Yesterday I said a whole Rosary and the sequence of the joys and sorrows. I meditated on the fifteen mysteries, in addition to daily prayers. I had two sopors instead of one, constantly felt ill, and in the evening suffered another assault.... By whom? I do not hesitate to say “by the devil.” I seemed to have gone back to the tremendous days extending from April 10 to May 3, which, beginning the day Our Lady spoke to me (May 4), changed into sad resignation, sometimes tinged with shades of joy. Since last night it’s been Hell again. But who can say to me, in such a way that I can believe it, that I am not damned?
And yet I pray.... And yet I believe.... And yet I love. But it is the most absolute abandonment by what I desire: God. And, behind Him, the persons from whom a word of God may still come to me remain absent. Even the Words I have heard seem to me not to be true.
Have mercy, Lord, for I feel I am going mad! I no longer see or understand anything. I feel only this agony. Just a month ago I happened to open books once to find a word that would illuminate me. Nothing. I seek comfort in prayer. Nothing. In things. Nothing. Who understands me? But why have I come here? I have the feeling that if I had gone elsewhere, where I wanted to and not where I submitted to going,320 under a lot of pressure from those hoping for who knows what from this place - and for those whose aim in life is the wellbeing of the flesh, there is perhaps cause for gladness at being here - I get the feeling that if I were where I wanted to go, I would be less forlorn.
My friend Gina, like a sister to me, has written.321 I am moved by her goodness. But I also suffer on this account. If only I were at least close to this true Christian and not in the midst of this frivolous company, which does not understand me, as I do not understand it. If only I were with my Sisters.... But here, without anyone to lift me to Heaven, and crushed as I am by the abandonment of God and the ferocity of Satan, I get lost. I feel it. I get lost in spirit and in flesh. I go crazy, and that’s the least of it. The bad part is that I am destroying what I have done for my eternal future. Have mercy, Lord! Mary, have mercy!
320 She had wanted to go to Camaiore rather than St. Andrea di Compito, as observed in note 312.
321 Gina Ferrari, her dear friend from school days.