commissioned to administer the blood, and it was his duty to delegate ministers to help him in the service of the entire universal body of Christianity. Only those accepted and anointed by him were to thus minister. He was the head of the whole clerical order, and he appointed each one to his proper office to administer this glorious blood.

Because he has sent them out as his helpers, it is his task to correct them for their faults, and it is my will that he do so. For by the dignity and authority I have bestowed on them I have freed them from slavery, that is, from submission to the authority of temporal rulers. Civil law has no power whatever to punish them; this right belongs solely to the one who has been appointed to rule and to serve according to divine law. These are my anointed ones, and therefore, it has been said through Scripture: "Dare not to touch my christs.” Therefore, a person can do no worse violence than to assume the right to punish my ministers.

116.

And if you should ask me why I said that this sin of those who persecute holy Church is graver than any other sin, and why it is my will that the sins of the clergy should not lessen your reverence for them, this is how I would answer you: Because the reverence you pay to them is not actually paid to them but to me, in virtue of the blood I have entrusted to their ministry. If this were not so, you should pay them as much reverence as to anyone else, and no more. It is this ministry of theirs that dictates that you should reverence them and come to them, not for what they are in themselves but for the power I have entrusted to them, if you would receive the holy sacraments of the Church. For if you refuse these when it is in your power to have them, you would live and die condemned.

So the reverence belongs not to the ministers, but to me and to this glorious blood made one thing with me because of the union of divinity with humanity. And just as the reverence is done to me, so also is the irreverence, for I have already told you that you must not reverence them for themselves, but for the authority I have entrusted to them. Therefore you must not sin against them, because if you do, you are really sinning not against them but against me. This I have forbidden, and I have said that it is my will that no one should touch them.

For this reason no one has excuse to say, “I am doing no harm, nor am I rebelling against holy Church. I am simply acting against the sins of evil pastors.” Such persons are deluded, blinded as they are by their own selfishness. They see well enough, but they pretend not to see so as to blunt the pricking of conscience. If they would look, they could see that they are persecuting not these ministers, but the blood. It is me they assault, just as it was me they reverenced. To me redounds every assault they make on my ministers: derision, slander, disgrace, abuse. Whatever is done to them I count as done to me. For I have said and I say it again: No one is to touch my christs. It is my right to punish them, and no one else’s....

119.

Now I would refresh your soul by softening your Page 50 →grief over the darksomeness of those wretched ones with the holy lives of my ministers. I have told you that they have taken on the qualities of the Sun, so that the fragrance of their virtues mitigates the stench, and their lightsomeness the dark. By this very light I would have you know more deeply the sinful darksomeness of those other ministers of mine. So open your mind’s eye and contemplate me, the Sun of justice, and you shall see these glorious ministers who by their stewardship of the Sun have taken on the qualities of the Sun....

They have all, according to the positions I have chosen them for, given light to holy Church: Peter with his preaching and teaching and in the end with his blood; Gregory with his learning and [his knowledge of] Sacred Scripture and the mirror of his living; Sylvester by his struggles against unbelievers and above all in the disputations and argumentations for the holy faith that he made in deeds as well as in words with the power he received from me. And if you turn to Augustine, to the glorious Thomas, to Jerome and the others, you will see what great light they have shed on this bride, as lamps set on a lampstand, dispelling errors with their true and perfect humility....

... They conducted themselves as good shepherds and followers of the good shepherd, my Truth, whom I sent to govern you, my little sheep, and to lay down his life for you.

These ministers of mine followed in his footsteps. Therefore they did not let my members grow rotten for want of correction. But they corrected lovingly, with the ointment of kindness along with the harshness of the fire that cauterizes the wound of sin through reproof and penance, now more, now less, according to the gravity of the sin. Nor did it concern them that such correcting and speaking the truth might bring them death.

They were true gardeners, and with care and holy fear they rooted out the brambles of deadly sin and put in their place the fragrant plants of virtue. Thus their subjects lived in truly holy fear and they grew up as fragrant flowers in the mystic body of holy Church because my ministers fearlessly gave them the correction they needed. Because there was in them no thorn of sin, they kept to the way of holy justice and administered reproof without any slavish fear. This was and is the shining pearl that sheds peace and light on people’s spirits and establishes them in holy fear with hearts united. I want you, therefore, to know that nothing causes as much darkness and division in the world among both laypeople and religious, clergy and shepherds of holy Church, as does the lack of the light of justice and invasion of the darkness of injustice.

No rank, whether of civil or divine law, can be held in grace without holy justice. For those who are not corrected and those who do not correct are like members beginning to rot, and if the doctor were only to apply ointment without cauterizing the wound, the whole body would become fetid and corrupt.

So it is with prelates and with anyone else in authority. If they see the members who are their subjects rotting because of the filth of deadly sin and apply only the ointment of soft words without reproof, they will never get well. Rather, they will infect the other members with whom they form one body under their one shepherd. But if those in authority are truly good doctors to those souls, as were those glorious shepherds, they will not use ointment without the fire of reproof. And if the members are still obstinate in their evildoing, they will cut them off from the congregation so that they will not infect the whole body with the filth of deadly sin.

But [those who are in authority] today do not do this. In fact, they pretend not to see. And do you know why? Because the root of selfish love is alive in them, and this is the source of their perverse slavish fear. They do not correct people for fear of losing their rank and position and their material possessions. They act as if they were blind, so they do not know how to maintain their positions. For if they saw how it is by holy justice that their positions are to be maintained, they would maintain them. But because they are bereft of light they do not know this. They believe they can succeed through injustice, by not reproving the sins of their subjects. But they are deceived by their own sensual passion, by their hankering for civil or ecclesiastical rank.

Another reason they will not correct others is that they themselves are living in the same or greater sins. They sense that the same guilt envelops them, so they cast aside fervor and confidence and, chained by slavish fear, pretend they do not see. Even what they do see they do not correct, but let themselves be won over by flattery and bribes, using these very things as excuses for not punishing the offenders. In them is fulfilled what my Truth said in the holy Gospel: “They are blind and leaders of the blind. And if one blind person leads another, they both fall into the ditch.”

Those who have been or would be my gentle ministers did not and would not act this way. I told you that these have taken on the qualities of the sun. Indeed, they are suns, for there is in them no darkness of sin or ignorance, because they follow the teaching of my Truth. Nor are they lukewarm, because they are set ablaze in the furnace of my charity. They have no use for the world’s honors and ranks and pleasures. Therefore, they are not afraid to correct. Those who do not hanker after power or ecclesiastical rank have no fear of losing it. They reprove [sin] courageously, for those Page 51 →whose conscience does not accuse them of sin have nothing to fear. ...

121.

... No matter where you turn, to secular or religious, clerics or prelates, lowly or great, young or old, you see nothing but sin. All of them pelt me with the filth of deadly sin. But their filth harms only themselves, not me....

Do you know, dearest daughter—listen with grieving bitterness of heart—do you know where these have set their principle and foundation? In their own selfish self-centeredness. There is born the tree of pride with its offshoot of indiscretion. So, lacking in discernment as they are, they assume honor and glory for themselves by seeking higher office and adornments and delicacies for their bodies, repaying me with abuse and sin. They take to themselves what is not theirs and give me what is not mine. To me should be given glory and my name should be praised; to themselves is due contempt for their selfish sensuality. They ought to know themselves enough to consider themselves unworthy of the tremendous mystery they have received from me. But they do just the opposite, for, bloated with pride as they are, they never have their fill of gobbling up earthly riches and the pleasures of the world, while they are stingy, greedy, and avaricious toward the poor.

Because of this wretched pride and avarice born of their sensual selfishness, they have abandoned the care of souls and give themselves over completely to guarding and caring for their temporal possessions. They leave behind my little sheep, whom I had entrusted to them, like sheep without a shepherd. They neither pasture nor feed them either spiritually or materially. Spiritually they do administer the sacraments of holy Church (the power of which sacraments can neither be taken away nor lessened by any sin of theirs) but they do not feed them with sincere prayers, with hungry longing for their salvation, with holy and honorable living, nor do they feed their poor subjects with temporal assistance.

I told you they were to distribute their material goods in three portions: one for their own needs, one for the poor, and one for the use of the Church. But these do the opposite. Not only do they not give what they are in duty bound to give to the poor, but they rob them through simony and their hankering after money, selling the grace of the Holy Spirit. Some are so mean that they are unwilling to give to the needy the very things I have given them freely so that they might give them to you—unless their hands are filled [with money] or they are plentifully supplied with gifts [in return]. They love their subjects for what they can get from them, and no more. They spend all the goods of the Church on nothing but clothes for their bodies. They go about fancily dressed, not like clerics and religious, but like lords or court lackeys. They are concerned about having grand horses, many gold and silver vessels, and well-adorned homes. They have and keep what they ought not, all with huge vanity. Their heart babbles out its disordered vanity, and their whole desire is feasting, making a god of their bellies, eating and drinking inordinately. So they soon fall into impure and lustful living.

Woe, woe, to their wretched lives! For what the gentle Word, my only-begotten Son, won with such suffering on the wood of the most holy cross they spend on prostitutes. They devour the souls who were bought with Christ’s blood, eating them up in so many wretched ways, and feeding their own children with what belongs to the poor....

122.

I told you that the pearl of justice was luminous in those chosen ones. Now I tell you that the jewel these puny wretches wear over their heart is injustice. This injustice proceeds from and is mounted in their self-centeredness, for because of their selfishness they perpetrate injustice against their own souls and against me, along with their lack of discernment....

Sometimes they administer correction as if to cloak themselves in this little bit of justice. But they will never correct persons of any importance, even though they may be guilty of greater sin than more lowly people, for fear that these might retaliate by standing in their way or deprive them of their rank and their way of living. They will, however, correct the little people, because they are sure these cannot harm them or deprive them of their rank. Such injustice comes from their wretched selfish love for themselves....

123.

What is the source of such filth in their souls? Their own selfish sensuality. Their selfishness has made a lady of their sensuality, and their wretched little souls have become her slaves, whereas I made them to be free by the blood of my Son, when the whole human race was freed from slavery to the devil and his rule. Every person receives this grace, but these whom I have anointed I have freed from the worlds service and appointed them to serve me alone, God eternal, by being stewards of the sacraments of holy Church.

I have made them so free, in fact, that it has never been my will, nor is it now, that any civil authority should presume to sit in judgement over them....

My ministers should be standing at the table of the cross in holy desire, nourishing themselves there on the food of souls for my honor.. . .

But instead these have made the taverns their table, and there in public they swear and perjure themselves in sin upon miserable sin, as if they were blind and bereft of the light of reason. They have become beasts in their sinning, lustful in word and deed. They do not so much as know what the Divine Office is, and even if they say it from time to time they are saying it with their tongue while their heart is far from me. They are like criminal gamblers and swindlers: After they have gambled away their own souls into the devils’ hands, they gamble away the goods of the Church as well, and they gamble and barter away whatever material goods they have been given in virtue of [my Son's] blood. So the poor go without what is due them, and the Church’s needs are not provided for.

Because they have made themselves the devil’s temple, they are no longer concerned about my temple. Rather, the things that should go for the adornment of the Church and her temples out of respect for the blood go instead to adorn the houses they live in. And worse: They act like husbands adorning their brides; these incarnate devils use the Church’s property to adorn the she-devils with whom they live in sin and indecency. Shamelessly they let them come and stay and go. And while they, miserable devils, stand at the altar to celebrate, it does not even bother them to see their wretched she-devils coming up with their children by the hand, to make their offering with the other people!

O devils and worse than devils! At least let your iniquity be hid from the eyes of your subjects! Then at least, though you would still be offending me and harming yourselves, you would not be hurting your neighbors by actually setting your evil lives before their eyes. For by your example you give them reason not to leave their own sinful ways, but to fall into the same sins as yours and worse. Is this the kind of purity I demand of my ministers when they go to celebrate at the altar? This is the sort of purity they bring: They get up in the morning with their minds contaminated and their bodies corrupt....

124.

. . . these wretches not only do not restrain their weakness; they make it worse by committing that cursed unnatural sin. As if they were blind and stupid, with the light of their understanding extinguished, they do not recognize what miserable filth they are wallowing in. The stench reaches even up to me, supreme Purity, and is so hateful to me that for this sin alone five cities were struck down by my divine judgement. For my divine justice could no longer tolerate it, so despicable to me is this abominable sin....

You know, if you remember well, how before the great Death I showed you how despicable this sin is to me, and how the world is corrupted by it. At that time, when I lifted your spirit up above yourself in holy desire, I showed you the whole world, and in people of almost every walk of life you saw this miserable sin. You saw in that revelation how the devils fled. And you know that your spirit suffered so from the stench that you thought you would surely die. You could see nowhere that you and my other servants could go to escape being touched by this leprosy. It seemed you could not live among the lowly or the great, the old or the young, religious or clerics, superiors or subjects, masters or servants; for they were all contaminated in mind and body by this curse....

So you see, dearest daughter, how abominable this sin is to me in any person. Now imagine how much more hateful it is in those I have called to live celibately. Among these celibates who have been lifted up above the world, some are religious and some are trees planted as my ministers in the mystic body of holy Church. You cannot imagine how much more I despise this sin in these celibates—even more than in ordinary people of the world. They are lamps set on a lampstand, to be stewards of me the true Sun, giving off the light of virtue and of holy and honorable living. But instead they minister in darksomeness....

127.

... Do you see, dearest daughter, how much reason I have to grieve over such wretchedness? And how generous I have been with them and how miserly they have been with me? For just as I told you, some of them even lend for usury. Not that they set up shop as public usurers do, but have all sorts of subtle ways of selling time to their neighbors to satisfy their own greed. Now there is nothing in the world that can justify this. Even if it were the smallest of gifts, if their intention is to receive it as the price for the service they have done by lending their goods, this is usury as much as anything else that might be paid for the time [of the loan]. I appointed these wretches to forbid seculars [to practice usury], and here they are doing the same and more. For when someone comes to ask their advice about this matter, because they are guilty of the same sin and have lost the light of reason, the advice they give is darksome, tainted by the passion within their own souls.

This sin and many others are born of the tight, greedy, avaricious heart. One could use the words my Truth said when he entered the temple and found there the sellers and buyers. He chased them out with a whip of cords, saying, “Of my Father’s house, which is a house of prayer, you have made a robbers’ den.”

You see well, sweetest daughter, how true it is that Page 53 →they have made a robbers’ den of my Church, which is a place of prayer. They sell and buy and have made the grace of the Holy Spirit a piece of merchandise. So you see, those who want the high offices and revenues of the Church buy them by bribing those in charge with money and provisions. And those wretches are not concerned about whether [the candidates] are good or bad, but only about pleasing them for love of the gifts they have received. So they make every effort to set these putrid plants in the garden of holy Church, and for this the wretches will give a good report of them to Christ on earth. Thus both use falsehood and deceit against Christ on earth, whereas they ought to behave sincerely and in all truth. But if my Son’s vicar [the Pope] becomes aware of their sin he ought to punish them. He should relieve those of office who will not repent and change their evil way of living. As for those who do the bribing, they would do well to receive imprisonment for their bargaining, both to change their sinful ways and that others may see the example and be afraid to do the same thing any more. If Christ on earth does this, he is doing his duty. If he does not, his sin will not go unpunished when it is his turn to give me an account of his little sheep.

Believe me, my daughter. Today this is not done, and this is why such sins and abominations plague my Church. Those who make appointments to high offices do not investigate the lives of those they appoint, to see whether they are good or bad. Or if they do look into anything, they are questioning and asking information of those who are as evil as they are themselves, and these would not give anything but good testimony because they are guilty of the same sin. They are concerned about nothing but the grandeur of rank and nobility and wealth, about knowing polished rhetoric; and worse, they will recommend their candidate by saying he is good looking! Despicable, devilish things! Those who ought to be looking for the beautiful adornment of virtue are concerned about physical beauty! They ought to be searching out the humble poor folk who in their humility avoid high office, but instead they pick those who in their bloated pride go seeking promotions.

They look for learning. Now learning in itself is good and perfect when the scholar is at the same time good and honorable and humble. But if learning is combined with pride, indecency, and sinful living, it is venomous and understands nothing but the letter of Scripture. It understands in darkness, for it has lost the light of reason and its eye for understanding is clouded over. It was in this light, enlightened by faith, that Holy Scripture was proclaimed and understood by those of whom I have told you more at length elsewhere. So you see, knowledge is good in itself, but not in those who do not use it as it should be used, and it will be a punishing fire to those who do not amend their lives....

... So many rebellions has my bride suffered that she should not have had! They ought to let the dead be buried by the dead. As for themselves, they should follow the teaching of my Truth and fulfill my will for them by doing what I appointed them to do. But they do exactly the opposite, for they set themselves to burying dead and passing things in their disordered care and affection, stealing their business from the hands of worldly folk. This displeases me and is harmful to holy Church. They ought to leave these things to the worldly, and let the one dead thing bury the other; that is, let those take care of worldly, temporal things who are appointed to do so.

I said, “Let the one dead thing bury the other,” and I mean “dead” to be understood in two ways. The first is administering and governing bodily things in deadly sin because of one’s disordered care and affection. The other stems from the fact that because these things are tangible it is the body’s function [to care for them]; and the body is a dead thing because it has no life in itself except as it derives it from the soul, and it shares in life only so long as the soul remains in it.

Therefore, these anointed ones of mine, who ought to be living as angels, should leave dead things to the dead and concern themselves with governing souls. For souls are living things and do not ever die so far as their existence is concerned. So they should govern them and administer to them the sacraments and gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit, and pasture them on spiritual food through their own good and holy lives. In this way will my house be a house of prayer, abounding in grace and filled with their virtues....