Autobiography

24. “Anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.... What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? But it is for this very reason that I have come to this hour.”

When one becomes a complete invalid, one suffers strange reactions. I suffered the first of these in April 1934; the second, more severe, in August of the same year.

To go from movement, though now reduced and quite relative, to inertia is always painful for someone who was active. And I was very active. To have to depend on others and require service, when you had previously done everything by yourself and served others, is disheartening. Those who serve us do not always remember how we served them as long as we could. And the more demanding they were in having themselves served as long as we could serve, the less they remember. The first days are a great affliction. But even here reactions are different, as is their duration, according to one’s spiritual condition.

In those who are utterly removed from God, immersed only in the worship of sense and money, chronic illness means rebellion, with the most violent manifestation, which may even lead to suicide. Sometimes, since God can do all, even against our own will, these creatures are saved by their pain itself and brought back to God. Generally, these spiritual resurrections take place in souls not totally torn away from God, but only seduced by the religion “of what is most comfortable and pleasurable.” They are straying souls more than dead ones. Under the blow of pain they realize they have grounded well-being on nothingness and uplift their eyes, seeking help.... This suffices for God to step forward and say, “Poor, suffering creature, here I am, it is I. I am your help.”

These souls, in whom pain becomes a summoning voice, are often the ones saved by another soul that suffers for them. The two people sometimes do not even know each other; at times even the souls are not familiar with one another—only in Heaven will their meeting take place.... How astonished we shall then be to see the agent of our salvation in the most unexpected being, whom we have inadvertently come across or whose existence we were not even aware of! And how beautiful it will be for the humble redeemers to encircle those they have redeemed by their prayer and their suffering to welcome them!

One of the dogmas of our Religion I am most fascinated by is that of the Communion of the Saints. When I think that the joy I benefit from comes to me from the heavenly rivers, whose every wave is formed by the merits of the Holy One among the children of men, by my Jesus, by the graces of her who is All Grace, and by the sum of works and charity of the entire boundless host of martyrs, virgins, penitents, and confessors, I feel enraptured in a transport of grateful joy and sense that until I merit this vital infusion, I shall not be able to die. I am a poor being, but, like reinforcing bars holding up my weakness, the treasures of the Saints work around and within me, giving me the capacity to live the life of faith. When I think that it is granted to my nothingness, able only to suffer joyfully to imitate the Master and all his chosen ones, to become, in turn, a drop in the immense river of these merits and to go and take my freshness to the souls burned by human blazes, my lavacre to the souls bespattered with faults, my oil of charity to life’s wounded, my nourishment to those abandoned by fortune, my song to the sad, and my weeping to the dead, I then sink into the depths of a worshiping, blessing humility! Just because the spiritual blood of the Church is circulating in me—who am nothingness, wretchedness, weakness, puerility—for me to be a force, a light, a means to give God to souls, and with God every grace, and souls to God, and with souls something to quench his thirst!

In the lukewarm infirmity yields irritability and whimpering. They are the ill who, even if they have a single malady and not a very painful one, do nothing but complain and declare themselves to be the most unfortunate of all. They grumble against God, who has taken away their health. Even if they are eighty or more years old, they always say, “But it’s not fair that I should suffer now that I’m close to dying. He could have spared me a little longer.” According to them, it is, however, fair for others to suffer from a most tender age; in any event, they say, one who has always suffered is used to it.... They grumble against their neighbor, who never gives them sufficient care. A door left ajar is an attempt on their precious health; a delay in bringing them a glass of water is certain proof of ill will; a slight bump against their—extremely fragile body is a crime; a word spoken to try and encourage them is unforgivable evidence that we do not believe in their suffering; if one smiles, it is derision; if one weeps, one has no mercy on their melancholy; if one speaks, one makes them worse; and if one is silent, one offends them with indifference. They grumble with relatives, nurses, and doctors and grumble tremendously with priests, who tell them to be patient; they grumble with household animals; they grumble over heat, cold, flies, the handkerchief that falls, the coffee which is too hot or not hot enough, and the newspaper not properly folded.... They grumble and grumble like little machines running on electricity. They live grumbling, soured by their malice towards everyone more than by their malady itself. And these are the ones in whom there is least to be hoped for. Even less than in an atheist before pain....

In the fervent infirmity is resignation. They have not wished for it; they would never have wanted it if they had had the power to decide, but since God has sent it—with their faces washed by tears they say, “Well then.... Lord—never mind! If You had spared me this cross, it would have been better, but since You have given it to me, I’ll hold it.” And they hold it. They hold it. But they do not embrace it or carry it. They remain there with the weight on their backs—and that’s all. Jesus must be the one to remove the weight every so often to make them walk....

In the lovers of God infirmity is joy. The reaction of dismay ceases after a few moments and never returns. The flesh suffers. But it alone suffers. All the rest is joy. These have asked, with the most ardent entreaties—such as not even the healthy make to remain healthy—to have pain. On seeing God at a distance advancing and bearing the cross, they exultantly go to meet Him, kiss his holy hands offering it to them, and kiss the cross as the dearest object. They do not hold it sluggishly, but, after having clasped it to their hearts, place it on their shoulders and go along singing.... God ahead of them and they behind, placing their feet in the footprints of the Master, without minding if the path becomes steep, thorny, or rocky, without worrying if the brambles lacerate their flesh, if the stones skin their feet, if the sun pounds, exacerbating their wounds, if the water soaks their clothing, if the wind freezes them, or if the night makes it even more painful for them to walk.... They know that in the end the Sun will rise! They know that in the end the steep path will change into a smooth sea of glass and fire leading to the city of the Lamb, and on this sea of splendors they will eternally sing the Canticle of Moses and the Lamb. They know all this and do not yield the cross to the merciful Cyrenean, who would like to relieve them. They say, “No, Jesus, holy Love. You once carried it for me. Now it’s my turn to carry it for my brothers and sisters. If your cross has opened a wound where it rests and blood drips from my wounded shoulder, observe, Jesus, the prodigy of my poor blood on the hard wood: it makes it blossom as a flower of goodness!” Yes, the cross blooms if it is loved. Yes, the cross becomes a wing for one who bears it with generosity, a swift wing like an angel’s....

I remained dazed for a short time. I immediately resigned myself to my destiny. To say “resigned” is not accurate. I should say, “After the initial bewilderment, already experienced when the malady confined me to the house and now repeated when it nailed me to the bed, singing, I kissed my cross, and I must acknowledge that I have not laid it down for a moment, but have always carried it, singing.”

When pain loosens its hold, when I know prayer is being offered for my recovery, I tremble and become anxious about my treasure’s being taken from me. It would be the only thing that would make me waver in the limitless trust, the boundless confidence I have in God. I would be tempted to think that God had found me so unworthy that He no longer associated me with the redeeming work of his Son.... And I, who recognize my worthlessness, but am familiar with the infinite mercy of my God, who raises us—poor human wretches—to the degree of redeemers, would fall into discouragement and weep immensely. But I trust my God!

You see, Father: today the devil is sneering around me. I told you on Monday, but don’t know if you remember: “I feel an inexplicable melancholy today. I apparently have no reason to cry. But something painful, which I shall soon know, is certainly occurring.” One of my usual premonitions. Last night my doctor was called to Rome for a checkup. If he’s fit, that means he’ll be departing for who knows where.

You know how many needs I have and the maladies requiring certain forms of care to which one submits with difficulty, and one cannot, out of modesty, think of coming under other hands. You also know the moral reasons for which it is appropriate for someone who knows quite well how things stand to come to my house so as not to give rise to detestable remarks on the way my mother lives—this is one of my nails. You also know the financial reasons for which it would be a disaster to have to resort to other doctors. There are so many reasons why it is necessary for our family doctor to remain.

For myself, as a creature, I ask only for this. In my work, together with the peace and salvation of the servicemen, and so on, I had also included this intention for myself—off in a corner, but there it was. And the devil sneers, “Do you see how your Jesus listens to you? He has taken everything away from you, and now He is taking away the doctor as well. And He is taking him away just now, when you, poor fool, were deceiving yourself about being more secure, just now, when your tatter, on which you have consumed your strength, is about to be placed on the altar. Go on with you—it serves you right! The war is going from bad to worse; peace is a myth; isolation is growing around you; you’re losing your doctor.... Poor idiot who have deluded yourself...!”

But I let him talk and cling to the Cross, crying, “Lord, increase my faith! Make it such as to remove all obstacles. Jesus, I trust You! Be with me, Jesus.” If Jesus continues to be for his poor slave—Jesus, that is, the Savior—then nothing can ever harm me. I can do nothing on my own. I am a frail violet that has only the good will to consume itself in perfume at the foot of the cross. It is because of this conviction about my nothingness that I have not wanted to call myself either a daughter or a servant in my act of offering, but an instrument and slave.

St. Thérèse calls herself “the Church’s little child, the one who, standing upright in her trusting innocence beside his throne, strews flowers and sings the song of love.” I shall be even less: I shall be the flower, the shy flower with the penitent little head and the heart of gold, the violet, born in the midst of the wet sod, beneath the giants of the forest, whose blanket is the fallen leaves; the violet, which is more perfume than flower and is found only by seeking it, so modest and loath to appear is it. I shall be the violet which, picked by the hand of the “Church’s little child,” is tossed by her, at one with her song, to die on the steps of the throne of God.

Didn’t the Saint herself teach me the song of the dying rose?

“What I dream of is to drop petals....

One walks without regrets over the

rose leaves

And these mere trifles are an ornament a

hand arranges....

Jesus, for your love I have lavished my life

Before the eyes of all, a rose wounded forever,

I must die.

For You I must die. How I yearn to!

I want, dropping petals, to tell You I love You

with all my heart.

Under your child’s steps I want to live,

And to sweeten your final steps to Calvary,

I thus drop petals.”

The free translation is surely not perfect, but I made it on the spur of the moment, as it flowed forth from me.

But Maria, Christ’s violet, will not die on the steps of the throne. The King, the Lamb of God, will descend to pick the humble flower which has asked to be uprooted from life to die spreading perfume before Him, and the touch of his holy fingers will give an eternal life to the little corolla, that in her fragility so endured all the storms and was so bold in her modesty.

Oh, the Lord is never trusted enough! With a smile, He is always ready to give us ten times what we request for love....

I am the instrument in the hands of God. No tool complains if the worker or artist uses it to the point of consuming it or breaking its singing soul or if, tired of using it, he tosses it into a corner and leaves it lying there to gather dust.... I, too, must be like that. A plane, hammer, saw, and screwdriver in the hands of the Carpenter’s Son, intent on constructing souls according to his work as a divine craftsman. Harp or lute, cymbal or trumpet, I must be ready to chime in or remain silent, in keeping with the wish of the divine Artist, who draws wonderful symphonies from his merciful Love. And if too forceful a paean should break my singing soul, it does not matter.... Another soul, more of a songster than mine, will be used by the Master to tame the furious creatures and make them lambs in the flock of Christ.

One of the first events in my definitive crucifixion in bed was the change in my personal physician. The who had looked after me in such—pedestrian fashion for four years was in Rome with his family for the close of the Jubilee Year of the Death of the Redeemer. Yes, for Jesus cloistered me, after three years of public life, at the beginning of 1933 and raised me upon the cross just when the Holy Year was ending for the Twentieth Centennial of his Passion.

Another doctor came, then, since it was impossible to do without one.... And this event provoked limitless gossip of every sort, including the pettiness of the ousted doctor, who hinted at infectious diseases, which may perhaps now exist, but did not at all then, as the various analyses demonstrate. And with these infectious diseases, other mental ones.... It is the custom of doctors to conceal their inability to determine and cure a malady under the label of “mania” on the part of the patient. So I was thoroughly lacerated by the good neighbor.

I feel I am not mistaken in thinking that all that occurred from April 1 on was caused by my special condition as a victim offered to Divine Justice. From 1931 on there was a constant increase in persecution on the part of the devil and my fellow men who became instruments of the devil to carry out what came within the plans of God—that is, my purification.

Nowadays people do not believe in this demoniacal power, which acts and disturbs its enemies or takes possession of those who, being rather unwary, can be seized by Lucifer as his agents. I do believe. Certain special states of temptation in creatures whose only work is to act in the light of God could not otherwise be explained, nor would certain wicked actions for no reason which are real tortures inflicted on the best be explainable. Yes, there are souls that through their own natural tendency or out of ignorance become instruments of the devil, who avails himself of them to torment those he most dislikes. As there are souls that by their particular mission have the power to make Lucifer uneasy, drawing upon themselves his vengeance. The devil, who is not very concerned about those who are “neither hot nor cold,” like God, who vomits from Himself the lukewarm, is particularly spiteful towards those who burn with charity, true bearers of God, for “where there is love, God is present.” And he rushes upon these with all his weapons.

Between the devil and myself, then, there had been bad blood for some time. I did not forgive him for all he had made me suffer from 1914 to 1918 (especially), and he did not forgive me for having put him to flight in 1930. So it was a fight to the death. As long as God had been upon me, protecting me with the wings of his Love, the devil had been able to do little to me. But from the moment I was nothing but a host placed upon the altar of God the Judge, and thus abandoned to myself, Lucifer had set to work.

I said “abandoned.” But don’t think it was abandonment based on—what shall I say?—indignation. No, it was the hour of trial I spoke about at the beginning of this notebook. The hour when the Father withdraws because it is our Gethsemane, and in Gethsemane the Christs must be alone.... If the Father were there, the agony would not be such.

The Father’s withdrawal had cleared the way for the devil, who has tortured me for nine years. Oh, if I had not offered myself to save the desperate, to redeem those on the road to damnation, to take the Kingdom of God into hearts and hearts into the Kingdom of God—if I had not asked for this mission of expiation, I would have to say that all that occurred was cruel. But I know what I have given and why I have given it and thus find that this, which might appear to be unjust sternness on the Father’s part, the Father’s lack of love, is, on the contrary, the most beautiful proof of love. Who knows how much it has pained the Eternal to have to leave me at the mercy of the Evil One! But this fell within my wish and the work of God, who needed even this for so many poor creatures more unfortunate than I because they are dead to grace.

I don’t know if I am expressing my ideas clearly. I have suffered. When I am dead, let it also be said that physical sufferings are nothing in comparison to the moral ones I experienced. I say “moral” because the spirit was not harmed. It was shoved and slapped, but not maimed.

“So that the revelation would not exalt me, God allowed an angel of Satan to slap me, wherefore I prayed that He might free me, but God replied, ‘My grace is enough for you’. ”

The spirit belongs to the Eternal. It is the house where the Master and King dwells, where the Holy Triad assembles, for where the Son is, there is the Father, who out of Love sent the Son. And this house will be Theirs as long as we, by our own evil will, do not take it away from Them by sin.

My spirit belonged and belongs to the Triune God, and if in my indigence I say with every heartbeat, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive You and to have You as a guest,” I do not, however, for this reason close the door of my heart to God, but open it entirely, trusting in the Lord’s compassionate mercy....

As my spirit belonged to my Lord, the devil could do nothing against it except roam around it like a raging lion and avenge himself by biting, shall we say, the plaster of the spirit—that is, the moral aspect. How much he has made me suffer! But with every struggle my Jesus would say, “Courage! Through your pain a soul has taken another step towards Me. And I am grateful to you!”

But what do you say, Father? Didn’t these words suffice to make me an indomitable lion that does not surrender, that stands up to every ambush and, while prostrating evil, offers its Lord the quarries it snatches away from the Enemy? They sufficed. And they made me increasingly anxious to fight.

In May what I call the Tower of Babel began.

The new doctor, who looked after me so well and had provided me with a sensible improvement, was entrapped by a person, one of the devil’s instruments, who persuaded him that I did not have heart trouble, but tubercular manifestations. The dethroned doctor, who had boorishly given notice as soon as he had found out that in his absence we had called another (I believe he seized the opportunity because he thought I was about to die and did not want it to fall upon him...), had spread this rumor, and after being quoted in amplified form by the new doctor, it had taken on credibility. In truth, a doctor should believe only himself. But that’s how it was....

This doctor was not from Viareggio. He traveled to and from Florence. On May 5, after a careful examination, the usual weekly one—he came every week—he changed my treatment.... He had already changed it a dozen times. Away with trinitrine and viretone and the cardiotonic. He wanted to give me calcium injections because pulmonary tuberculosis was present.... Tuberculosis? Since when? It had not shown up in any analysis, and there was nothing in me to make anyone assume it. I repeat: maybe it is now present. But nine years ago there was really nothing. Enough. I refused the calcium injections. I did not want injections.... And now I have had over 13,000—that’s right: thirteen thousand.... Then I had to swallow calcium, cod-liver oil, cholesterol taken orally, and phosphates, and vitamins.... My stomach turned into a sink.... There were so many things to take, and all of them at least an hour apart and separate from meal times, that I asked the doctor, with a Brother Juniper reaction, “Will you tell me, then, at what time I can eat?” For he entreated me to nourish myself to excess and to remain in repose. The only thing he added was that for half an hour each day I had to sit in the sun.

The result was a ruined stomach, an obstacle to nutrition, not superabundant, but rather less than usual, because I always had indigestion from all those concoctions I gulped down, heart crises more violent than ever, an increase in fevers, and, finally, a first-rate congestion due to the sun and to the hardening of my arteries, to the point of having juvenile sclerosis, with the formation of aneurysm.

But before stating the rest I shall make a remark. If another person had had to savor that diagnosis, it would have caused a scare. I took it in joyfully. To have tuberculosis, and at the point where I was, according to the doctor, meant to die soon. And what did I want except to consummate my sacrifice? Oh, human foolishness! That hurry of mine was cowardice and egotism, nothing else. Cowardice: to suffer much, but for a short time. Egotism: to stop suffering soon.

The desire for heaven does not suffice to justify this hurry, especially when we have offered ourselves as victims. The Redeemer did not speed up the final solution of his martyrdom by an instant. A single sword thrust immediately after the abominable kiss would have been more comfortable for Him as well. It would have avoided so many torments and removed at once the memory of that kiss, erasing it with blood—that kiss, which must have filled Christ with disgust, like the cold, sinuous crawling of a snake on living flesh. But Jesus accelerated nothing. He lived out all those hours of torture, split up into minutes of such intense agony that each minute amounted to an hour. He underwent all the tortures: one after another in a rosary of insults, punches, blows, spitting, and rushes through the mob drunk with hatred forcing Him here and there, sadically unaware, with the humiliation of being stripped and dressed as a madman and a farcical king, with the torment of pitiless flagellation and the cruel coronation, with the superhuman exertion of the uphill road, under the weight of the cross and in those conditions, up to the peak of Golgotha, with the atrocious crucifixion and the tremendous agony....

A little victim, whose afflictions are nothing compared to the Master’s, must not be in more of a hurry than He. Every moment of those tormenting hours was a pledge of salvation for numberless ranks of souls, and for this reason Jesus, if He had been able to, would have prolonged his torments so that not one, not even one of his poor wandering brothers and sisters would perish after his death. A little victim must be happy to see her agony prolonged, offering every additional hour for a new aim possessing a single denominator: to save another soul.

My good Master instructed me in this sense, for, if the Father had withdrawn in the hour of my Gethsemane, over my agony I had, not Jesus’ angel, but Jesus Himself. I have Him. My good Master instructed me that I should bless every additional day I lived out on the cross because every day spent upon it could profit a soul. In his Voice, which is soundless, but so audible to the spirit, He told me, “Enable all your sufferings to bear fruit. Remember that you are here not for yourself, but for souls. And souls are not saved except through suffering. Give me souls,

Maria.” Then I replied, “Give me agonies, Jesus!” And the pact was made. A soul for every new agony. And one that would really be saved. A soul consoled for every day of pain without agony.

Since then I have desired agonies and days of acute pain. I have desired them with a measureless desire, endeavoring to increase my sufferings in a thousand ways. There is a daughter of mine who still recalls how alarmed she was on seeing me smile when I felt the tremendous crisis which took me to the threshold of eternity coming upon me. I smiled, thinking that another soul was being saved.

Is it my presumption? No: trust in God. If it is true that even an insignificant act performed out of love acquires great value in the eyes of God, what value must suffering death out of love have? In his divine words, Jesus states what perfect love this is: “No one has greater love than one who gives his life for his friends.”

I was giving my life for my friends, embracing under this name a limitless throng of souls, among whom were—and are—relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers, enemies, idolaters, the dead.... And at the head of this whole army of friends, who, on being bought back for grace, became my children, I placed my Divine Friend, Jesus: Brother, Master, Spouse, and King.

One cannot have greater love for You, my ineffable Joy, than to give one’s life for You, so that You will triumph in hearts and your Kingdom will come! No, one cannot have greater love! And if in my love there are human weaknesses which contaminate it and diminish its value, indestructible Compassion, have mercy on me all the same. O Merciful One, do not look at my poor reality. Look only at my ideal desire to be perfect in your sight, not to receive a reward, but to bring back a smile to your face, embittered by the crimes of this hour.

Some, on seeing my gladness in suffering, played the role of Peter alongside the Master. But I had the same reply as the Master for the zealous apostle: “Get behind me, Satan! You are thinking not as God thinks, but as human beings do.” I did not use that formula, exactly, for it would not have been very charitable. But, while softening it into a number of other words, I made it clear that if I was dependent—worse than a child—in all things, held as I was by my mother’s iron hand, which not even illness made gentler in my regard, I intended to preserve all my independence in matters of the spirit. In these only God had the right to reign. And no one else.

In this there was great justice, at heart. The only one who had loved me throughout my life was my God. The others had been either unable or unwilling to. He alone had extended his arms and clasped me to his heart, without taking into account my acts of incivility, pouting, and coldness; He alone had consoled me, dried my tears, and healed my heart; He alone had acted as my father, mother, brother, spouse, and friend. Now, after having given me so much, He was asking me for one thing alone, the only one I could give Him, for in my family slavery I possessed nothing and had nothing at my disposal except for my life, the life that came to me from Him and which He had protected up to that point. And I was giving Him my only petiole, tossing my only possession into the alms box He was holding out to me....

There are so many souls to be bought. Once more I became convinced that after twenty centuries of Christianity we are still far from having grasped the essence of Christianity, which is a religion of generosity, daring, charity.... The majority, however, reduce it to a comfortable office where all the passports for Paradise are to be authenticated for a small fee or to an enormous shop whose owner, the good Lord, is always prepared to give his clients what they like best. A kind of Land of Plenty...! And what rumblings if they do not immediately find what they ask for...!

So summer came. And, with summer and the erroneous treatment, congestion. It was August 1. At 3 p.m. I was really in extremis. Here, too, the devil properly set to work to make me despair.

My father at once rushed to advise the person responsible to have the doctor come—he was then in Viareggio for a series of baths. But the one in charge, the same one who had convinced the doctor about my supposed tuberculosis, preferred not letting a pot of water get cold to having mercy on me and running to call the doctor. The outcome was that he arrived after two hours of crisis, when my blood was already coagulating in my veins.

It was my first injection, of five different ampoules mixed together. There was already talk of hypodermoclysis for me, but it was later possible to avoid it. I nearly went to celebrate the Forgiveness of Assisi in heaven! In twenty-four hours I had five angiospastic attacks!

On the morning of August 2, at four o’ clock, my parish priest, utterly convinced that I was dying, brought me the Viaticum. And he remained for many hours, also present for a consultation in which—a valuable discovery—I was found no longer to have heart, lung, or circulatory trouble, but a liver disorder. Liver? And who ever took notice of having a liver? Heaven knows! I had to have liver trouble. I am still waiting for it after nine years! Thermal water treatment and so on.

Once the two—discoverers of the liver had left, I wanted another examination. But I wanted it without the presence of the family doctor. Professor Bianchi, a phthisiologist, came. He excluded the liver and any form of tuberculosis, particularly pulmonary. He found only that with all the calcium administered they had calcified my arteries. As a result, decalcifying treatment for the precocious sclerosis and trinitrine and spasmosedine all over again for my heart, lesioned to the utmost. Silence, rest, the room kept dark, and so forth. I spent the summer with the window open and the shutters closed. I can still remember the sunbeam beating upon the wall by the stairs.... If I think of that sunbeam, I see those days again. For seventeen days I was more dead than alive. Then the embolus dissolved, and I improved a bit. Now I had to be watched over.

My mother at once abandoned me to other hands. If I had had a daughter in that state, with a heart that could give in from one minute to the next, I would not have left her for an instant. She left me from the first night, during which I was watched over by a sister. The poor woman! She did her best, but, perhaps accustomed to most patients’ eating and drinking at every moment, she continually disturbed me, asking if I wanted something to drink.... The nights were later divided into shifts among my married and unmarried women friends. But I had them lie down on the other bed. It was enough for me to have them in the room.... They slept—I spent the hours speaking with God and marking the time by the furious beating of my heart. During the day a sister came to look after me. She was very good.

The doctor obstinately maintained that either tuberculosis or hysteria was present. Analysis after analysis.... And the tuberculosis would not make up its mind to pop out so as to please him. Test after test to establish hysteria. But neither did it want to show up to make him happy. And I suffered terribly.

Another consultation with a surgeon. “It’s appendicitis! It should be operated on immediately!” Boom! In 1920 the same thing had been said, and after fourteen years the appendicitis had still not appeared. I am still waiting for it. And I live on raw salad, peas, and similar delights for an intestine which, according to the surgeon, is nearly perforated...!

Another consultation: “It’s a case of genital insufficiency.” Boom thrice over! I had never suffered in that sense. Insufficiency, of course! If anything, there was a tendency towards supersufficiency! But that had to be the breeding ground. There was no solution. Very comfortable for doctors to take care of women! What they are unable to classify by its proper name is called hysteria, and we’re taken care of! Ovarian hormone treatment. The result: my heart remained the same. An ovarian inflammation leading to the tumor which gives me so much pain and not only physical troubles.

Then, since they had failed to hit the bull’s-eye, ladies and gentlemen, it was time for a change. The phthisiologist came back once again. Properly worked on by the family doctor—oh, human inconsistency!—he took back his entire diagnosis of a short time before, and whereas he had previously put me on water fresh from the tap and fruit juices for my pressure, he now ordered supernutrition; whereas he had previously ordered complete immobility, under pain of death, he now ordered me to get up and go to the pinewood; whereas he had previously decalcified my arteries with all the nitrates possible, he now ordered calcium again without interruption, because there was bilateral tuberculosis (boom!), which, if not checked by supernutrition, air, movement, and calcium, would take me to the cemetery in three months (boom! boom!) amidst tremendous hemoptyses (boom! boom! boom!).

It was September 4, 1934. Today is April 8, 1943. I have eaten less and less, have not taken air, except for what comes in through the window, have not moved about, have not ingested calcium, and I am here—waiting....

I had to engage in movement, but none of the three consultants committed himself to taking me in the ambulance to have the X-ray done.... They knew that on moving I risked death, if I did not precipitate it as well.

In short, one gave me alcohol in any case; another prohibited even watered-down white wine; one administered heavy doses of caffeine, and another prohibited coffee; one fed me to excess, provoking crisis after crisis, and another put me on water and fruit juice.... Enough to drive you crazy!

Finally, a professor came who was a friend of ours. “Why, who has given you all this stuff?” he exclaimed on seeing the pharmacy I had on my bedside table. “But they’re mad! I’d throw everything into the middle of the street.” An examination and the complete exclusion of tuberculosis. A serious myocarditis, definitely, and now an ovarian inflammation. Bed, complete repose, nutritious but very limited food intake, cardiotonic injections, and that was all. “And then I’ll see to finding the doctor you need.” And he found him.

This is my current physician, who has been treating me for eight-and-a-half years and who, if not a genius healing all maladies, is at least a good psychologist who understands the causes of ills. And this is already quite a bit for a patient, particularly for certain patients!

With respect to my recovery.... He has often stated for years, “We can do nothing in this case. We are faced with forces stronger than medicine which impede the slightest relief of the patient’s condition just as they impede her death, for, in human terms, she should have died years ago, on account of both the violence of the maladies gnawing at her and the foolish treatment applied at the outset. I am not a convinced believer, but I surrender to the evidence of a miracle: a miracle even greater than that of a cure. I do nothing. I merely follow the malady as best I can because I feel that even if I accomplished the impossible, I would collide with a Will which would annul my every effort.”

It’s a good thing he understood! But the others—those who were just “passing through,” shall we say, like the consultants—also reached the same conclusion. “If you are a believer, go to Lourdes or Loreto. Here the hand of God is present, and He alone can work a cure.”

It has often been proposed that I go to Lourdes or Loreto. My parish priest at the outset also suggested accompanying me there gratis. But, though grateful to him, I refused. First of all, as I have already written, it would be a serious inconsistency. What has been donated is not asked for. In the second place, I renounce the grace of health which might be granted me in favor of another ill creature who is not resigned to infirmity.

Every time there is a pilgrimage of patients or a solemn novena, like the ones to Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Joseph, St. Anthony, and others, I say to the Lord: “If I went, if I asked, You, Infinite Goodness, would bring me, too, back to health. But I ask and beseech You, instead, to give someone else the health, or at least the relief from agony, which You would give me. May another enjoy it and give You praise. There are so many fathers and mothers of a family who are ill and needed by their children! Heal one of these! There are so many patients who despair over being such: heal one of them! It is enough for there to be another creature who loves and blesses You, and I am content, much more than if I were to get well or my agony were to diminish.”

Just think how lovely Paradise will be for me, where I shall meet those who were healed through my renunciation! Healed of physical maladies and of distrust or despair! Now I do not know who they are. But in Heaven I shall know. My Lord Himself will be the one who points them out to me when, clasping me to his heart, He says, “Come, blessed one, for I was ill and you healed me.”

This blessedness, too, will certainly exist for those who renounced recovery to heal another! Not even a glass of water given in his Name is in vain or goes unrewarded.... What, then, will be the reward for having given the grace of health in his Name to an ill brother?

Oh, I am so happy when I suffer very, very much...! My mission is to suffer. Every time the doctors’ compassion thinks up a remedy and every time the compassion of believers utters prayers for my improvement, a more serious deterioration and more acute suffering are observed.

In the economy governing the Universe everything has its reason for existence and its mission to carry out. The circling stars give us light and send forth astral forces influencing the fructification of lesser elements and the laws of the tides. The waters obey the eternal code directing them to descend in rain and snow from the clouds which amass them to sprinkle the earth and form glaciers nourishing the rivers, which, flowing into the lakes and seas, sustain them with their substance and turn them into a kind of enormous reservoir from which the sun draws up the evaporating vapors to create new clouds giving rain. Fish, the quite dimwitted fish, serve to clean the waters as well as for human food. Birds serve to exterminate insects and for the spontaneous sowing of the flowers’ seeds. The trees, respectful of vegetable laws, robe themselves in leafy branches in the spring to provide an abode for nests and shade for man or cover themselves with fruit to feed man and the good Lord’s birds. Seeds agree to be buried in the black earth, where nothing creeps but little worms, so as to sprout, in due course, as small plants supplying bread and food of every kind. Sheep cover themselves with thicker wool during the autumn to give tufts in the springtime to the birds building their nests and the warmth of clothing to the sons of man. Bees and butterflies serve to spread pollen, without which the flowering of plants would be of no use. Winds have their reason for existence, for they regulate heat, sweep clean the sky, purify the seas, and act as paranymphs in the vegetable marriages between flowers. Even the brambles have their mission. They are a defense for the hanging nests filled with tender bodies against the danger of man and snakes and serve as a hook for the tufts of wool sought out by the birds and donated by the flocks.

Everything, everything has its reason in creation, and everything has its mission, given to it by the Creator. I have mine: to suffer, to expiate, to love. To suffer for those who are unable to suffer, to expiate for those who are unable to expiate, to love for those who are unable to love. I do not think of myself. I say to the good Lord, “I trust You!” and that’s all I say to Him.

I give no thought to keeping registers and an inventory, as if I were a merchant, to mark therein all the good I may do to present my accounts to the Eternal at the hour of judgment. Even the thought of it! I hate accounts....! When I go up there and am asked, “What good did you do, thinking of this hour?” I shall respond, “Well—You must know, Lord. I know only that I have loved You and have loved my neighbor for your sake.” In the face of such an utter absence of—human accounting, the good Lord will have no choice but to write—a clear-cut “canceled out” on the set-off and let me pass on.... Thérèse, too, says so: “There will be no judgment for the little ones.” I am even less than little: I am a moron able to do one thing alone: love.

I ask for neither death nor life. To die now or ten years from now leaves me indifferent. Not even the thought that death will open up Life to me is capable of making me ask God to hasten to immolate me completely. I want one thing alone: “To do his Will”—and, aside from this, no peace....

If I become poor, the good Lord, who feeds the little birds of the sky, will also feed me. If I am abandoned, He, the Good Samaritan, will provide assistance for me. If I no longer have a home, clothing, or anything, He, who knows what it means not to have a stone on which to lay one’s head, will find a house of Bethany for me where a merciful woman will give me everything necessary for our humanity. If I became blind, deaf, mute, covered with sores, He, who sent the dog to heal the wound of Rocco, the crow to satisfy the hunger of Benedict, will provide me with the animal—better than man—that will not recoil from my sores and will bring me a piece of bread. If I lacked even this, it would suffice for the capacity to go on loving Him to remain in me, to love my God until my final breath, and ask for nothing else.

It is necessary to be treated by one’s neighbor as I was to understand that on earth all is vanity and falsehood and that only God does not lie and disappoint. When we are convinced of this, we necessarily come to that—i.e., loving the Only One who has never harmed us: God.

When we love God, the warmth flows from the center outwards, and in this way we love our neighbor, not for what he is worth, but for what he is: the work of God, redeemed by Christ, dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. We necessarily love him, for, in having God in us—whoever has Charity has God—we have his Mercy, which covers the base actions of others and clothes bodies, even if repellent with moral tabes, in a supernatural robe.

Therefore, if Jesus, for a long time still, wishes to delay the marriage of my soul to Him in lovely Paradise, what shall I say? I shall say only, “Here is your slave, O my Lord; do with her as You please.”

I was interrupted at this point for lunch.

While I was preparing the breadcrumbs for my doves, for the second time during the morning I heard a voice whispering, “Remember that what you write is material which remains and in which people will search to reconstruct your life. See, then, that you reflect about what you say so as to neither diminish nor increase yourself.” This morning, too, in the first hours of the day, while I was busy with my toilet, the same idea was articulated in me.

It often happens that inspirations, counsels, and voices sound in my heart precisely when I am occupied in things far removed from the reign of the spirit. It is unlikely that I will hear then when praying, whereas when I write, read, work, eat, play with my animals, or speak with someone, a word flashes in my soul.... Perhaps it is due to the fact that, whatever I do, my deepest self is always fixed in one place, and nothing can separate it from its life, which is God. I don’t know. I think it’s that way.

The first time I did not pay attention to that idea. The second time I thought it over and concluded as follows: “Let whoever speaks know that, on examining myself, I feel I have done nothing but write my truest and deepest thoughts and have narrated the bad and the good, the good and the bad, just as it has taken place. I will do the same until the end. If on narrating I should have to diminish myself, I don’t mind. If I should instead have to give people a better opinion of myself, that is of no concern to me. It would be only greater glory for God, who is able to draw a prodigy of grace from nothingness. As regards the thought that in my writings posterity might in the future search so as to reconstruct a perfect portrait of me, I tell you it does not disturb me. When that occurs, I shall no longer be a human creature, but a spirit. As a spirit, and I hope as a spirit in the Kingdom of God, there will be no danger of pride’s being aroused. In the heavens this ugly plant does not take root. As a result, this prospect neither exalts nor depresses me. If you that speak are my God, you see that I am telling the truth about everything, including this last thought. If you are the Enemy, then you can save your breath: none of your conceit of praise will go to my head. You can be sure of it. I am too aware of my past indigence and my present nothingness.” And I tranquilly started to eat.

I wanted to tell you this, too, for it seemed right and proper for me to do so. And now I shall continue.

In November—on November 19—I dreamt that my father was dying.... He was then quite well. But I dreamt that he was dying.... I awoke with great palpitation. I told Mother and the young lady who had slept in my room that night. The latter consoled me as best she could. Mother derided me, as usual.

She was going through an impossible period. She had thought my malady would not last long and that I would soon be up and about as before. But this time real chronic illness had set in. I had said so quite often in the preceding years: “I can’t go on any longer! I drudge and drudge, but I’m exhausted. If I stop, if I fall, this poor little donkey won’t get up again.” I had not been believed then either.... My mother had the monopoly on ailments.... Dad and I had no right to get ill. That was the way she thought. But God showed her the opposite. That oak who was my dad thundered to the ground in three days, and I—am nailed down for life. She is the only healthy one. In short, seeing that I did not get better and that, after having been even excessively served by me, she now had to serve me had made her furious.

Poor Dad! How much incivility, how much neglect! He had to spend his final months of life condemned to boiled and sliced meat, coffee and milk—accustomed as he was to dainties and, above all, to cakes, which I always made for him and for which he had a sweet tooth like a big child.

Poor Dad! How many rebukes because when the crises came upon me, he would stay close by, adoring me as if I had still been the little three-year-old Mary who said to him, “I won’t marry anyone but you, and I’ll give you a wig”! My mother would have wanted him to scold me as she did because I disturbed everyone with my crises at the most unexpected hours. But Father did not scold me: he kissed me, busied himself in giving me help, and called me “his darling, his pet,” as when I was small and had only him to love me—and he wept over me....

When I was a child and became ill, my mother was a bit more “motherly” to me. But now, since I got sick this miracle has no longer occurred. I am simply a burden...! Poor Dad! And poor me! How much indifference! How many acts of discourtesy, grumbling, and abandonment! My father would get angry on seeing her, for instance, occupied and preoccupied with watering the flowers or folding the laundry instead of coming to my bed when a crisis would make me waver between life and death. At night she would go off to the second floor to sleep, often without even giving me a kiss and saying good night...! I might have died in the night—she would not have been there.

In December—December 18—as a result of having stubbornly insisted on remaining dressed in summer clothing Mother caught bronchial pneumonia. Heavens above! Three lady friends, two sisters, the doctor, and a part-time maid were not enough for her.... I was left alone for entire days because she kept everyone busy.

On the evening of the 25th, Father, who a few days before had had a slight vesical hemorrhage, had a small stroke. He was coming into my room with a basin full of water.... I saw him totter and become cyanotic, and his mouth got twisted. Defying cardiac paralysis, I grasped him and guided him to a seat beside me. He then got better, and when the doctor and the person who looked after me at night (sleeping in) came, he was able to go up to his own room by himself. But just imagine what I suffered on remaining there, impotent and alone—for we were always alone from 5 to 10 p.m.—with Father ill. The physician treated him, having leeches applied....

Mother took the opportunity to inveigh against me, with a burning note, and against him, with a river of words, accusing us of having made merry in her illness. Made merry! We had been living on broth and boiled rabbit.... On Christmas Day, on my little hot plate I had made a bit of buttered brains. That was out merry-making...! No, it was not merry-making which was killing Father! It was his constantly repressed rage, the offenses he had to swallow.... In 1910 he had become ill on this account—now he was dying for the same reason. I saw that his jugular veins sometimes got as big as sticks from the effort to control himself.... Heaven knows!

Between the anxiety and eating poorly—on the 26th I went without eating until 6 p.m.—I got worse again.

On the 28th Mother wanted to get up, against the doctor’s orders to take charge of the application of leeches. There were two nursing sisters, but she did not trust them. She went down to the first floor half undressed to inspect the whole house, finding objections to everything and everyone. She came to see me to make reproaches, not even noticing that I was at that moment coming out of an angiospastic attack. She then went back to bed and had a relapse. Of course! She had walked about in a nightdress for three hours on December 28...!

Dad got up again at the beginning of January. So that he would eat as he should and the other upstairs would not engage in further foolish actions, for several days I behaved rashly in getting up from five to eight—a time I was sure no one would observe me. I tidied up everything, prepared the food for the next day, and then—went to bed in a corpse-like state. On January 26 Mother took charge again. It was about time....

On February 2, 1935, after a heavy sopor and a terrible cardiac crisis, paresis appeared. It was then that the family doctor had his theory accepted by the consultants that not only my heart was damaged, but also the spine, or, rather, the spinal marrow. We do not know if it is a tumor or the formation of liquid resulting from the blow received in 1920, but the lesion exists.

After the consultation I wrote as follows (I copy from my diary): “My soul is full of song. An incomprehensible song and incomprehensible gladness for someone unaware of the most burning longing of my heart...! You, my Good, know why I am happy...! The fact is that I do not have one malady, but three afflicting me! I kiss this trinity of pain wherein I see the will of the Trinity reflected and worship God, who adorns me with three such gifts, and with St. Francis I cry, “Lord, I am not worthy of such a great treasure!” I clasp these three nails to my heart, your three nails, O my King, O my Christ, O my All, and since the more love grows, the more it sees itself comprehended and compensated, with the boldness of lovers I ask You, “Why just three wounds? Why not five, like yours?” And I trustingly wait, for I feel that You will adorn me with all, all your jewels of pain....”

The three maladies were myocarditis, the ovarian tumor (now formed), and the spinal lesion. But I saw that the doctor was concealing something. And I prodded him to speak out.

On the morning of the 3rd I observed an undecipherable sign from the doctor to Mother. They went to the front hall and shut themselves in. “Just fine,” I said, “now I’m coming too.” Holding on to the furniture, I went barefoot to the glass door and, grasping the sewing machine to keep myself erect, I looked through the glass and heard the conversation. “The professor informs you that it is a form of progressive paralysis. Very slow, but extremely dangerous and inexorable in its course. As a result of a scare or some emotion or other, it may accelerate, strike the diaphragm and the bulbar centers, and provoke instant death. If there are no factors speeding it up, it may last years, gradually extinguishing the life of the organs....”

I went back to bed because—my heart was leaping and my legs, bending. Not from fear, but from exhaustion. I now knew enough, though. I have always wanted to know the truth. And to tell the truth.

The paresis beginning in the lower abdomen had little by little spread to many other organs and from time to time gives signs of paralyzing others. When it rises, it is the head which is affected; when it descends, the thorax. It is most painful because, according to the bulbar center stricken, it occasions blindness or deafness, or impairments involving speech, swallowing, breathing, digestion, renal filtration, writing.... A mine of troubles.

It was then that I made a solemn pact with Jesus to rescue a soul for every crisis. I had done so before informally. And how happy I was if I had many crises a day. At that time I had only cardiac and spinal pains and a straining with heat, as if I had a fire inside where the tumor was forming. At Easter, on account of a terrible crisis caused by my incorrigible mother, I remained for many days with my arms and throat paralyzed. I suffered morally to the maximum degree possible. And I was not loved...! Only my father loved me. Mother fed me with such ill grace that I preferred to let myself die of hunger. I was laid out on a table because my vertebras were very inflamed. I had a strange form of delirious sopor.... I had to undergo treatment that was detestable for me....

And the devil was puffing within.... I felt that the war was coming.... I knew that Father was dying....

At that time Jesus, to meet the needs of his little crucified one, had my family win a big prize. Mother did not even tell Father, who worried, thinking that I needed a lot of treatment for no one knew how long, and she made me swear I would say nothing. And my poor dad died without finding out. If he had been in his right mind, as would have been fitting, I could have told him, begging him not to say a word. But it was useless to make certain recommendations to Dad! After a few hours he did not recall our entreaties, and the mess was made.... To avoid a thousand acts of incivility towards him and myself, I kept silent. There were already so many! And so many jeremiads along with them...!

Immediately after Easter I wanted to become a “zealot of suffering” in the Prayer Apostolate. Our parish priest agreed to my wish and said everything was taken care of. The suffering has certainly been taken care of. But in eight years I have not received a single card, any indication whatsoever of belonging to this category and this Association.

In the meantime the abdominal pain grew and, as a result, there were other examinations, which increasingly confirmed the existence of the tumor. But they reached no conclusion, for when the time came to do something, all the professors withdrew on account of the state of my heart.

In that period I began to understand the reason for certain deviations of so many poor companions of my sex. Until then they had aroused in me the same pity as that prompted by the sight of a delinquent. Pity over their wretchedness. I judged them to be just like delinquents because they killed themselves in vice.

Years before a doctor, in speaking of certain unfortunates whom I described as amoral, had said to me, “They are ill. And as such they should be forgiven and helped to recover. No physically healthy woman stoops to certain profanations. They are ill.” He had said nothing else, and, foolish as I was, I had not grasped clearly what he was referring to. I was so free from some things!

In the tremendous moment of my young years I had also wished to do evil through a rebellion of the flesh, mutilated in its right to love. But I did not know exactly what the evil I wished to do was, what this animal need agitating within me really was. This tumor was needed to make me understand certain things. And to make me pray for the unfortunates living in vice.

I had made myself a calendar of suffering. Every day I offered my afflictions for a given class of persons and to make reparation for special things. On Monday I made reparation for violations of the law of God and of the Church, for justice, and to obtain a holy death for those in agony. On Tuesday for abuses and contempt of the word of God, for resistance to grace, and for the souls in Purgatory. And so on. On Saturday, when I offered and suffered for sacrilegious confessions and the sins of sense, I added the intention of expiating to redeem lost women.

Now I understood how easy it was to become a lost woman. How many Gospel pages my tumor has illuminated for me regarding mercy, worthy not only of a God, but of a sublime scientist, of Christ for the women sinners the Gospel names! I recognized, amidst tears of gratitude and humility, that only the goodness of God had saved me from becoming like so many others, creatures the first sin has bitten into more deeply, stricken, moreover, by horrendous maladies driving them mad and not sustained by true knowledge of our religion.... I recognized that, if left to myself, I would not have been stronger than they in repelling sense, which illness sharpens to the point of pushing us to the brink of madness.

Perhaps demonic suggestion also worked intensely in me. Oh, it has tormented me in every way! Only I know how much it has tormented me! And for years!

It was something strange. My soul remained ever the same: united to God, in peace, in thirst of sacrifice. Prayer was my joy; I desired the sacraments more than air itself. My flesh was mad. It produced an effect, by the will of I don’t know who, whether it is the Most High or the Most Low, as if I were split in two. God reigned over my spirit; in the material part Lucifer bit, incited, disturbed—and sometimes bent into the mud. Then the spirit and the flesh were reunited, and there followed the anguish of having been weak....

I have suffered hell. I became angry with myself, for I was weak, with the doctors, who did not eliminate that ailment, which disturbed my spirit. If it had occasioned me only physical pain, it would not have burdened me. I got angry with the priests, who were so calm in the face of my torment, which I did not conceal from them. I did not get angry with the good Lord, for I understood that He was not at all to blame for what was happening.

It was the terrible hour of temptation. A victim of divine Justice must go through even this to save the souls of so many sinners.... After having undergone the devil’s pressure, I clung to my God, kissed my Jesus, and commended myself to Him. I have suffered, I repeat, in an inhuman way. At times I still wonder how this could happen in a soul entirely donated to God. I think that God wanted thereby to keep me lowly so that I would not exalt myself or believe myself to be perfect. Oh, there is no longer any danger that I should so regard myself! It suffices for me to think of those years of torment to acknowledge, with St. Paul, that if my inner self delighted in the law of God, another law weighed upon my members in opposition to the law of my mind and made me a slave to sin. The angel of Satan properly smacked me, you can be sure....

How, how I suffered! You see: physically, I am now truly tortured. But all of this agony, whereby even a breath is a torment, is nothing alongside that suffering, which I am convinced was demonic vengeance. And let’s speak no more about it, for goodness’ sake!

From that point on, then, I prayed for fallen women! Which, of course, increasingly intensified the infernal wrath.

In April 1935 I had a dream which I could almost call an apparition.

When I was drowsy, I saw Marta’s mother. Note that it was in the early hours of the afternoon, so it was unlikely that I had slept to the point of dreaming. She was dressed as usual, with her head veiled. She seemed to be ready to go out. The word “white” hardly suffices to describe her face. It was a face which transmitted light. There seemed to be an inner lamp shining through it. Not a brilliance at all, but a peaceful light giving peace. She seemed to be standing at the foot of my bed.

“Oh, Isolina!” I exclaimed. “Have you come to visit me?”

“Ah, yes! I have always remembered you, you know?”

“Are you happy?” I knew I was speaking to her after her death and, on seeing her luminous face, understood that she was in Paradise.

“I am happy, for where I am, everyone’s happy. My purgatory is not over, though; not even in the bosom of God has it ended....”

“But, why? How can this be?”

“God has given me the reward for my life, which you know was an upright life of sacrifice.... But, even in the joy of Heaven, I have a thorn in my heart. My Marta—alone in the world—and in an environment which I see is not bad, according to the world, but not meritorious with respect to God. What I sowed of faith is dying. For the time being, that alone. But once faith falls.... My purgatory is this, has always been this, and still lasts, even in heaven. I would like Marta to be with me. Then there would no longer be a purgatory for me, since I would be sure about my child and her soul.... I have loved you, Maria; love me as well. I entrust Marta to you.”

As she spoke, she became more and more luminous and finally dissolved into light....

That is why Marta is here instead of being in the offices, as before. Mother, who needed help, agreed to my wish. It was just that I had a supernatural motive in taking Marta in, and my mother, an entirely human and supremely selfish motive.

I have carried out the mission Marta’s mother gave me regarding her child. I have nothing to reproach myself for. I welcomed this poor little orphan, from her mother’s hands, with the heart of a mother and a sister, and I have given and give her sincere affection which is not limited only to foolish sentimentalism, but involves help for her, foresight, and consolation in a thousand little things. I could not do more for her if she were of my own blood. And, above all, I have looked after and loved her soul.

When she came to me, her piety had grown quite feeble. Without sermons, which, when delivered to an irritated heart, produce only greater irritation, but simply by loving her very much and letting her gradually penetrate on her own into my self entirely donated to God, just praying and letting myself be seen praying—by her I have indeed let myself be seen to bring back to her mind the image of her mother, who prayed so much, to tell her wordlessly that the good always pray and in prayer find comfort in all their sorrows and all their solitude—I have managed to bring her back, without her being aware, to a living faith, and I hope she will never again lose it, even when I am no longer on this earth. Her mother must now be utterly happy, in lovely Paradise, where she undoubtedly awaits me to watch over our Marta with her.

I regret only having introduced Marta into my mother’s grinding gears. But I really hoped she would be stingy, but not bad to the extent she is bad, ungrateful, and spiteful towards this poor Marta. I assure you that if Marta had to atone for some sin against the Fourth Commandment, she has already more than made up for it...!

But perhaps even this is not without a higher goal which we shall discover one day. In the meantime, it serves to testify to what my life is like in my mother’s hands.... Marta can say so much about it clearly showing my behavior and mother’s, and I am not the one who comes off badly as a result. I must say so to be faithful to the truth, without paltry false modesty....

Last night, April 10-11, I was thinking about what I had written in the last completed notebook. And I realize I expressed myself badly on a certain point. I said I got angry with myself and with the doctors because of the phenomena occasioned by my ovarian ailment.

To get angry means to lose one’s calm, trust, peace; it means to rebel. No, there was not a bit of this. I reproached. That’s what I did. I harshly reproached and punished myself for not being capable of repelling certain sensations, and I quite justifiably reproached the doctors, who remained inert in the face of all my pleas that the neoformation producing such complex phenomena disturbing my whole self be removed.

And so it continued for years. Then I finally understood that this, too, was a test and had a purpose—and I ceased to become unsettled. And the best part is that the temptations immediately started to diminish in frequency. It is evident that the devil, crestfallen on being found out, went off to hell. It is not possible to send him off to anywhere else, don’t you think? Now, since I narrated my state to you in detail, in that letter in February, he has no longer dared to stick out even the tip of his horn or his tail. Maybe he’s gnawing at it in a rage.... Good health!

And now I must speak of a most painful thing. But it is Passion Sunday.... I can, then, speak of one of my bitterest hours of passion. Impassioned Jesus and sorrowful Mary will help me and certainly dry my tears, which are already in my throat and ready to fall.

I confess to you that I would not like to have to speak of this because it is too, too agonizing. But if I fail to speak, my crown of thorns ends up lacking many prickles, and precisely those which are most agonizing, for it has been an agony of the flesh, of the mind, and of the heart. An agony which, as usual, was not understood, sympathized with, or believed. An agony still very intense after eight years, though it does not now reach the paroxysm it attained in the first hours, lasting months, and is now only a nostalgia swelling my heart and wringing tears from it, a mournful nostalgia which is, however, so deep that when I feel it more strongly, I am reduced to the state of a poor little bird that has fallen from its nest and languishes on the ground.