Since yesterday I have been on Mary’s lap. And how good I feel! It is not just a phrase. I really feel as though I am on her knees. She is holding me seated towards the left in such fashion that I am resting my right side on her heart and my head on her shoulder. She is clasping me with her left arm and from time to time says to me, “Be at ease. Rest.” Oh, I seem to have returned - but it’s even sweeter - to those rare hours when Mother would take me onto her lap and make me so happy!
My physical affliction is so great - suffocation, emphysema, and cardiac insufficiency are constantly increasing. Tonight I have gone right to life’s limit, with numerous extrasystoles and a drop to a pulse of forty-six beats a minute. I no longer breathed; I was in a cold sweat - real agony. But Mother had said to me, “Be at ease,” and I felt I was in her arms. I had cuddled up in the nest of her lap, arm, and mantle and was not afraid even of death.
After the atrocious agony of these last twenty-five days - a spiritual agony compared to which this physical one I am now undergoing is a mere trifle - my agonal suffering of the flesh is turning into a lark; indeed, it is rendered blessed by the peace being poured into me by contact with Mary.
No, my state is not and cannot be a deception. Pain, yearning, and the wish for my house are still present; there is an atrocious recollection of what I have suffered; there is a perceptible, enduring sensation of abandonment by God. These things are still present. But I am on Mary’s lap. I can withstand them. It is as if a heavenly anesthetic were attenuating moral sensitivity to pain in me and injecting a sense of celestial euphoria.
Blessed be you, Mary, my Mother! You save me! Save me now and in the hour of my death. Mother, hold me on your lap, and I will be safe until the end.