Chapter 6: Of the intimate union of the Infant Jesus with her heart

0 UNATTAINABLE height of surpassing excellence ! O pro found abyss of inscrutable wisdom ! O immense extent of most desirable charity ! how powerfully and exuberantly are the most delicious torrents of Thy most sweet Divinity pouring themselves forth on me, vile worm that I am, crawl ing in my negligences and sins ; since it is permitted to me, even while wandering in exile, to speak, according to my poor capacity, of the ravishing sweetness and inconceivable delights by means of which those who unite themselves to God become one spirit with Him ; which blessedness is poured forth on me with such abundance, who am but a little dust. Since, after having permitted me to drink of this pre cious beverage, I am still privileged with the remembrance of it, I will use such words as I can to describe it.

It was on that most sacred night in which the sweet dew of Divine grace fell on all the world, and the heavens dropped sweetness, that my soul, exposed like a mystic fleece in the court of the monastery, having received in meditation this celestial rain, was prepared to assist at this Divine Birth, in which a Virgin brought forth a Son, true God and Man, even as a star produces its ray. In this night, I say, my soul beheld before it suddenly a delicate Child, but just born, in whom were concealed the greatest gifts of perfection. I imagined that I received this precious deposit in my bosom with the tenderest affection. As I possessed it within me, it seemed to me that all at once I was changed into the colour of this Divine Infant, if we may be permitted to call that colour which cannot be coinpared to anything visible.

Then I understood the meaning contained in those sweet and ineffable words : " God will (erit) be all in all " (1 Cor. xv. 28) ; and my soul, which was enriched by the presence of my Beloved, soon knew, by its transports of joy, that it possessed the presence of its Spouse. Then it received these words with exceeding avidity, which were presented as a delicious beverage to satisfy the ardour of its thirst : " As I am the figure of the substance of God, My Father, in His Divinity, so also you shall be the figure of My sub stance in My Humanity, receiving in your deified soul the infusions of My Divinity, as the air receives the brightness of the solar rays, that these rays may penetrate you so in timately as to prepare you for the closest union with Me."

O most noble balsam of the Divinity, pouring Thyself out like an ocean of charity, shooting forth and budding eternally, diffusing Thyself until the end of time ! O invin cible strength of the Hand of the most High, which causes so frail a vessel, and one which should be cast away in con tempt, to receive within it so precious a liquor ! O evident testimony of the exuberance of Divine goodness, not to withdraw from me when I wandered in the devious ways of sin, but rather to unite me to itself as far as my misery would permit !