The Way of Divine Love

[Stone]

BOOK ONE - THE MESSENGER OF THE HEART OF JESUS

CHAPTER II. LES FEUILLANTS THE OLD MONASTERY OF THE SACRED HEART AT POITIERS


Part I. IN THE OPEN HEART OF JESUS February 4th–July 16th 1920


“For all you give Me, I give you My Heart.” (Our Lord to Josefa, July 15th, 1920)

THE old-world town of Poitiers is perched above the valley of the Clain, and from the top of its highest hill the ancient monastery of Les Feuillants dominates the surrounding country. There two centuries earlier, a colony of Cistercians had settled; it was a place of prayer and labor, and though the French Revolution left the hallowed spot desolate it was destined to live again, when the storm had passed and faith had revived, for the monastic buildings were peopled once more at the coming of Saint Madeleine Sophie and her newly-founded Order. Here the Saint opened the first Noviceship of the Society of the Sacred Heart, here she made long sojourns, and here, too, many graces were conferred on her. Ever since, the house, the cloisters, and the garden have been regarded by the nuns of the Sacred Heart as a sort of reliquary and memorial of their holy Foundress.

To this remote and solitary house of prayer Josefa was guided by God, that He might there cultivate her soul and train and associate her with His divine Heart in the work of Redemption.

None who saw Josefa on her arrival at Poitiers could have suspected how great a work was beginning, for from the first days of her postulantship she passed unnoticed, and during the four years of her short religious life remained ever the same simple, silent, laborious, and unassuming religious. There was nothing particularly attractive in her exterior; she was usually serious and seemed at times to be suffering, but a bright, intelligent smile lighted up her face when she was addressed, especially if a service were asked of her. Her large dark eyes alone expressed and at times betrayed her inmost feelings; they were limpid eyes, gentle and ardent, and bespoke her interior recollection.

Her gifts, if hidden, were very real ones: she was swift and capable, active and adaptable to all sorts of conditions; she possessed rare good sense and excellent judgment. These gave her character an earnest and balanced foundation on which grace could build at will. Her heart was both tender and generous; her past sufferings had given her breadth of understanding and the kindliness which self-forgetfulness alone engenders. She brought to her religious formation a maturity which was the fruit of sacrifice and a supernatural understanding of the value of a religious vocation, together with a highly developed interior spirit and an immense love of God.

These gifts were hidden from herself as they were from those around her, and from the day of her arrival till her death she went her way utterly unknown, in the complete effacement of a very faithful and obscure life.

There were few novices at Poitiers; Josefa remained first postulant and eldest novice among the members, who came like herself from various houses of the Society.

The humble hiddenness of the life filled her with enthusiasm; it was modeled on that of Nazareth, and she found in it the fulfillment of her most sanguine expectations. It was in effect just what Saint Madeleine Sophie had defined as her ideal—a great deal of strenuous labor offered for the souls of children, accompanied by the vivifying charity and prayerful atmosphere that result from close union with the Heart of Jesus. Josefa threw herself with her whole heart and soul into the current of life as she found it.

Events were few, and there is little to record of the months of her postulantship and noviceship, and the short eighteen months of religious life that followed after her vows till her death. None of the things that made up her daily life are of any value in the eyes of the world, yet are not the first years of the life of the Man-God all summed up in one short sentence: “He was subject to them”? And so it was with Josefa; the less a Sister is spoken of, the more unnoticed, the truer she is to type. None of those who lived with her knew anything of her mysterious intercourse with the Sacred Heart of Our Lord, and when after her death they were asked to recount all they could recall about her, how little they were able to say! She had passed unnoticed and hidden, simply and faithfully doing her duty—that was all.

In this way Our Lord veiled from all the special graces which He now began to give her; day by day His designs of love were imprinted on the warp and woof of a career so hidden from human eyes that no exterior sign revealed the secret of which God Himself was the guardian.

Certainly it is one of the marvels of this narrative that the exterior and visible was such a contrast to the inner and invisible life she led. Josefa always followed common life and seemed in no way different from her sisters, yet she bore on her soul the weight of the most extraordinary and momentous graces of divine predilection which at one moment delivered her over to the onsets of excruciating physical pain, and again held her captive under the Hand of God; there was a twofold current of love between Him and her: Love Divine, which like the eagle precipitates itself upon its prey, and whose velocity none can stay, and a love frail yet ardent—that of Josefa—whose constant endeavor was to hold herself ever ready to accept all the urgent requirements of God’s plan.

These pages are an attempt to narrate something of the mystery of her life. While we unhesitatingly submit to the judgment of the Holy See, sole judge in these matters, it would seem that the silence and shade under which that life was to unfold itself bore the stamp of the Holy Spirit, and we are therefore less afraid of temerity in discerning His Hand in the heavenly prudence which surpassed all human feasibility and succeeded in keeping undiscovered, except by her Superiors alone, the course of Josefa’s uncharted ways—for the big household of Les Feuillants remained totally ignorant of the mysterious marvels that were being enacted within its walls, and that to the very end of Josefa’s life.

Another sign of God’s action, and by no means the least, was the jealous care with which Our Lord kept His instrument lowly in her own eyes, as in those of everybody else. “It is not for what you are that I have chosen you, but for what you are not. So I have found room for My power and My love.” He reiterated this to her again and again.

It was fundamentally necessary that the Lord of all Wisdom should begin by sinking deep in her consciousness this capacity for humility in which the predilections of His Heart could, so to speak, engulf themselves. Josefa, whose frail skiff had reached the port of the religious life she so coveted, was soon to be tossed by storms and high winds more perilous than any that had hitherto rocked her little craft. “A fortnight of delicious peace,” she noted, “followed on my entrance into the Postulantship.”

She soon made acquaintance with the Mothers and Sisters, the house and the garden. Memory still recalls the arrival of the little Spaniard with her big black eyes, who did not know how to express her joy and her gratitude for being there. Simple and good-natured, she soon became quite at home in her new surroundings. The Mother Assistant and several Sisters who had spent long years in Spain and had become familiar with the language were able to greet her in her own Castilian tongue. A few days rest, and the new recruit was sent to help the Sister in the kitchen. Josefa was unaccustomed to that particular kind of work, but she put her whole heart into it and her face beamed with pleasure, showing how little it mattered to her what form the work took, if she was thereby able to prove her love for Him who possessed her whole heart. Nothing, it seemed could cast a shadow over such happiness, but the evil one, who had a presentiment of her future worth, was close by, ready to suggest subtle temptations. God was going to allow him to come on the scene, and Josefa sank into the darkest night of trial.

“Soon,” she wrote, “I began to waver at the thought of my mother and sister . . . of my home, and of the language that I did not understand. The temptation was so strong in the first months that I felt I could not possibly withstand it. Above all, the sad thought of the pain I was inflicting on my sister seemed intolerable. However, I made up my mind to leave them all to the Heart of Our Lord, to place them in His care, and every time the remembrance of these much-loved ones returned I did as I was advised and made an act of love and confidence.

“One evening in the beginning of April the temptation to leave was stronger than usual. All day long I had been repeating: ‘My God I love Thee,’ for above all I wanted to be faithful to Him. When I went to bed I put my crucifix under my pillow as I always did. I woke towards midnight, and kissing it, I said with all my heart: ‘My God from today on I will love Thee more than ever.’ At the same instant I was seized by an invisible force, and a shower of blows, as if from a fist, fell on me; they were so violent that I feared I should die. This torture continued all night, all through meditation and Mass. I was so terrified that I never left hold of my crucifix. I felt exhausted and dared not move. At the moment of the elevation of the Sacred Host I saw a sort of flash pass by me, there was a rapid current of wind, and suddenly all was quiet again, but the pain of the blows lasted several days.”

This was but the prelude to a lifelong fight Josefa was to wage with the powers of darkness, but it never affected her work nor her fidelity to the Rule. Her confidence and obedience to her Mistress of Novices grew,

These words, which were not spoken by Our Lord, but shown to Josefa written in a book in the midst of the flames of His Heart, are to be found word for word in the works of Saint Margaret Mary. They are at the hour of Sext of the Office for Tuesday in the Little Breviary of the Sacred Heart. Through them the Saint marvelously explains her mission as a victim and it would seem that in reproducing them here as His own it was Our Lord’s intention to associate humble little Sister Josefa with the Saint.

and she went to her in all her troubles, there to get the peace and strength she needed to go on suffering.
“On Thursday, May 7th,” she wrote, “being absolutely exhausted by my struggles, I begged to be allowed to go, but the Mother Assistant showed me the note I had written with my own hand, asking that for the love of God, in the name of the Blessed Virgin, of my Father Saint Joseph, and of our Holy Mother Foundress, even if I asked a thousand times to be sent away, that I should be reminded a thousand times that in moments when the light shone I was convinced that God wanted me here.

“From that hour I had not a day of peace, and God only knows what I endured . . .”

Five weeks of struggle went by; they were exceptionally hard to bear, and Josefa continued to repeat the words obedience had put into her mouth: “Yes, dear Lord, I will stay here; I love Thee, and I will obey. I can see no light, but in spite of this, I will be faithful to Thee.” One evening in May the diabolical assaults became more tangible:

“I was in the chapel for my adoration,” she wrote later, “when I was suddenly surrounded with what seemed to be a crowd of spirits, I saw horrible faces, heard sharp yells, and there rained on me a shower of furious blows. I could not call for help; I was so overcome that I had to sit down, and pray I could not, so I just looked at the Tabernacle. Suddenly I was roughly seized by the arm, as if someone wanted to force me to leave the chapel. The power that held me was irresistible, and not knowing what to do or where to go, for I was afraid of meeting someone, I went up to our Blessed Mother’s cell.

“When the Mother Assistant found me and asked me what I was doing there, I was unable to answer her. Interiorly I said to myself: ‘Even if they kill me, I will go and tell her everything’—but I was once more surrounded by that awful crowd whose screams terrified me. When I reached her door in a flash they all disappeared, and I found such peace that I should have liked to stay there forever. . . .

“The same thing has often happened since. As soon as I have determined to speak, everything stops as I reach the Mother Assistant’s door. I have noticed, too, the rage of the devil when she makes a little cross on my forehead; he seems to stamp his foot in fury, and at other times, if she forgets it, I hear hideous guffaws.”

It was after such trials that Josefa’s postulantship ended. On the 16th of July she was to take the habit, but so many unexpected sufferings and the thought of future trials left her undecided and hesitant; at one time she made up her mind to embrace God’s Will at whatever cost, at another she felt paralyzed and could not accept what must be bought at such a high price. “It was thus,” she wrote, “till the day when Jesus made His divine Presence clearly known to me, and since then He has given me so much light and consolation.”

On Saturday, June 5th, 1920, after a formidable attack of the devil, Josefa decided to go; she went into the chapel with her Sisters for the evening adoration; there, Jesus was waiting for her. Under the influence of the arch-fiend who dominated her: “No,” she said, “I will not take the habit, I am going home.” “I said it five times, but could not go on,” she wrote later. “My Jesus how good Thou art to me.”

All of a sudden she was, as she naïvely expressed it, wrapped in a sweet slumber, from which she awoke in the Wound of the Sacred Heart.

“I cannot explain what happened . . . Jesus . . . I want nothing more than to love Thee and to be faithful to my vocation.”

In the radiance now illuminating her, she saw all the sins of the world, and offered her life to comfort the wounded Heart of Our Lord. She was seized with a vehement desire of uniting herself to Him, and no sacrifice appeared too great that she might be faithful to her vocation. In the effulgence of the Godhead the night had faded away and desolation had given place to unfathomable bliss.

“It was God who did it,” she continued in the notes she wrote under obedience. “I am abashed at so much goodness; I want to love Him to folly. . . . I have but two requests: love and gratitude to His Sacred Heart. . . . More than ever I recognize my weakness, but also I shall now find strength and courage in Him. . . . Never before have I rested in that Divine Wound . . . but now I know where to go in moments of tribulation: It is a place of sweetest repose and much love.

“I feel keenly that I have been resisting grace and have been unfaithful, but this has become a further motive of confidence and hope that Our Lord will never fail me, even when I seem to be all alone. That was what made me so afraid before: to be alone, and unfaithful. But now I see that, even though I did not know it, He was helping me. Well, I simply cannot express how much I want to love Him.”

When Josefa came out of the chapel, still strongly under the influence of the divine contact, she was a totally changed person.

“And then, I don’t know what it is,” she added two days later, “but I believe He wants to tell me another secret, because during my prayer yesterday, Monday, June 7th, He made me re-enter that Divine Wound: O my Jesus, how great is Thy love for me . . . I shall never be able to respond to so much goodness. It seemed to me that I saw in that Divine Wound a tiny opening, and I wanted to know how to get in . . . but He made me understand that it will not be till later.”

“Twelve days have passed,” she wrote on June 17th, “since the signal grace Jesus granted me. I have had immense consolation during that time, but especially I have been able to study all that this Sacred Heart was teaching me. He showed me clearly, that what pleases Him most is to do little acts out of obedience. I understood that I must direct all my energies to this, for that is how I shall learn to deny myself in everything, and however small the act is, it will still be pleasing to His Sacred Heart. . . . Oh, I want to be burnt up by love. Oh, what a Heart is that of my Jesus!”

Crushed by the weight of so much grace and such amazing happenings, Josefa continued to jot down on paper the overflow of her heart.

“Today, Wednesday, June 23rd, I was meditating on the kindness of the Heart of Jesus and this thought came to me: that this Heart so full of love for souls and for me, that this same Heart is to become my Bridegroom, if I am faithful. I did not know what to say, and how to thank. ‘O my God, I can only pay Thee back with Thyself, for I am Thine and Thou art mine. . . . I give myself up to Thee, my life must be solely in God . . . and for God. . . . ’ I must so abandon self that everything in me may be consumed and obliterated and that all I do and am, may be solely of Him.

“After I had received Him in Holy Communion, I told Him, as I always do, how much I love Him, and want to love Him. Then He made me re-enter my place of refuge; it is the third time I have rested in that Divine Heart. . . . I am not able to explain what happens . . . except to say that I am too little for so many graces. . . . My God, Thy Heart fills with love those who seek and love It.

“During the heavenly moments that I spent in that Wound, Jesus gave me to understand that He is rewarding me for the very little I have done to prove my fidelity. I will never again seek my own interests, but only the glory of His Heart. I will try to be very obedient and very generous in the smallest details, for I believe perfection consists in this, and that it is the one way straight to Him.”

“Today, June 24th, I saw in a way impossible to explain what the Heart of Jesus is. . . . I asked Him to make me thirst for Him. I cannot set down in writing what I saw . . . but it was Himself, Heaven on earth. . . . O my God, it is too much, I cannot bear such happiness . . . would that I had something I could offer Him . . . give to Him, who gives me so much, but I am so little. . . . I again promised to be faithful and above all to let myself be guided in everything so as to go more surely to His Divine Heart.”

Here Josefa stopped, for she does not allow her feelings to run away with her. She tried to penetrate to the very depths of the Heart of Jesus to discover what He expected of her, and to realize the immensity of His loving-kindness.

“As each moment goes by, I notice two things. First, a greater understanding of the Divine Goodness, for if I certainly have always known that God loves mankind to folly, now I know that it is His Sacred Heart that does so. . . . His greatest sorrow is not to find a return of love, and if a soul is wholly abandoned to Him, she can be sure that He will fill her with graces, will make of her His Heaven, and take up His abode in her. I promise in a very special way fidelity, obedience, confidence, and abandonment. The second thing I have noticed is the clearer view I have gained of myself. I see myself as I am (though I am not sure that I do fully): cold, distracted, immortified, and ungenerous. . . . O my God, why dost Thou love me so? Thou knowest what I am . . . but I will not lose confidence, Lord . . . what I cannot do myself, that Thou wilt do, and with Thy love and Thy grace I will go forward.”

Jesus, too, was about to take her deeper into His Heart; the graces with which He had overwhelmed her in this month of June were but a prelude. Josefa wrote on the evening of June 29th:

“Meditation today was on the three denials of Saint Peter, and comparing my weakness to his, I resolved to weep for my falls, and to learn to love as he did. How often I, too, have promised fidelity . . . but I did so today with more force and decision. Yes, Lord, I will be faithful. I promise not only to refuse Thee nothing, but to go forward to do what I know will please Thee.

“I was thus in converse with my God, when again He made me enter the Wound of His side. The little passage by which I was unable to enter the other day opened, and He gave me to understand the happiness that is to be mine if I am faithful to all the graces He has prepared for me.

“I cannot very well describe what I saw; my heart was being consumed in a great flame. I could not see the bottom of this abyss, for it is an immense space and full of light. I was so taken up with what I saw that I was not able to speak or ask anything. . . . I spent meditation and part of Mass in this way . . . till, a little before the Elevation, my eyes, even my poor eyes . . . saw my Beloved Jesus, my heart’s desire, my Lord and my God; His Heart in the midst of a great flame. I cannot say what passed; it is not possible. . . . Would that the whole world knew the secret of happiness. There is but one thing to do: love and abandon oneself. Jesus Himself will take charge of all the rest. . . .

“I was annihilated in the presence of so much beauty and so brilliant a light, when He said to me in a voice so sweet and grave:

“ ‘Just as I sacrificed Myself as a victim of love, so I want you to be a victim: love never refuses anything.’

“So this heavenly moment passed, for I can give it no other name. I could only say: ‘My God, what wouldst Thou have me do? . . . Take and dispose of me, for I no longer belong to myself, but I am Thine.’ Then He vanished.”

When recording this experience Josefa was unable to contain herself. Already her love had become a consuming zeal, for in drawing her near His Heart, Our Lord allowed the thirst that devours His own to overflow onto hers.

“Jesus,” she wrote, “I have but one desire—that the whole world may know Thee, but especially the souls of religious whom Thou hast chosen for Thy adorable Heart. If they know Thee, they will love Thee, for Thou art the one and only Good. Inflame me with Thy Love and that is enough for me. . . . Inflame all hearts and this, too, will suffice, for where there is love, we run to Thee by the shortest way. As for myself, I ask only to love Thee daily more and more, only Thee! Everything else will be but a path to lead me to Thee. Would that I could bring the whole world to the divine furnace of Thy Heart, even if it cost me my life.

“Jesus has given me such a thirst to make all men love Him that I am ready to offer all, to undertake all that costs me most, to please Him and obtain that others may know and love Him.

“I promised Him to do nothing except what Holy Obedience prescribes, and I understand that it will please Him very much if I am simple and very open with Superiors, so as to allow myself to be guided as a little child.”

A few days after “this great and heavenly moment,” Our Lord showed Josefa the cost of this thirst for souls that He was beginning to communicate to her. She wrote on Saturday, July 3rd:

“I was working in the Noviceship today and thinking of the happiness it was to be living under the same roof with Him and to have Him as the Companion of all my labors. I don’t remember exactly what I was saying to Him, but suddenly He showed me His Heart all surrounded with flames and wreathed with a crown of thorns. . . . O my God, what thorns! . . . they were very sharp and penetrated very deeply, and from each there flowed a great deal of blood. . . . I should have liked to take them from Him. Then my heart was as it were torn with sharpest anguish, and He placed it next His Own under the thorns. My heart was so small that only six of them pierced it. Then there was silence. . . . I could not utter a word. He knew that I longed for my heart to be bigger that so I might have freed His from more of the thorns.

“Then in a voice so gentle and yet so full of pain, He said: ‘My Heart has suffered all this and infinitely more. But some souls unite themselves to Me and comfort Me, and so make up for those who go away from Me.’

“Oh, how He has suffered. . . . I understand that some thorns wound Him more cruelly than others. I should have liked to know what to do to console Him, for what I can offer Him is very little, and when compared with His torments, very little indeed—but He did not tell me.”

On Sunday, July 4th, Josefa was at Holy Mass as usual, associating herself with the Divine Mysteries:

“To tell the truth,” she wrote soon after, “not knowing what to say or do, if not to humble myself, for every day I get a clearer insight into my misery and littleness, I was trying to do this, when I saw before me the Adorable Heart. It was pierced through with a large thorn, which caused much blood to flow. O my Jesus! who is wounding Thee so? . . . Is it I? . . . What sorrow to see Thy Sacred Blood flow; it pains me more than I can say. My Lord and my God, take me and do with me what Thou wilt, but do not let that thorn transpierce Thy Heart. . . . Then I saw what looked like a very large nail drawn out, leaving so gaping a wound that I could see deep into that burning brazier, and Jesus replied: ‘That large nail is the coldness of My religious, I want you to understand it that you may be all on fire with love and may console Me.’

“On Tuesday, July 6th, while I was at prayer, He again showed me His Heart; It was transpierced by six thorns. My grief was very great, because of His sufferings, and of the impossibility I was in to give Him consolation or to assuage His pain. He made me understand that those six thorns are six souls that are offending Him in a particular way. He said: ‘These are the thorns I ask you to draw out by your love and desires.’

“Then He allowed a few drops of His Blood to fall on my heart . . . O my God, my heart is too small for so much love, but such as it is, it belongs entirely to Thee.”

The next day, once more Jesus made her enter His wounded Heart, and left her this watchword: “Love Me in your littleness; this will console Me.”

“Of all the graces that I receive,” she concluded at this time, “two things remain deeply engraven on my heart: first, a very great desire to love and to suffer in order to correspond to His love, and this I shall find in fidelity to my vocation; second, an ardent thirst that many souls may know and love Him, especially those He has chosen and consecrated to Himself. This, I think, is to be my path in life: to spare myself in nothing, and offer many little acts to Jesus whom I love to folly, or at any rate desire so to love.”

Such were the dispositions in which she waited for the day of her clothing. The retreat which was to bring her through many a struggle to this much-longed-for day began on Wednesday, July 7th.

“Ardent desire to surrender wholly, leaving nothing out and refusing nothing of whatever I know to be God’s Will. Be very attentive to the voice of God, so that this retreat may be the foundation of my Noviceship. I will ask especially for a great love of my vocation which is for me the means of union and conformity with the Heart of Jesus.”

Such are the opening words Josefa wrote in her retreat notebook. She noted faithfully day by day the result of her efforts, and one becomes conscious as one reads these very simple jottings destined for no eye but her own, how great was the storm and commotion of temptation that had arisen within her.

“I was in great consolation,” she wrote, “until the third day of my retreat. But in the meditation on the Judgment, when I suddenly found myself alone before God, as my Judge, my soul was filled with fear, and I lost the peace which had not left me since June 5th. I saw before me all the graces that will one day accuse me, and the sight plunged me into such desolation and solitude that it seemed to me far preferable not to receive them, rather than to have to give an account of them. . . .

“Several days went by and I decided to go home. My God! What darkness and what anguish. . . . My mother and sister were expected, and this increased the temptation, as it revived my affection for them and for my home.

“From the very first I had told the Mother Assistant everything, and I constantly repeated the offering she had taught me and which had helped me so much before; I wanted to stay and be faithful, and there were moments when I saw that the whole thing was a temptation. But nothing availed and the day before my clothing, July 15th, the struggle was so great, that I could think of nothing to offer God but the temptation itself: ‘O my God, I love my liberty, my family and my home—in a word all that makes up this temptation—I offer it all to Thee, for what else do I want but to be faithful and die. . . . ’

“Then it was that Jesus deigned to console me as I shall relate.”

But before telling of these graces, Josefa held to stating explicitly her reply of love:

“Practical result of the first three weeks

In the Society of the Sacred Heart it is the Mother Assistant who is specially charged with the Sisters and the direction of their Noviciate.

of this retreat:
“I saw that God is calling me to great perfection and it consists in complete conformity to His Heart.

“The means: my vocation and holy Rule.

“God is calling me to a life of intimate union with Himself; He wishes me to live in a state of sacrifice, as a victim. . . . He will choose my cross. It is not for me to ask or select; He will give what He pleases. He wants my life to be spent in His Heart, and I know that the cross and thorns are part of it. Such is my life; it must be so, and only so shall I be doing God’s Will.

“I do not feel that I can very well explain what took place during the contemplation ad Amorem: I had so ardent a desire to give Him all He asks for, that I said with my whole heart: ‘Take, O Lord, and receive all my will; I give Thee all I care for most in the world . . . if there is anything else that Thou requirest of me, I give it with joy—take my miseries and consume them, take my heart and my soul, take me, Lord.”

The response was immediate:

A stream of the Precious Blood escaping from His Heart submerged Josefa. “For all that you give Me,” He said, “I give you My Heart.”

“I thought myself no longer on this earth—He was clothed in white, and this made His Sacred Heart stand out in an ineffable manner. . . . His face was like the sun. . . . O my God, what beauty. . . . How entrancing to those who know Thee.”

Naïvely Josefa explains in the lines that follow how she required no book in order to meditate on Heaven: “For the real Heaven is in my heart. Love is all I want . . . love, love.”

Once more before the great day He wished to show her whither He was leading her, and Josefa, who had leave to make a Holy Hour, began it with an act of profoundest humility.

“I adored the Divine Majesty,” she wrote, “and then I thought of the graces I had received from God, and of my desire to console Him which was growing ever stronger.

“Suddenly I saw Him standing before me in His gleaming white raiment, and His Heart seemed about to escape from His breast. As I was alone in the tribune, I fell on my face, humbling myself all I could, but unable to speak.

“After a moment of silence, showing me the six thorns, He said in a voice that is so piercing-sweet: ‘Daughter, take out these thorns.’

“On Friday, July 16th, the day of my clothing, as I received the white veil and all through Mass, Jesus was present to me, and made me enter the Wound in His Heart. All I was able to say was . . . My God, I am Thine forevermore . . .”