Chapter 2-21

You were not content, my God, with making me speak, you further gave me an impulse to read the Holy Scripture. There was a time that I did not read, for I found in myself no want to fill up; on the contrary, rather too great a plenitude. As soon as I commenced reading the Holy Scripture, it was given me to write out the passage I read, and immediately the explanation of it was given to me. In writing out the passage I had not the least thought on the explanation, and as soon as it was written out it was given to me to explain it, writing with inconceivable quickness. Before writing I did not know what I was going to write; while writing I saw that I was writing things I had never known, and during the time of the manifestation light was given me that I had in me treasures of knowledge and understanding that I did not know myself to possess. As soon as I had written I remembered nothing whatever of what I had written, and there remained to me neither species nor images. I could not have made use of what I had written to aid souls; but our Lord gave me while I spoke to them ( without my paying any attention to it) all that was necessary for them. In this way our Lord made me explain all the Holy Scripture. I had no book except the Bible, and that alone I used without searching for anything. When, in writing on the Old Testament, I took passages from the New to support what I was saying, it was not that I sought them out, but they were given to me at the same time as the explanation; and exactly the same with the New Testament. I there made use of passages from the Old, and they were given to me without my searching for anything. I had no time to write except at night, for I had to speak all day, without reflection any more for speaking than for writing, and as little careful of my health, or of my life, as of myself. I used to sleep only one or two hours every night, and with that almost every day I had fever, ordinarily a quartan, and yet I continued to write without inconvenience, without troubling myself whether I should die or live. He whose I was without any reserve did with me as he pleased, without my meddling in his work. You yourself, O my God, used to wake me up, and I owed such an entire dependence and obedience to your will that you were not willing to suffer the least natural movement. When the least thing mingled therewith you punished it, and it ceased at once.

You made me write with such a purity that I had to stop and begin again as you wished. You tried me in every way; suddenly you made me write, then stop immediately, and again begin. When I wrote by day I was suddenly interrupted, and often left words half written, and you gave me afterwards what you pleased. What I wrote was not in my head; my head was so free that it was a perfect vacuum. I was so detached from what I wrote that it seemed strange to me. A reflection occurred to me: I was punished for it; my writing at once dried up, and I remained like a fool until I was enlightened thereon. The least joy in the graces you gave me was very rigorously punished. All the faults which are in my writings come from this, that, not being accustomed to the operation of God, I was often unfaithful: thinking I was doing well in continuing to write when I had the time without having the movement for it, because I had been ordered to finish the work; so that it is easy to see passages which are beautiful and sustained, and others which have neither taste nor unction. I have left them as they are in order that people may see the difference between the Spirit of God and the natural human spirit; being, however, ready to correct them according to the present light which is given me, in case I am ordered to do so.

Previous to this time what test did you not make of my abandonment? Did you not give me a hundred different aspects to see if I was yours without reserve, under every test, and if I had yet some little interest for myself? You still found this soul supple and pliable to all your wishes. What have you not made me suffer? Into what humiliation did you not cast me to counterbalance your graces? To what, my God, did you not deliver me, and by what painful straits did you not make me pass? That which before I could not touch with the tip of my finger became my ordinary food. But I was not troubled at all that you did to me. I saw with pleasure and complaisance—taking no more interest in myself than in a dead dog—I saw, I say, with complaisance your divine play. You lifted me up to heaven, then immediately you cast me down into the mud, then with the same hand you replaced me in the place from which you had cast me down. I saw that I was the sport of your love and of your will, the victim of your divine justice, and all was alike to me. It seems to me, O my God, that you treat your dearest friends as the sea does its waves. It drives them at times with impetuosity against the rocks, where they are broken; at other times against the sand or the mud, and then immediately it receives back into its bosom and buries there that wave with so much the more force as it had with greater impetuosity cast it forth. This is the play which you make of your friends who, nevertheless, are one in you, changed and transformed into yourself, although you make a continual play of casting them off and receiving them back into your bosom; like as the waves are a part of the sea, and after a wave has been thrown forward with greater impetuosity, the gulf which swallows it up is deeper in proportion. O my God, what things I should have to tell! but I am not able to say anything of the operations of your just and beneficent love, because they are too subtle.

This love delights in making those whom it has made one in you the continual victims of its justice. It seems that these souls are made holocausts to be burnt up by love on the altar of the divine Justice. Oh, how few the souls of this kind! They are almost all the souls of Mercy, and it is much; but to belong to the divine Justice, Oh, how rare that is! but how great it is! These are the souls of God alone, who have no longer any interest in themselves, or for themselves; all is for God, without reference or relation to themselves as to salvation, perfection, eternity, life, or death. All that is not for them: their business is to let the divine Justice satiate itself in them, as says Deborah, with blood of the dead; that is to say, with this soul already dead through love; and take on her vengeance for the sins of the others. This is too little; it satiates itself with a glory which is peculiar to that attribute—glory which does not permit the smallest reference to the creature, and which desires everything for itself. Mercy is altogether distributive in favour of the creature; but Justice devours and carries off everything, and cannot desire anything save for itself, without having any regard for the victim which it sacrifices; it is for this reason that it does not spare. Yet it desires voluntary victims, who have no other object than itself in what they suffer, no more than it has any other object than itself in what it makes them suffer. It is not that the soul thus devoured pays attention to this loving cruelty, which treats her pitilessly; no, she has neither thought nor reflection. She thinks on it only when it is given her to write or to speak on the subject. This Justice, thus devouring, nourishes itself only from sufferings, opprobrium and ignominy, and with the same hand with which it has struck the Author of justice, it strikes with so much the more force those who are predestinated, the more conformed they are to be to him.

But it will be said, How, then, is such a soul sustained in the cruelty of the divine Justice? She is sustained without sustenance by the same cruelty; the more she is deserted, as it seems, by God, the more is she sustained in God above all sustenance: for it must not be thought that such a soul has anything for herself which can satisfy her, either within or without—absolutely nothing. All is rigour without any rigour; all that is given her is only given for the neighbour, and to make him know and love and possess his God.

My friend commenced to conceive some jealousy at the applause which was given me, God so permitting in order to further purify that holy soul through this weakness and the pain which it caused her. Her friendship changed into coolness and something more. It was you, O my God, who permitted it, as I have said. Certain confessors also commenced to stir themselves, saying that it was not for me to meddle with helping souls, that there were some of their penitents who had for me an entire openness. It was here one might easily remark the difference between those confessors who sought only God in the conduct of souls, and those who sought themselves; for the former used to come to see me, and were delighted with the graces which God bestowed on their penitents, without paying attention to the channel of which he made use. The others, on the contrary, secretly moved to stir up the town against me. I saw that they would have been right in opposing me if I had intruded of myself; but besides that I could only do what our Lord made me do, it was a fact that I did not seek anyone. Each one came to me from every direction, and I received all indifferently. Sometimes they came to oppose me. There were two monks of the same order as the begging friar of whom I have spoken; the one was Provincial, very learned, and a great preacher, the other was Lent preacher at the cathedral. They came separately, after having studied a quantity of difficult subjects to propose to me. They did this, and although they were matters beyond my scope, our Lord made me answer with as much correctness as if I had studied them all my life; after which I said to them myself what our Lord gave me. They went away not only convinced and satisfied, but smitten with your love, O my God.

I still continued to write, and with incredible quickness, for the hand could hardly follow the spirit which dictated, and during this long work I did not change my conduct, nor make use of any book. The copyist could not, however diligent, copy in five days what I wrote in a single night. What is good in it comes from you alone, O my God; and what is bad comes from me. I mean to say, from my unfaithfulness and the mixture which, without knowing it, I have made of my impurity with your pure and chaste doctrine. At the commencement I committed many faults, not being yet broken in to the operation of the Spirit of God, who made me write. For he made me stop writing when I had time to write and I could conveniently do it, and when I seemed to have a very great need of sleeping, it was then he made me write. When I wrote by day there were continual interruptions, and I had not time to eat, owing to the number who used to come. I had to give up everything as soon as I was asked for, and in addition I had the maid who served me in the state of which I have spoken, and she without cause used to come and suddenly interrupt me, according as her whim took her. I often left the meaning half finished, without troubling myself whether what I was writing was connected or not. The places which may be defective are so only because sometimes I wished to write as I had the time, and then it was not grace at its fountain head. If these passages were numerous it would be pitiable. At last I accustomed myself to follow God in his way, not in mine. I wrote the Song of Songs in a day and a half, and in addition received visits. The quickness with which I wrote was so great that my arm swelled up and became quite stiff. At night it caused me great pain, and I did not believe I could write for a long time. There appeared to me as I slept a soul from purgatory, who urged me to ask her deliverance from my divine Spouse. I did so, and it seemed to me that she was at once delivered. I said to her, If it is true that you are delivered, cure my arm; and it was instantly cured, and in a condition for writing. I will add to what I have said about my writings, that a very considerable part of the Book of Judges was lost. I was asked to make it complete. I rewrote the lost parts. A long time afterwards, having broken up house, it was found where one never would have looked for it. The earlier and the later were found to be exactly alike—a thing which astonished many persons of learning and merit, who verified the fact.

There came to see me a counsellor of the Parliament, who is a model of holiness. This worthy servant of God found on my table a “Method of Prayer,” which I had written a long time before. He took it from me, and having found it much to his taste, he gave it to some of his friends, to whom he thought it would be useful. All wished to have copies of it. He resolved with that worthy friar to have it printed. The printing commenced and the approbation given, they asked me to put a preface to it. I did so, and it is in this way that the little book, which has been made the pretext for my imprisonment, was printed. This counsellor is one of my closest friends, and a great servant of God.

This poor little book, notwithstanding the persecution, has nevertheless been printed five or six times, and our Lord gives a very great blessing to it. These worthy monks took fifteen hundred copies. The begging friar wrote perfectly, and our Lord inspired him to copy my writings, at least a part. He also gave the same idea to a monk of a different order, so that each of them took some to copy. Being one night engaged in writing something which he thought urgent (for he had misunderstood what had been said to him), as it was extremely cold, and his legs were naked, they so swelled that he could not move. He came to see me, quite sad, and as if disgusted with writing. He told me his ailment, and that he could not go on his begging rounds. I told him to be cured; he was so on the instant, and went away very well pleased and very desirous of transcribing that work, through which he declares our Lord has bestowed on him great graces. There was also a worthy girl, but very fickle; she had a great pain in the head. I touched it for her, and she was immediately cured.

The Devil became so enraged against me, owing to the conquests that you made, O my God, that he beat some of the people who came to see me. There was a worthy girl of great simplicity, who gained her livelihood by her work; she is a girl who has received very great grace from our Lord. The Devil broke two teeth in her mouth; her jaw swelled to a prodigious size, and he told her that if she came to see me any more he would give her worse treatment. She came to see me in this state, and said to me in her innocence, “The villain! he has done this to me because I come to you; he utters great abuse against you.” I told her to forbid him from me, touching her. Seeing that he was caught, and dared not touch her, for he could not do what God through me forbade him to do, he uttered much abuse, and made horrible gestures before her, and assured her he would stir up against me the most strange persecution I ever had. I laughed at all this, for I have no apprehension of him. Although he stir up persecutions against me, I know that in spite of himself he will serve for the glory of my God.