Chapter 2-19

THERE were some worthy girls here who were specially given to me, in particular one, and over her I had great power, both over her soul and her body, to establish her health. At the commencement, when this girl came to me, she felt a great attraction to come, and our Lord gave her through me all she had need of; but as soon as she was at a distance, the Devil excited in her mind a frightful aversion to me, so that when it was necessary for her to come and see me, it was with repugnance and terrible efforts that she did it, and sometimes when half way she turned back through faithlessness, not having the courage to continue; but as soon as she was faithful to persist she was delivered from her trouble. When she came near me it all vanished, and with me she experienced that abundance of grace which has been brought to us by Jesus Christ. It was a soul greatly influenced by God from her childhood, to whom our Lord had given much grace, and whom he had led with great gentleness. One day she was with me I had a movement to tell her she was about to enter on a serious trial. She entered on it the next day in a very violent manner. The Devil put into her mind a terrible aversion to me. She loved me by grace, and hated me through the impression, which in a strange manner the Devil made on her; but as soon as she came near me he fled, and left her in quiet. He put into her mind that I was a sorceress, and that it was by this means I drove off the devils, and that I told her what was about to happen, in consequence of which things happened as I had told them to her. She had a continual vomiting, and when I told her not to vomit, and to retain the food, she retained it. One day before entering on the trial which I shall tell, she came to see me in the morning (because it was my fete), intending to come to Mass with me, and to communicate. She could hardly speak to me, such was her then aversion for me; and the Devil did not wish her to tell it, lest I should drive him off. He closed her mouth, and put into her mind that all I said or did was by sorcery. As she did not say a word, I knew her trouble, and I told it to her. She acknowledged it. When I was in the church I said to her: If it is through the Devil I act upon you, I give him the power to torment you; but if it is another spirit who possesses me, I will that during the Mass you participate in that spirit. The little time we were there before they commenced the Mass, the Devil made use of his interval, and more forcibly impressed on her that I was a sorceress, and it was this which made me act, and that she saw how she was worse since I had said that to her. While she was in the crisis of her pain, and an aversion to me that amounted to rage, the Mass commenced. As soon as the priest made the sign of the cross, she entered into a heavenly peace, and so great a union with God, that she knew not whether she was on earth, or in heaven. We communicated in the same manner, and she was saying to herself during this time, “Oh, how certain I am it is God who moves and leads her!” After the Mass was over, she said to me, “O my mother, how have I felt what God is in you! I have been in Paradise.” These are her words. But as I had only said “until after Mass,” the Devil came to attack her with more rage than before.

The greatest mischief he did was hindering her from telling me her state, for although our Lord made me well enough acquainted with it, he yet wished her to tell it to me. She was very ill; she thought she had an abscess, and the faints she fell into, joined to a pain of the head, made the doctor think so. She believed that when I touched the place on her side the abscess broke; but our Lord gave me no knowledge that it was so. I said nothing to her about it, and I have not attached faith to it, although she tried to persuade me; but what is certain is that our Lord made use of me many times to cure her. The Devil attacked her violently, and not being content alone, he took as allies a fine gang, and caused her much trouble. I drove him away when I had the movement for it, or I handed her over as I had done before, according as our Lord inspired me; but always as soon as she approached me and kept herself in silence to receive grace, he left her in repose. In my absence he thought he would be revenged to his full; as many as sixteen of them came to torment her. She wrote it to me. I told her when they came to torment her more violently, to threaten them that she would write to me. They left her for moments.

Then I forbade them for a time to approach her, and when they presented themselves at a distance she said to them, “My mother has told me that you should leave me in quiet until she permits it.” They did not approach her. At last I forbade them once for all, and they left her in quiet. She was faithless to God, and practised on me evasions and deceptions, which only came from self-love. I at once felt it, and that my central depth rejected her, not that she ceased for that to be among the number of my children; but it is that our Lord could not endure her deception or her duplicity. The more she concealed things, the more our Lord made me know them, and the more he rejected her from my central depth.

I saw, or rather, I experienced therein, how God rejects the sinner from his bosom, and especially those who act with concealment and deceit; that it is not God who rejects them, by a volition of rejecting them, or by hatred, but by necessity, owing to their sin; that in God the unchangeableness of love is entire for the sinner, so that as all the cause of that rejection is in the sinner, God cannot receive him into himself or into his grace until the cause of this rejection cease. Now, this cause does not subsist in the effect of the sin, but in the will and inclination of the sinner; so that as soon as this will and inclination ceases on the side of the sinner, however foul and horrible he may be, God purifies him by his charity and his love, and receives him into his grace; but as long as there remains in the man the will of sin, although from powerlessness or lack of opportunity he does not commit the sin he wills, it is certain he would be rejected from God, owing to this perverse will. It must be understood that the rejection does not come from a will in God to reject this sinner, “for his will is that all should be saved,” and that they should be received into him, who is their Origin and their End; but the indisposition which the sinner contracts, which is entirely opposed to God, and which he cannot, God though he be, receive into himself without destroying himself, causes a necessary rejection on the part of God of that sinner, who returns into his proper place (which is no other than God) as soon as the cause of this rejection ceases. It is for this reason the Scripture says, “Turn unto me, I will return unto you;” cease to will that sin which obliges me, in spite of my love, to reject you, and I will return to you, to take you, and draw you to me, far from rejecting you.

When this sinner is rejected by God, as I have said, because the matter of his rejection subsists, he can never be admitted into grace until the cause ceases, which is in the will to sin. However disorderly and however abominable the sinner may have been, he ceases to be a sinner as soon as he ceases to will to be so: for all rebellion is in the will. This rebellious will causes all the incongruity, and hinders God from acting on this sinner; but as soon as the sinner ceases to be rebellious, in ceasing to will sin; God by an infinite goodness incessantly works to purify him from the filth and the consequences of the sin, in order to make him fit to be received into himself. If all the life of this sinner pass in falling and getting up again, all the operation of God on this same sinner during all his life will be to purify him from the fresh stains which he contracts, and nothing will be done for his perfection. But if this sinner dies during the time that his will is rebellious, and turned towards sin, as death fixes for ever the disposition of the soul, and the cause of his impurity is still subsisting, this soul can never be purified by the charity of God, and can consequently never be received into him; so that his rejection is eternal. And this rejection is the pain of damnation, for this soul necessarily tends to her Centre, owing to her nature, and is continually rejected from it, owing to her impurity subsisting in the cause, and not merely in the effect. For if it subsisted only in the effect, as I shall immediately tell, it would be purified; but her sin being still subsisting in the cause, which is the rebellious will, it is utterly impossible for God to purify the sinner after his death; because he can only purify the effect and not the cause, as long as it subsists. Now, as it is rendered subsisting and immortal by the death of the sinner, it is of necessity that the sinner should be eternally rejected, owing to the absolute opposition there is between essential purity and essential impurity. No; God, all God though he be, cannot admit a sinner into his grace as long as his sin subsists in the cause, which is rebellion to God, because he cannot ever be purified as long as the cause subsists. It is the same in this life. But as soon as the cause is removed, and no longer subsists, the sin is no longer subsisting, but in its effect, and thus this sinner can be purified, and God works at this from the moment the cause no longer subsists, for that cause absolutely hinders God from working, the sinner being then in actual revolt.

But if this sinner dies penitent—that is to say, that the cause, which is the will to sin, is removed, and only the effect remains, which is the impurity caused by sin—however horrible and filthy the sinner may be, he ceases to be a sinner, although he does not cease to be filthy. He is then in a state to be purified. God, by an infinite charity, has provided a bath of love and justice, but a painful bath, to purify this soul, and that bath is Purgatory, which is not in itself painful, yet is so in the cause of the pain, which is impurity. Were this cause removed, which is nothing else than sin in its effect, the soul, being quite purified, would suffer nothing in that place of love. Now, God rejects from his grace the cause of the sin, that is the rebellious will, and he rejects from himself the damned owing to his impurity, which causes that not only can he not be received into God, but he cannot be received into his grace, owing to the rebellion of the will, entirely opposed to grace. It is not the same with the soul in Purgatory, who, having no longer the cause of sin, that is, the rebellion, is admitted into the grace of God, but she cannot for that be received into God until all impurity, the effect of sin, is removed; so that the pain of damnation and of the senses both proceed from her impurity and incongruity; as soon, however, as all impurity is removed, according as it pleases God to give a degree of glory to this soul, then she ceases to be rejected from God, and to suffer. There are, however, souls who die so pure that they do not suffer the pain of the senses, only some retardation. I have explained it elsewhere, therefore will not say anything of it here.

Now, I say that in this life it is quite the same; souls are received into grace as soon as the cause of sin ceases, but they are not received into God until all effect of sin is purified. If one continually defiles himself, or also, if being defiled, one has not the courage to allow himself to be purified by God as much as he wishes, one never enters into God in this life. Those souls who have not the courage to allow God to act are not thoroughly purified in this life, because these purifications are effected only by pain and overthrow, and this it is which makes many holy and wonderful souls still need Purgatory; for it must be known there are in us two things which need purifying: the effect of sin, and the cause of sin. I have said that those who die have subsisting in them only that which is there at their death. If they die in grace, their will not being rebellious, they no longer have the cause of sin, and cannot have it, since their will remains fixed in good. It is not the same on earth with a man who is not confirmed in charity; for, not being in the unmovable, he can always change, and his will may rebel until it dies and passes into that which renders it immovable. It is, therefore, necessary on the earth for God to purify not only the impurity and the remains of sin, but also the cause in its source, which is that root of sin, that leaven, that ferment, which may always give birth to it, and render our will rebellious, and consequently make us fall from grace, that is, the SELFHOOD. And herein is that radical purification of our nature, ever disposed to revolt, which God desires to purify in this life, and which he effectively purifies in the souls, that he wills not only to receive into his grace, but into himself. He purifies them not merely from the effect of sin, but from the radical cause, from that leaven, from that ferment, which always may make the will revolt; and this is effected only by the death of the soul through her annihilation, which is attended by extreme pains, and by the loss of all. It is for this reason that an extraordinary courage is needed to pass into God in this life, and to be annihilated to the necessary point, losing all that is “own.” Therefore the souls truly “transformed into him,” as St. Paul says, who are transformed, not merely in grace, but into himself, are more rare than I can tell.

To return to my subject. I say, this girl was rejected from my central depth; the cause was subsisting in her; not in my will. I experienced that she was still held to me by a certain bond, as the sinner to his God, which renders it possible for him always to be received into him in this life, as soon as the cause of the rejection ends. God incessantly solicits that will to cease to be rebellious, and he spares nothing on his side, but it is free; yet grace never fails, for as soon as the will ceases to rebel, it finds grace at its door, quite ready to give itself. Oh, if people conceived the goodness of God, and the wickedness of the sinner, they would be surprised, and it should make us die of love. I felt then how this girl, and many other souls, were bound to me by a link of filiation, but I could no longer communicate myself to this girl as I did before, owing to the want of simplicity, which was not in fleeting matters, but in her will to dissemble, and that it was impossible for that flow of grace to take place until this subsisting voluntary dissimulation was destroyed. I said to her what I could, but she dissimulated afresh to conceal her dissimulation, so that this caused God to reject her still more in me, and she became more opposed to me; not that I ceased to love her, for I knew well that I loved her, but it was she who caused her rejection, which could be ended only by her. O God, how admirable are you, to be willing to give petty creatures the knowledge by experience of your most profound secrets! What I experienced with this girl I have experienced with many souls: I have given this as an example. Father La Combe was not yet in a state to discern these things, and I could not explain them to him, except by saying that this person was artful and dissembling; but he took it in the sense of virtues, with which I had no longer anything to do, and he told me I formed rash judgments. I did not even understand what was a rash judgment—all that was far removed from my mind; and I remember that once, when I was in Piedmont, he wanted to make me confess it. I did so because he told me, and thereby suffered inconceivable torments; for our Lord was angry because they regarded that in me as a defect, in place of regarding it in him, the Supreme Truth, who judges things not as man judges, but who sees them as they are. Father La Combe made me suffer much in regard to this person; he was, however, himself enlightened, our Lord making him see falsities and manifest duplicity. Before my arrival at Grenoble, the lady, my friend, saw in a dream that our Lord gave me an infinity of children: they were all children and small, clothed in the same way, bearing on their dresses the marks of their candour and innocence. She thought I was coming there to take charge of the children of the Hospital, for the meaning was not given to her; but as soon as she related it to me, I understood itwas not this; that our Lord by spiritual fecundity meant to give me a great number of children, that they would be my true children only by simplicity and candour, and that he would draw them through me into innocence. Therefore there is nothing I have so much opposition to as trickery and duplicity. I have wandered far from what I commenced; but I am not my own mistress.