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The Dialogue

CHAPTER CXVII · 116 of 145

The Dialogue

English, translated by Algar Thorold — Algar Thorold, 1896

Here God speaks against those, who persecute the holy Church and His ministers, in various ways.

" I HAVE said that they persecute Me, and it is true that they do so, as far as they can, in intention. But I, person ally, can receive no hurt or be in any way injured by them, for I am like a stone which, if it be thrown, does not itself receive the blow, but returns against him who threw it. In this way the blows of their offences, which exhale a stench towards Me, cannot really injure Me, but their arrow returns to them poisoned with their guilt, which deprives them, in this life, of grace, and loses for them the fruit of the Blood.

A TREATISE OF PRAYER 249

And at last, if they have not corrected themselves with holy confession and contrition 01 heart, they arrive at eternal damnation, being cut off from Me and being bound to the Devil, with whom they have leagued together. For, as soon as the soul is deprived of grace, she is bound to sin, with a bond of hatred against virtue and love of vice ; with this bond they have placed themselves by their free will in the hands of the Devil, and are bound to him, for in no other way could they be bound. With the same bond are the persecutors of the Blood bound one to another, and bound to the Devil as his members, having taken on them selves the function of devils. The devils strive to pervert My creatures and draw them from grace, and lead them into the guilt of mortal sin, in order to infect My creatures with the same evil which they have in themselves. Such men as these do the same, neither more nor less ; for, like members of the Devil, they go about subverting the sons of the spouse of Christ, My only-begotten Son, and loosening them from the bond of charity, binding them, when deprived of the fruit of the Blood, with the miserable bond with which they themselves are bound. This bond is fastened with the knot of pride, and self-esteem, and servile fear; for it is through fear of losing their temporal possessions that they lose their grace, and fall into the greatest confu sion into which they can come, being deprived of the dignity of the Blood. This bond is sealed with the seal of darkness ; for they do not know into what miseries they have fallen themselves, and make others to fall. Where fore, in their ignorance, they do not correct themselves, but, like blind men, take glory in the destruction of their soul and body. Let it grieve thee inestimably, dearest daughter, to see such blindness and misery in those who have been washed in the Blood like thee, and nourished and brought up on the same Blood, at the breast of the holy Church, and, having become rebels through fear, and, under colour of correcting the defects of My ministers, whom I have forbidden them to touch, have left their mother's breast. Thou and My other servants should be in terror when you hear this miserable bond spoken of. No tongue can tell

250 THE DIALOGUE OF ST. CATHERINE

how abominable it is to Me, and it is the worse, because they wish to cloak and hide their own defects with the mantle of the defects of My ministers, and they do not consider that no such mantle can repair their sins to My eyes, which see everything. They might, indeed, well enough hide them from the eyes of My creatures, but not from Me, from Whom nothing can be hidden ; for I loved you and knew you before you were in existence. And this is one of the reasons why the wretched men of the world do not correct themselves, because they do not really believe, with the light of a lively faith, that I see them. For if they really believed that I saw their sins, and that every sin would be punished, as every virtue rewarded, as I said to thee in another place, they would not do so much evil, but would correct themselves of that which they have done, and would humbly implore My mercy, and I would give it them through the Blood of My Son. But they are obstinate and reprobated by My goodness for their sins, and fallen into the final ruin of privation of light, and have become blind persecutors of the Blood, which persecution can find no excuse in any sin which may appear in the ministers of the Blood."