CHAPTER 12

With how much goodness God bears our faults.

I RENDER Thee thanks also for another revelation, which was no less advantageous and acceptable to me, by which I was shown with what benign patience Thou dost bear our defects, that, by correcting us thus, Thou mightest insure our happiness. For one evening, having allowed myself to give way to anger, and on the following morning, before break of day, finding myself disposed to pray, Thou didst present Thyself to me under so strange a form, that it seemed to me on beholding Thee that Thou wert not only deprived of all kind of good, but even of strength. Then, my conscience being touched for my past fault, I began to reflect with grief how improper a thing it had been for me to trouble the Supreme Author of peace and purity by my ill-regulated passion. I thought it would have been better that Thou shouldst have been absent from me when I failed to repel Thine enemy, while he solicited me to do that which was so contrary to Thy Will.

Thou didst apply this to me: “Even as a poor invalid who has been brought out to enjoy the sunshine by the assistance of others, with much difficulty, when he sees a storm coming on, has no other consolation than the hope of soon seeing fine weather again—thus, under the influence of your love, I prefer dwelling with you in all the tempests of vice, hoping to behold the calm of your amendment, and to see you enter the port of humility.”

Since my tongue is too feeble to explain the abundance of the graces which thou didst pour forth on me during the three entire days in which this apparition lasted, permit, O my God, that my heart may supply for its weakness, and teach me how to render a thanksgiving of gratitude for the depth of the humility to which Thy love then abased itself for this charity, so amazing and so tender, which Thou hast for us.