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"My daughter, the tongue is not sufficient to narrate
the pain of these poor souls. As there are three
principal vices, namely: self-love, whence proceeds
the second, that is love of reputation, whence
proceeds the third, that is pride, with injustice and
cruelty, and with other filthiness and iniquitous
sins, that follow upon these.
"So I say to you, that in Hell, the souls have four
principal torments, out of which proceed all the
other torments. The first is, that they see
themselves deprived of the vision of Me, which is
such pain to them, that, were it possible, they would
rather choose the fire, and the tortures and
torments, and to see Me, than to be without the
torments and not to see Me.
"This first pain revives in them, then, the second,
the worm of Conscience, which gnaws unceasingly,
seeing that the soul is deprived of Me, and of the
conversation of the angels, through her sin, made
worthy of the conversation and sight of the devils,
which vision of the Devil is the third pain
and redoubles to them their every toil.
"As the saints exult in the sight of Me, refreshing
themselves with joyousness in the fruit of their
toils borne for Me with such abundance of love, and
displeasure of themselves, so does the sight of the
Devil revive these wretched ones to torments, because
in seeing him they know themselves more, that is to
say, they know that, by their own sin, they have made
themselves worthy of him. And so the worm of
Conscience gnaws more and more, and the fire of this
Conscience never ceases to burn. And the sight is
more painful to them, because they see him in his own
form, which is so horrible that the heart of man
could not imagine it.
"And if you remember well, you know that I showed him
to you in his own form for a little space of time,
hardly a moment, and you chose (after you had
returned to yourself) rather to walk on a road of
fire, even until the Day of Judgment, than to see him
again. With all this that you have seen, even you do
not know well how horrible he is, because, by Divine
justice, he appears more horrible to the soul that is
deprived of Me, and more or less according to the
gravity of her sin.
"The fourth torment that they have is the
fire. This fire burns and does not consume, for the
being of the soul cannot be consumed, because it is
not a material thing that fire can consume. But I, by
Divine justice, have permitted the fire to burn them
with torments, so that it torments them, without
consuming them, with the greatest pains in diverse
ways according to the diversity of their sins, to
some more, and to some less, according to the gravity
of their fault.
"Out of these four torments issue all others, such as
cold and heat and gnashing of the teeth and many
others. Now because they did not amend themselves
after the first reproof that they had of injustice
and false judgment, neither in the second, which was
that, in death, they would not hope in Me, nor grieve
for the offense done to Me, but only for their own
pain, have they thus so miserably received Eternal
Punishment."
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