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Then God, turning the eye of His mercy towards her,
allowing Himself to be constrained by her tears, and
bound by the chain of her holy desire, replied with
lamentation -- "My sweetest daughter, your tears
constrain Me, because they are joined with My love,
and fall for love of Me, and your painful desires
force Me to answer you; but marvel, and see how My
spouse has defiled her face, and become leprous, on
account of her filthiness and self-love, and swollen
with the pride and avarice of those who feed on their
own sin.
"What I say of the universal body and the mystical
body of the Holy Church (that is to say the Christian
religion) I also say of My ministers, who stand and
feed at the breasts of Holy Church; and, not only
should they feed themselves, but it is also their
duty to feed and hold to those breasts the universal
body of Christian people, and also any other people
who should wish to leave the darkness of their
infidelity, and bind themselves as members to My
Church.
"See then with what ignorance and darkness, and
ingratitude, are administered, and with what filthy
hands are handled this glorious milk and blood of My
spouse, and with what presumption and irreverence
they are received. Wherefore, that which really gives
life, often gives, through the defects of those who
receive it, death; that is to say, the precious Blood
of My only-begotten Son, which destroyed death and
darkness, and gave life and truth, and confounded
falsehood.
"For I give this Blood and use It for salvation and
perfection in the case of that man who disposes
himself properly to receive it, for It gives life and
adorns the soul with every grace, in proportion to
the disposition and affection of him who receives It;
similarly It gives death to him who receives It
unworthily, living in iniquity and in the darkness of
mortal sin; to him, I say, It gives death and not
life; not through defect of the Blood, nor through
defect of the minister, though there might be great
evil in him, because his evil would not spoil nor
defile the Blood nor diminish Its grace and virtue,
nor does an evil minister do harm to him to whom he
gives the Blood, but to himself he does the harm of
guilt, which will be followed by punishment, unless
he correct himself with contrition and repentance.
" I say then that the Blood does harm to him who
receives it unworthily, not through defect of the
Blood, nor of the minister, but through his own evil
disposition and defect inasmuch as he has befouled
his mind and body with such impurity and misery, and
has been so cruel to himself and his neighbor. He has
used cruelty to himself, depriving himself of grace,
trampling under the feet of his affection the fruit
of the Blood which he had received in Holy Baptism,
when the stain of original sin was taken from him by
virtue of the Blood, which stain he drew from his
origin, when he was generated by his father and
mother.
"Wherefore I gave My Word, My only-begotten Son,
because the whole stuff of human generation was
corrupted through the sin of the first man Adam.
Wherefore, all of you, vessels made of this stuff,
were corrupted and not disposed to the possession of
eternal life -- so I, with My dignity, joined Myself
to the baseness of your human generation, in order to
restore it to grace which you had lost by sin; for I
was incapable of suffering, and yet, on account of
guilt, My divine justice demanded suffering.
"But man was not sufficient to satisfy it, for, even
if he had satisfied to a certain extent, he could
only have satisfied for himself, and not for other
rational creatures, besides which, neither for
himself, nor for others, could man satisfy, his sin
having been committed against Me, who am the Infinite
Good. Wishing, however, to restore man, who was
enfeebled, and could not satisfy for the above
reason, I sent My Word, My own Son, clothed in your
own very nature, the corrupted clay of Adam, in order
that He might endure suffering in that self-same
nature in which man had offended, suffering in His
body even to the opprobrious death of the Cross, and
so He satisfied My justice and My divine mercy.
"For My mercy willed to make satisfaction for the sin
of man and to dispose him to that good for which I
had created him. This human nature, joined with the
divine nature, was sufficient to satisfy for the
whole human race, not only on account of the pain
which it sustained in its finite nature, that is in
the flesh of Adam, but by virtue of the Eternal
Deity, the divine and infinite nature joined to it.
The two natures being thus joined together, I
received and accepted the sacrifice of My
only-begotten Son, kneaded into one dough with the
divine nature, by the fire of divine love which was
the fetter which held him fastened and nailed to the
Cross in this way.
"Thus human nature was sufficient to satisfy for
guilt, but only by virtue of the divine nature. And
in this way was destroyed the stain of Adam's sin,
only the mark of it remaining behind, that is an
inclination to sin, and to every sort of corporeal
defect, like the cicatrice which remains when a man
is healed of a wound. In this way the original fault
of Adam was able still to cause a fatal stain;
wherefore the coming of the great Physician, that is
to say, of My only-begotten Son, cured this invalid,
He drinking this bitter medicine, which man could not
drink on account of his great weakness, like a
foster-mother who takes medicine instead of her
suckling, because she is grown up and strong, and the
child is not fit to endure its bitterness.
"He was man's foster-mother, enduring, with the
greatness and strength of the Deity united with your
nature, the bitter medicine of the painful death of
the Cross, to give life to you little ones
debilitated by guilt. I say therefore that the mark
alone of original sin remains, which sin you take
from your father and your mother when you were
generated by them. But this mark is removed from the
soul, though not altogether, by Holy Baptism, which
has the virtue of communicating the life of grace by
means of that glorious and precious Blood. Wherefore,
at the moment that the soul receives Holy Baptism,
original sin is taken away from her, and grace is
infused into her, and that inclination to sin, which
remains from the original corruption, as has been
said, is indeed a source of weakness, but the soul
can keep the bridle on it if she choose.
"Then the vessel of the soul is disposed to receive
and increase in herself grace, more or less,
according as it pleases her to dispose herself
willingly with affection, and desire of loving and
serving Me; and, in the same way, she can dispose
herself to evil as to good, in spite of her having
received grace in Holy Baptism. Wherefore when the
time of discretion is come, the soul can, by her free
will, make choice either of good or evil, according
as it pleases her will; and so great is this liberty
that man has, and so strong has this liberty been
made by virtue of this glorious Blood, that no demon
or creature can constrain him to one smallest fault
without his free consent.
"He has been redeemed from slavery, and made free in
order that he might govern his own sensuality, and
obtain the end for which he was created. Oh,
miserable man, who delights to remain in the mud like
a brute, and does not learn this great benefit which
he has received from Me! A benefit so great, that the
poor wretched creature full of such ignorance could
receive no greater."
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