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"I have told you how all sins are accomplished by
means of your neighbor, through the principles which
I exposed to you, that is, because men are deprived
of the affection of love, which gives light to every
virtue.
"In the same way self-love, which destroys charity
and affection towards the neighbor, is the principle
and foundation of every evil. All scandals, hatred,
cruelty, and every sort of trouble proceed from this
perverse root of self-love, which has poisoned the
entire world, and weakened the mystical body of the
Holy Church, and the universal body of the believers
in the Christian religion; and, therefore, I said to
you, that it was in the neighbor, that is to say in
the love of him, that all virtues were founded; and,
truly indeed did I say to you, that charity gives
life to all the virtues, because no virtue can be
obtained without charity, which is the pure love of
Me.
"Wherefore, when the soul knows herself, as we have
said above, she finds humility and hatred of her own
sensual passion, for she learns the perverse law,
which is bound up in her members, and which ever
fights against the spirit. And, therefore, arising
with hatred of her own sensuality, crushing it under
the heel of reason, with great earnestness, she
discovers in herself the bounty of My goodness,
through the many benefits which she has received from
Me, all of which she considers again in herself.
"She attributes to Me, through humility, the
knowledge which she has obtained of herself, knowing
that, by My grace, I have drawn her out of darkness
and lifted her up into the light of true knowledge.
When she has recognized My goodness, she loves it
without any medium, and yet at the same time with a
medium, that is to say, without the medium of herself
or of any advantage accruing to herself, and with the
medium of virtue, which she has conceived through
love of Me, because she sees that, in no other way,
can she become grateful and acceptable to Me, but by
conceiving, hatred of sin and love of virtue; and,
when she has thus conceived by the affection of love,
she immediately is delivered of fruit for her
neighbor, because, in no other way, can she act out
the truth she has conceived in herself, but, loving
Me in truth, in the same truth she serves her
neighbor.
"And it cannot be otherwise, because love of Me and
of her neighbor are one and the same thing, and, so
far as the soul loves Me, she loves her neighbor,
because love towards him issues from Me. This is the
means which I have given you, that you may exercise
and prove your virtue therewith; because, inasmuch as
you can do Me no profit, you should do it to your
neighbor. This proves that you possess Me by grace in
your soul, producing much fruit for your neighbor and
making prayers to Me, seeking with sweet and amorous
desire My honor and the salvation of souls.
"The soul, enamored of My truth, never ceases to
serve the whole world in general, and more or less in
a particular case according to the disposition of the
recipient and the ardent desire of the donor, as I
have shown above, when I declared to you that the
endurance of suffering alone, without desire, was not
sufficient to punish a fault.
"When she has discovered the advantage of this
unitive love in Me, by means of which, she truly
loves herself, extending her desire for the salvation
of the whole world, thus coming to the aid of its
neediness, she strives, inasmuch as she has done good
to herself by the conception of virtue, from which
she has drawn the life of grace, to fix her eye on
the needs of her neighbor in particular.
"Wherefore, when she has discovered, through the
affection of love, the state of all rational
creatures in general, she helps those who are at
hand, according to the various graces which I have
entrusted to her to administer; one she helps with
doctrine, that is, with words, giving sincere counsel
without any respect of persons, another with the
example of a good life, and this indeed all give to
their neighbor, the edification of a holy and
honorable life.
"These are the virtues, and many others, too many to
enumerate, which are brought forth in the love of the
neighbor; but, although I have given them in such a
different way, that is to say not all to one, but to
one, one virtue, and to another, another, it so
happens that it is impossible to have one, without
having them all, because all the virtues are bound
together.
"Wherefore, learn, that, in many cases I give one
virtue, to be as it were the chief of the others,
that is to say, to one I will give principally love,
to another justice, to another humility, to one a
lively faith, to another prudence or temperance, or
patience, to another fortitude. These, and many other
virtues, I place, indifferently, in the souls of many
creatures; it happens, therefore, that the particular
one so placed in the soul becomes the principal
object of its virtue; the soul disposing herself, for
her chief conversation, to this rather than to other
virtues, and, by the effect of this virtue, the soul
draws to herself all the other virtues, which, as has
been said, are all bound together in the affection of
love; and so with many gifts and graces of virtue,
and not only in the case of spiritual things but also
of temporal. I use the word temporal for the things
necessary to the physical life of man; all these I
have given indifferently, and I have not placed them
all in one soul, in order that man should, perforce,
have material for love of his fellow.
"I could easily have created men possessed of all
that they should need both for body and soul, but I
wish that one should have need of the other, and that
they should be My ministers to administer the graces
and the gifts that they have received from Me.
Whether man will or no, he cannot help making an act
of love. It is true, however, that that act, unless
made through love of Me, profits him nothing so far
as grace is concerned. See then, that I have made men
My ministers, and placed them in diverse stations and
various ranks, in order that they may make use of the
virtue of love.
"Wherefore, I show you that in My house are many
mansions, and that I wish for no other thing than
love, for in the love of Me is fulfilled and
completed the love of the neighbor, and the law
observed. For he, only, can be of use in his state of
life, who is bound to Me with this love."
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