CHAPTER 60

That God is pleased with us when we are displeased with ourselves.

AS GERTRUDE prayed for a person with special affection, and said to Our Lord, “Hear me, O loving Lord, according to the sweetness of Thy paternal love, for her for whom I pray,” Our Lord answered: “I usually hear when you pray for her.” “Why, then,” replied Gertrude, “does she so often entreat me to pray for her, alleging always her unworthiness and nothingness, as if she never received any consolation from Thee?” “This,” answered the Saviour, “is the sweetest way in which My spouse could gain My affection; this ornament becomes her best, and in this she pleases Me most, because thus she is displeasing to herself, and this grace increases in her in proportion as you pray for her.” On another occasion, when she prayed at the same time for this person and also for another, Our Lord said to her: “I have brought her nearer to Me, and therefore it is necessary she should be purified by some little trial; even as a young girl who, on account of her love and tenderness for her mother wishes to seat herself beside her, although she may be more inconvenienced thereby than her sisters, who take their proper seats round their mother— the mother also cannot look so easily and lovingly on the child beside her as on those who sit opposite to her.”