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can this be? Between You and me, You wanted to put a third
now? And this third one does not want to make himself

available. See, we could have been so content, the two of
us. When You wanted me to suffer, I would immediately
accept, because I would know that You Yourself would free
me. There is no need of another hand now. I beg You free

me, and both of us will be more content.’

At times He pretended not to hear me, and He would not
tell me anything. Other times, then, He would say to me: “Do
not fear, I AM the one who gives darkness and Light. The
Time of the Light will come. It is my usual way to manifest

My Works through the priests.”

So I spent three or four years of these contradictions on

the part of priests. Many times they subjected me to very
hard trials; they reached the point of letting me remain in
that state of sufferings that is, petrified, incapable of any
slightest motion, even of taking a drop of water for eighteen

days, more or less, when they pleased to do so. The Lord
alone knows what I was going through in that state; and after
they came, I would not even have the Good of at least being

told: “Have patience, do the Will of God.” Rather, I was
reproached as capricious and disobedient. O! God, what
pain how many tears I shed. How many times I thought I
was disobedient, saying to myself: “How can this be that

the virtue that is the most pleasing to the Lord is so far away
from me. What good can a disobedient soul ever do or hope

for?” Many times I lamented to Our Lord, and at times I
reached the point of being resentful; and when He wanted me
to accept sufferings, I would resist as much as I could. But
when the Lord saw that I would begin to resist, He showed

He would not pay attention to me, and He would not tell me
anything else; and then, all of a sudden, He would come to
surprise me. As for what the confessor would say, then, it is

because sometimes he did not want me to fall into that state;
but this was not in my power. It is yet true that I have been
disobedient, and that I have never been good at anything, but

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