Page 26 - volume1
P. 26

Now, who can say the change that occurred in my interior?
            Everything was horror for me. That love which I felt in me

            before, I saw now changed into atrocious hate. What pain,
            not being able to love Him any more. The thought that that
            Lord, who had been so good to me, I was now forced to abhor,
            to curse, as if He were the most cruel enemy tortured my

            soul. I could not look at Him, even in His images, because
            in looking at them, in holding rosary beads in my hands,

            in kissing them, such rushes of hate came to me, and such
            force, that doing that and reducing everything to pieces was
            the same. And sometimes I put up such resistance that my
            nature trembled from head to foot. O! God, what a most

            bitter pain! I believe that if in hell there were no other pains,
            just the pain of not being able to love God would form the
            most horrible hell. Many times the devil would place before

            me the Graces that the Lord had given me, now as a crafting
            of my imagination so that I would conduct a life more free,
            more comfortable; and now as true, and they reproached me
            by saying: “Is this the Love He had for you? Is this the

            Recompense leaving you in our hands? You belong to us,
            you belong to us, everything is over for you, there is nothing
            left to hope for.” And I felt such rushes of indignation against

            the Lord, and of desperation, being cast into my interior, that
            many times, if I found myself with some images in my hands,
            the force of the indignation was such that I would tear them
            apart. But while doing this, I would cry and kiss them but

            I don’t know how I was forced to do that.


            Now, who can say the torment of my soul? The demons
            made feast and laughed some would make noise from one
            point, some from another; some would yell and shout, some
            would deafen me with screams, saying: “See how you belong

            to us there is nothing left but taking you to hell, body and
            soul, and then you will see what we will do to you.” Sometimes
            I felt myself being pulled now my clothes, now the chair on

            which I was kneeling; they would move it and yell so much
            that I could not pray. And sometimes the fear was such that,
            thinking I could free myself, I would go and lay down in bed


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