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6:30 a.m., The Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
How good the Lord is!
Last night I had an hour of Gethsemane. The moral suffering was such and so great that it also made an impact on the physical suffering, which sought to change into the daily sopor and collapse. I was not at all in a collapse last night! On the contrary, I was quite stimulated. Jesus had let go of his little chick, and, now longer held up by his talons as an Eagle,452 I was plunging down, touching the bottom, the darkness and gloom of desolation.
From this darkness, from every part of it, there arose the phantoms of doubt about the truth of what is happening to me, of fear of human reprisals against me and the one directing me, and the dejection of being without spiritual and medical direction, precisely now, when I am closer and closer to death and tortured by such moral and physical sufferings that I continually experience agony from one or another of my five main illnesses, or from weariness and repugnance over what surrounds me here - the priest, first of all, so... different from the way I conceive of a priest and want him to be – and torture at the thought that I will no longer possess the good of going back to my house....453 Oh, how many things weighing upon a heart!
The most agonizing one was the voice saying to me, “You are a dreamer. You are not saved and do not save. You are condemned. You will be excommunicated by men and accursed by God.” But the other ones, too...! A bush of thorns.... I felt madness rising from my heart to my head.... It was not desperation, for I felt Jesus, and I felt Him to be a merciful Friend. But it was a very intense desolation. I was afraid it would turn into a delirium. Instead - for when Jesus is there, the storm may develop, but it cannot submerge us - it served only to keep me wide awake to observe the hour of nocturnal adoration, together with Paola and Marta.
Afterwards - it was then past midnight - Marta gave me her prayer book454 so that I would locate for her the point for today’s prayers. I looked up and found the devotion to the Sacred Heart. Just in passing, I looked at the introductory notes, with a plunge of my heart which submerged all the shadows of torment and brought out a great peace, I read about the first apparition of Jesus to Margaret Mary.
I know very little about this saint. I know she was a Visitandine, that Jesus appeared to her, that she was combatted by her superiors and directed by La Colombiere,455 and that she suffered a lot. That’s all, because I heard this twelve years ago, when I was in Catholic Action. I remembered that we had been told that Jesus appeared to her on a hazel plant. Therefore, when on June 1 I received the vision of the apparition of Jesus to Margaret Mary,456 I described it as I saw it, of course, but it seemed to me mistaken, for I saw it was taking place in the choir instead of on the hazel plant. And I of course distrusted myself more than ever. Well then, to comfort me, last night Jesus had me find the apparition just as I had seen it, just the same, down to the details, as described in that book, which is not mine and which I never use, for... I don’t like it.
“What nonsense!” some will say. Let them try being in my situation and in my condition to be able to understand whether or not it is nonsense! For me, it was the change of course which took me out of the storm and brought me back into the harbor. The Eagle grasped me again with his talons, and only the atrocious physical suffering remained. But I am not afraid of this.
I am thinking the same things as yesterday: that I might experience the resentment of the enemies of my mission, that I don’t have a real priest at my side, that perhaps I will not see my house any more, and that I feel I am dying in this place, which is deadly for me in all respects.... But I think them in Jesus’ arms, and then... they don’t drive me crazy.
My poor head certainly is a ball of blown glass and is hanging from the thread of a cobweb. The slightest jolt may forever fracture my reason, which for too long and because of too many factors has been subject to continual tempests. But I want to hope. Together with Blessed Eymard,457 I say, “Make me hope against all hope, O Lord. You will do everything, for I lack all human support and am in the thickest darkness.”458
452 Cf. the image in the second dictation on June 14.
453 See note 312.
454 The book was Manuale di Filotea, by the Milanese priest Giuseppe Riva. There is no date or place of publication listed. On page 333 the chapter on “Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus” is found.
455 Blessed Claude de la Colombiere, a Jesuit priest (1641-1682).
456 Written on June 2.
457 St. Peter Julian Eymard, the apostle of the Eucharist (1811-1868).
458 The texts associated with the episodes involving “Jesus and the Fallen Nest,” written on June 16 (found in The Third Year of the Public Life) and “The Widow’s Mite,” written on June 19 (found in the Passion cycle) appear in the following pages of the notebook and have been omitted here.