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"It remains for Me to tell you of the fruit produced
by tears shed with desire, and received into the
soul.
"But first will I speak to you of that first
class of men whom I mentioned at the beginning of
this My discourse; those, that is, who live miserably
in the world, making a god of created things and of
their own sensuality, from which comes damage to
their body and soul. I said to you that every tear
proceeded from the heart, and this is the truth, for
the heart grieves in proportion to the love it feels.
So worldly men weep when their heart feels pain, that
is, when they are deprived of something which they
loved.
"But many and diverse are their complainings. Do you
know how many? There are as many as there exist
different loves. And inasmuch as the root of
self-love is corrupt, everything that grows from it
is corrupt also. Self-love is a tree on which grow
nothing but fruits of death, putrid flowers, stained
leaves, branches bowed down, and struck by various
winds. This is the tree of the soul.
"For you are all
trees of love, and without love you cannot live, for
you have been made by Me for love. The soul who lives
virtuously, places the root of her tree in the valley
of true humility; but those who live thus miserably
are planted on the mountain of pride, whence it
follows that since the root of the tree is badly
planted, the tree can bear no fruits of life but only
of death. Their fruits are their actions, which are
all poisoned by many and diverse kinds of sin, and if
they should produce some good fruit among their
actions, even it will be spoiled by the foulness of
its root, for no good actions done by a soul in
mortal sin are of value for eternal life, for they
are not done in grace.
"Let not, however, such a soul
abandon on this account its good works, for every good
deed is rewarded, and every evil deed punished. A
good action performed out of a state of grace is not
sufficient to merit eternal life, as has been said,
but My Justice, My Divine Goodness, grants an
incomplete reward, imperfect as the action which
obtains it. Often such a man is rewarded in temporal
matters; sometimes I give him more time in which to
repent, as I have already said to you in another
place.
"This also will I sometimes do, I grant him the
life of grace by means of My servants who are
pleasing and acceptable to Me. I acted in this way
with My glorious apostle Paul, who abandoned his
infidelity, and the persecutions he directed against
the Christians, at the prayer of St. Stephen. See
truly, therefore, that, in whatever state a man may
be, he should never stop doing good.
"I said to you that the flowers of this tree were
putrid, and so in truth they are. Its flowers are the
stinking thoughts of the heart, displeasing to Me,
and full of hatred and unkindness towards their
neighbor. So if a man be a thief, he robs Me of
honor, and takes it himself. This flower stinks less
than that of false judgment, which is of two kinds.
"The first with regard to Me, by which men judge My
secret judgments, gauging falsely all My mysteries,
that is, judging that which I did in love, to have
been done in hatred; that which I did in truth to
have been done in falsehood; that which I give them
for life, to have been given them for death. They
condemn and judge everything according to their weak
intellect; for they have blinded the eye of their
intellect with sensual self-love, and hidden the
pupil of the most holy Faith, which they will not
allow to see or know the Truth.
"The second kind of
false judgment is directed against a man's neighbor,
from which often come many evils, because the
wretched man wishes to set himself up as the judge of
the affections and heart of other rational creatures,
when he does not yet know himself. And, for an action
which he may see, or for a word he may hear, he will
judge the affection of the heart. My servants always
judge well, because they are founded on Me, the
Supreme Good; but such as these always judge badly,
for they are founded on evil. Such critics as these
cause hatreds, murders, unhappinesses of all kinds to
their neighbors, and remove themselves far away from
the love of My servants' virtue.
"Truly these fruits follow the leaves, which are the
words which issue from their mouth in insult to Me
and the Blood of My only-begotten Son, and in hatred
to their neighbors. And they think of nothing else
but cursing and condemning My works, and blaspheming
and saying evil of every rational creature, according
as their judgment may suggest to them. The
unfortunate creatures do not remember that the tongue
is made only to give honor to Me, and to confess
sins, and to be used in love of virtue, and for the
salvation of the neighbor. These are the stained
leaves of that most miserable fault, because the
heart from which they proceeded was not clean, but
all spotted with duplicity and misery.
"How much
danger, apart from the spiritual privation of grace
to the soul, of temporal loss may not occur! For you
have all heard and seen how, through words alone,
have come revolutions of states, and destructions of
cities, and many homicides and other evils, a word
having entered the heart of the listener, and having
passed through a space not large enough for a knife.
"I say that this tree has seven branches drooping to
the earth, on which grow the flowers and leaves in
the way I have told you. These branches are the seven
mortal sins which are full of many and diverse
wickednesses, contained in the roots and trunk of
self-love and of pride, which first made both
branches and flowers of many thoughts, the leaves of
words, and the fruits of wicked deeds.
"They stand
drooping to the earth because the branches of mortal
sin can turn no other way than to the earth, the
fragile disordinate substance of the world. Do not
marvel, they can turn no way but that in which they
can be fed by the earth; for their hunger is
insatiable, and the earth is unable to satisfy them.
They are insatiable and unbearable to themselves, and
it is conformable to their state that they should
always be unquiet, longing and desiring that thing
which they have to satiety. This is the reason why
such satiety cannot content them, because they (who
are infinite in their being) are always desiring
something finite; because their being will never end,
though their life to grace ends when they commit
mortal sin.
"Man is placed above all creatures, and not beneath
them, and he cannot be satisfied or content except in
something greater than himself. Greater than himself
there is nothing but Myself, the Eternal God.
Therefore I alone can satisfy him, and, because he is
deprived of this satisfaction by his guilt, he
remains in continual torment and pain. Weeping
follows pain, and when he begins to weep the wind
strikes the tree of self-love, which he has made the
principle of all his being."
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