3. God Gives Authority. How Billy Goats Become Lambs
That this same noble cleric' was chosen deacon is God's will. For he himself said: "For this reason I have taken him from one chair and put him onto another, that he might be food for billy goats."' Explanation: God calls the cathedral canons billy goats because their flesh stinks of lust in eternal truth before his Holy Trinity. The skin of a billy goat is noble, and this is true of their authority and possessions. But when this skin is removed at death they lose all their nobility. And our Lord was asked how these goats might become lambs. Our Lord spoke thus: "If they eat the fodder that Canon Dietrich puts in their trough, that is, holy penance and sincere advice in confession, they shall become the kind of lambs that one calls sheep rams: lambs with horns." The horn is spiritual power that they use in a holy manner to God's praise. One should be strong and trust God utterly, for he says: "I myself shall help this canon successfully atone for his guilt."
4. Discernment and Fear That Preserve the Senses from Earthly Things`'
Oh, what a wretched person I am! I complain to God in heaven that I am worse than I was thirty years ago. For the creatures that then helped me bear my misery did not have to be so noble to help this poor body thrive. This is why I must constantly station two guards between my soul and all earthly things, so that she may find just that amount of pleasure in my flesh that my meager needs require. They also preserve my senses, so that these earthly things do not lead me astray into a greedy desire to possess much or to linger in pleasure.
The one guardian is discernment, which arranges all things in such a way that they are used entirely according to God's will. In this way a person always retains a heart alien to all earthly things, so alien that, if a person loses earthly things, his heart becomes so buoyant, his soul so unfettered, and his senses so carefree that he feels as comfortable in God as though his dearest friend had taken the heaviest of all burdens from him; for whichever person does not find earthly things to be a heavy burden cannot be called a truly spiritual person before God. This is why our Lord said: "In times of want one uses all things rightly. What is good about poverty is that it uses only what is necessary. That is why it is holy. Then overindulgence cannot bring darkness into the soul."
My other guardian is holy fear, which together with God's wisdom keeps my soul from smiling upon the earthly things that are given to her. Rather, she receives them as though they were a temptation, a hook baited to catch cupidity and vain honor, which cast many a praiseworthy person in religious life into such darkness that he loses the light of discernment, the fire of love, and the taste for God's sweetness, peace, and mercy without even noticing it.
And so our Lord said: "Indeed, they make fine arguments: that they want to love earthly things and gather much for themselves so that they might the better serve me. But they serve themselves more than me." The person who works only for his own comfort and advantage is his own self. However, everyone should be a Christ in himself, living for God and not for himself. For that most blessed person who lives completely in God, it is all the same to him what he has. For it is holy poverty into which God casts this man with his power in the same way he cast his most beloved Son down from heaven onto the road and into a feeding trough belonging to someone else. Just so does our Lord cast his chosen friends far from earthly consolation, so that they might hunger for heavenly consolation.
A truly holy person fears earthly happiness more than he shows concern for the basic necessities of life. Why? His home is in heaven and his prison is in this world. This is why our Lord said: "Those who know and love the nobility of my liberty cannot bear to love me only for my own sake. They must also love me in creatures. Thus do I remain what is most close to them in their souls."
5. After Love and Desire the Beauty of Creatures Gives Knowledge Along with Sadness
The first knowledge that God gave me, after touching me with love and after the flood of desire, was accompanied by sorrow. Whenever I glanced at anything that was beautiful or dear to me, I began sighing and then weeping; and then I began to reflect, to complain, and to speak thus to all things: "Alas! Be careful! No, this is not your Beloved who greeted your heart, lit up your senses, and captured so blissfully your soul. Don't let the rich delights of earthly things push you away from him. Rather, in the nobility of creatures, in their beauty and usefulness, I shall love God and not myself."
6. At the End You Should Have Love, Longing, Fear, and Three Kinds of Sorrow
I asked our Lord how I should conduct myself in the time just before my death.
Our Lord said: "You should conduct yourself in the final hours just as you did in the beginning. You should have love and longing, sorrow and fear; for these four things were the beginning of your life, and so they should also be your end."
Then I said: "Dear Lord, what happens to those two things that are the foundation and crown of heavenly honor: Christian faith and true hope?"
Our Lord responded thus: "Your faith becomes a knowing and your hope is transformed into true certainty."
I saw these explanations in his words and know them in my heart, as well.
My sorrow arises from three things. Most of all, I am sorry for my sins. This is the result of love. But by constantly loving I have lost the pain of sorrow. I am sorry for the sins of all human beings, which makes me like a sick person who has a craving for something very fine that he can never or seldom have. And so my heart remains disconsolate and my soul in her desire chases after a huge wild animal. Our Lord said about this: "One cannot catch large animals unless one drives them into water. Thus a sinner will never be converted unless he is pursued by the swift desire of holy people into the deep tears of their hearts."
I am sorry for all the good works that I have failed to do out of love of my flesh without real necessity. Our Lord said about this: "One cannot build a dwelling unless one has a place to build. In like manner one cannot receive a reward in heaven without having performed good works." Our Lord lets this hold true because of love in his heart, so that he can say to each and every soul: "Receive, my very dearest, this rich honor you yourself have earned." That God might be able to address these words to the soul with sincerity to her glory and love, as though he were not the cause of her happiness, and that she might receive in body and soul full honor-this is why our Lord is so deeply concerned that in our struggles, in our want, and in times of suffering we carry on in sincere love: that he might in generosity depart from his justice as much as is fitting for his Godhead. This is what I discovered in the heap of God's favors.
7. Our Self-Will Can Resist the Barbed Hook. The Good Soul Comes Swiftly to God
In my community there is a religious person who causes me much distress because of her contrary disposition. This person is not willing to obey me in regard to anything.' With great intensity I complained to God and was very perplexed how this could be. And our Lord said: "Look what is causing the trouble."
Then I saw that a special devil was clinging to this person and was pulling her away from all good things. So I said: "Who gave you the power to cause God such great humiliation through this person?"
And the devil said: "Nothing other than this person's own selfish will gave me this power."
At these words I saw that the devil pursued all religious persons who give him the opportunity with such derisive contempt because they lead such phony lives by making excuses for themselves before God and all creatures.
Then I said: "Who is going to help this poor wretch to become free from you?"
The devil, under compulsion from God, said: "No one can help her but her own free will, for God has given her the power to change. If she does that, I will be forced to scurry off."
"I hereby ask you by the eternal Truth: what is your name?"
The devil replied: "I am called Barbed Hook, and this throng that you see back there are all mates of mine with the same task that I have. There are as many of them as we find people who are not willing to obey their
well-intentioned superior in good things."
Thereupon my soul flew to God so swiftly that she literally arose with no effort on her part and snuggled herself into the Holy Trinity, just as a child snuggles into its mother's coat and lays itself right at her breast. My soul then spoke with the power and the voice of all creatures thus: "Ah, dear Lover, consider my distress with this person so that, Lord, you change her attitude with your divine sweetness."
"No," said our Lord, "she is not worthy of my sweetness. Instead I shall make her body sick, and the pain will so paralyze her that only with great difficulty will she continue on her sinful path. And I shall strike her dumb, that she not utter spiteful words. She shall also become so blind that she will be ashamed to see frivolity. And yet, whatever one does to her, one does to me."
Fourteen days later this actually happened. Alleluia.
8. Between God and Lucifer There Are Two Kinds of Purgatory. How the Devil Tortures Souls
Our human brother Jesus Christ ascended with all virtues into heaven to the heights of his Godhead. And no one can follow him in this unless he, too, has all virtues. Similarly the Holy Trinity has ascended in glory above all things to the blissful heights with all its virtuous friends, who are ever glorious, fair, and joyous in the same measure that they possess within themselves praiseworthy likenesses of his divine virtue. Indeed, all virtues that are practiced on earth with good intentions and not hypocritically, and are adorned with love and performed without sin, are the musical strings in heaven that resound without end out of the faithful soul and out of the submissive body into the Holy Trinity. The Father thanks the Son for having brought her there with virtues, and the Son honors the Father for having created her, and the Holy Spirit gently urges Father and Son that the Holy Trinity might flow out to her with such force and sing so sweetly that she view and love all things with God. Then the sinful devil Lucifer has sunk down under all things together with those who strive after and love only the vices.
Between God's heights and the devil's pit there are two kinds of purgatory. In these two purgatories there are many kinds of suffering and anguish. The first purgatory consists of profitable sufferings that afflict us in this world with various kinds of pain. The second purgatory-after this life-is so large that it begins at the mouth of hell and ends at heaven's gate. But the devils can torment souls only on earth, in the air, and in all the places where a person has sinned, and in the heights where he polluted the air with his sins. Thereby the devil convicts them, so that their shame and torment are all the greater because of all the sins that remain unatoned here. But when they have become so blessed that they have been freed from the hands of the devil, they still burn painfully within themselves because of small wrongdoings. Thereafter, through help and forbearance they pass beyond all distress. This is so close to heaven that they possess all joys but three: They do not see God. They have not yet received their honor. They have not yet been crowned. This is the purgatory on earth and the one in the air between hell and heaven. Because of her spiritual nature, however, the soul cannot suffer torments from physical things once she has left the body."
9. The Saints Honor Those Who Honor Them and They Console Them at Their Death
When one honors the saints by remembering them well, together with all the throng,12 as one can do on the day that God honored them with a holy death, they are so grateful that they immediately come in all the glory that they received from their holy actions. I actually saw this on the feast of St. Mary Magdalene as one was glorifying God with songs of praise for the great honor that she received as a reward. She danced about in the choir to the holy song and looked each of the singers in the eyes. She came forward and said: "All those who honor my death, I shall be with them at the end and shall honor them in return. I shall stand ever at their side, giving as much help as they are capable of receiving."
Four majestic archangels led her in their midst and the number of lesser angels was beyond human reckoning. Then I asked her what the names of the four princes were. She said: "The first is called Power; the second is called Longing; the third is called Good Will; the fourth is called Constancy. With these four virtues I overcame all the sufferings of my heart. For this God gave me two things as a reward: noble servants and a crown. It is the same with other saints as well."
Our Lord says: "When one blows upon the tiniest spark, it contributes warmth and brightness in heaven's fire, where the saints are all aglow."
10. Prayer, Masses, God's Word, the Lives of Good People, Fasting, and Carenae13 Free Souls from Purgatory
I prayed for a soul whose body had been killed in the midst of a sinful life. Then our Lord said this: "Seven years of fasting and seven years of carenae would be like one raindrop on a huge fire. With less than thirty years of praying he cannot be helped, because he lost his life thirty years before his time through foolish pride. These he has to make good to me with suffering."
[The soul speaks:]' "Alas, Lord, can I not beseech your goodness?"
[God speaks:] "Indeed, when two wrestle with each other, the weaker must lose. I shall willingly be the weaker, even though I am almighty. Three thousand masses are the price of his redemption, for he never attended a whole mass except out of human respect."15
"Lord, what was it that saved him?"
"Whenever he heard my words, he sighed. I rewarded him for that since toward the end he so lived that he sighed because of his sins."
"Lord, if his mother's brother-who from his youth till he turned gray has been considered a pious man and who is worn with toil and care-were to offer all this up for him, and for love of you were to depart and place himself in the position where he first became well known, would you perhaps let this soul go free?"
"Yes," said our Lord, "if I were so urgently importuned, I would have to grant everything that one wanted."
"Lord, if this religious man were to give his good works to this poor soul, what would happen to it then?"
Full of cheer and contentment he said: "Tell my friends: even if the earth were made of gold and the bright sun shined upon it constantly both day and night with the sweet breezes of May and with delightful flowers ripening to fruit, I would not want to be there for one hour, so blissful is this life."
Hehad not yet entered heaven eternal.
11. How a Student Is Dead and a Dominican Was Seems
Our Lord spoke thus: "I say to you with my burning Godhead and with my living humanity that his nature is dead in a holy death, and so he can no longer commit serious sins on earth."
Then he was seen looking like a Dominican, standing on a column of red marble and preaching to the people thus: "Come, blessed of my Father," come to me, all ye blessed; and depart from me all ye cursed."
Then it was seen and understood that all preachers preach and teach us from these two sayings.
12. How You Should Conduct Yourself as to Fourteen Things
13. How Religious out of Blindness Fend Off Inwardness from Themselves. The Sixfold Power of God's Gift
"Ah, dear Jesus, God of heaven, I have to ask you about something, Lord. I just cannot stand it any longer because of the great blindness that I recognize at the bottom of it." It is this: that religious people fend off divine inwardness in the following way. When God sees fit to let his divine heart shine forth in love toward the very blessed soul so intensely that a small spark alights on the cold soul and she receives so much that the heart of this person begins to glow, his soul to melt, and his eyes to flow, then our Lord would like to make an earthly person so heavenly that one actually wants to follow, love, and see God in him. And the person's senses say: "No, I can be of much use in external matters."" And it is especially cloistered people who say this when they are being especially clever.
Indeed, this favor that God is wont to grant a person powerfully and unexpectedly is so noble in itself and brings with it such closeness to God that it is no small sin that a person commits who rejects him for the sake of some earthly thing. Alas, ignoble soul, h
ow can you manage to reject God before enjoying him fully, as is his will? For his most sublime pleasure lies hidden in you.
Do you want to know how you should make use of God's holy favor and enjoy it according to God's will? Well, it shall teach you this itself if you welcome it. You should receive it with external virtues and internal desire. In humble fear you should keep hold of it, submissive in all tribulations. Give it time and room in you; that is all that it asks of you. It shall melt you so deeply into God that you know what his will is concerning how long you should pursue his intense caressing of you, and when and how you should work for sinners and for those in purgatory, and should attend the needs of each and every person, alive or dead.
When you have accomplished this inwardly to God's pleasure insofar as lies in your soul's power-she will grow weary in herself as long as she is in the grips of her mortal body-then the soul says after this pleasurable experience:
14. Those Who Complain in Suffering Lack Six Things; How One Should Bear Sickness and Contempt
For this reason our Lord said: "This person does not want to be sick and does not want to be scorned. What, then, shall I use as the foundation of his glory?"
"Lord, when a person is sick and scorned, how can he then increase your glory?"
"When he is sick, he should honor, serve, and love me alone with cheerful forbearance. When he is scorned, he should love me and wait patiently. When preachers and confessors are forced from their office and cannot exercise it but still have the holy wish to do so, that is not an obstacle to their happiness. It is an enhancement of their glory."
15. The Sufferings of Enoch and Elijah, the Last Preachers, and the Wickedness of the Antichrist'
The Flowing Light of the Godhead Page 21