Page 26 - volume1
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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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