The Dialogue

How penance should not be taken for the foundation or principal end in itself : but rather the affection and love of virtue.

" I HAVE spoken to thee, dearest daughter, of two lights, and I will now speak to thee of the third, to which I would have thee pay great attention, reproving thyself, if, at any time, the devil, or thy own low point of view, should have tempted thee to wish to send all My servants along the same road as thyself, for this would be contrary to the doctrine given thee by My Truth. It may often happen that a person, seeing many travelling by the road of severe penance, would wish to send all by that road, and, seeing

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that they do not all choose it, he is angered, and takes scandal, thinking that such are acting wrongly. Now, see how such a one deceives himself, for it will often happen that he who is thought evil of because he does less penance, will do better and be more virtuous than he who, doing more penance, murmurs at it.

" Wherefore I said to thee above, that those who feed at the table of penance, unless they do so with true humility, their penance, not being to them an end in itself, but merely an instrument of virtue, will often, by this vice of murmur ing, offend against their own perfection. They should there fore not remain in ignorance, but should see that perfection does not consist only in the maceration or slaying of the body, but in the destruction of their own perverse will. It is by this road of the extinguishing and submission of the human will to My sweet will, that I wish thee to desire all to walk. This is the doctrine of that glorious light, in which the soul runs as one enamoured, clothed with My Truth. I do not on that account despise penance, for it is good to macerate the body when it strives to fight against the Spirit, but I do not wish, dearest daughter, that thou shouldst impose penance as a rule to any one, because all bodies are not equal, or of the same strong complexion ; because one man may have a stronger nature than another, and also because it often happens, as I have told thee, that penance, when it has been begun, has to be relinquished, on account of many accidents which may occur. And, if the foundation of thy soul was laid in penance, or thou hadst caused others so to lay it, thou wouldest then faint and become imperfect, lacking consolation, for thou wouldst be deprived of the thing which thou didst love, and which had become thy principal object, and so thou wouldst seem to thyself to be deprived of Me, and of My goodness, and wouldst thus fall into weariness, bitterness and con fusion. In this way, thou wouldst lose the benefit of the spiritual exercise and the fervent prayer which thou wast wont to make when performing thy penance. Thus, having relinquished thy penance on account of some accident or other, thou wouldst no longer find that savour in prayer

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which thou hadst before. This would happen because thy foundation would be laid rather in penance than in yearning desire — desire, that is, for true and real virtues.

"See, then, how much harm would follow from placing thy end solely in penance, how thou wouldst become ignorant, and fall into murmuring judgments against My servants, as has been said, and into weariness and great bitterness, endeavouring to serve, with finite works only, Me, Who am Infinite Good, and therefore demand on your part infinite desire ; you should therefore place your foundation in the destruction and extinction of your own will, and, by thus submitting your will to Mine, you will send up before Me a sweet, hungry and infinite desire, seeking My honour and the salvation of souls. And thus will you eat at the table of holy desire, which desire is never scandalised either in itself or in its neighbour, but rejoices in every thing, and draws fruit from all the divers and varied cir cumstances in which I place the soul. The poor wretches who do not follow this sweet doctrine and smooth road, given them by My Truth, do not so. They do, indeed, the contrary, judging according to their blindness and infirm vision. Wherefore they become raving lunatics, and deprive themselves both of the advantages of the world and of heaven. And, in this life, as I have said to thee in another place, they taste the earnest of Hell."