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would offer Him that most bitter pain, that violence I made
to myself in seeing that, while the Lord deserved all the love,

all the praises, I was forced to do the opposite in reparation
for many who blaspheme against Him freely, and who do
not even remember that a God exists, whom they are obliged
to love in return. If they incited me to desperation, in my

interior I would say: “I don’t care either about hell or about
paradise; what I care about is to love my God. This is not the

time to think about anything else; rather, it is the time to love
my Good God as much as I can. Paradise and hell I place in
His hands He, who is so Good, will give me what is best for
me, and will give me a place in which I can Glorify Him the

most.”

Jesus Christ taught me that the most effective means so

that the soul would remain free of any vain apprehension,
of any doubt, of any fear, was to protest before Heaven, the
earth and the very demons, that she does not want to offend
God, even at the cost of her life, and that she does not want

to consent to any temptation of the devil. And this, as soon
as the soul feels the coming of the temptation, in the act of
the battle, if she can, and as she begins to feel free and also

during the course of the day. By doing this, the soul will
not waste time in thinking about whether she has consented
or not, because the mere memory of the protest will already
give her calm; and if the devil tries to disturb her, she will be

able to answer that if she had the intention of offending God,
she would not have protested the opposite. In this way, she

will remain free of any fear.

Now, who can say the rage of the devil, since all his
tricks resolved into bewilderment for himself, and there

where he thought he would gain, he would lose, and his very
temptations and tricks were used by the soul in order to make
acts of reparation and love for her God by acting in this way.

The other way He taught me in casting away temptations
was the following: if they tempted me to suicide, I was to

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