1. Of the beginning of her spiri tual consolations through the recollection of the Lord's passion

As of old through the mouth of the holy prophets God spoke His secrets to the comfort of His elect, so now also He speaks to them by the writ ings of the learned, and the examples of the good, lest perchance troubled by the divers tribulations of the world, or torn by scourges, they fall away from the hope and expectation of the joys to come. For holy David, to whom God revealed the hidden things of His wisdom (Ps. 1 8), says that he frequently received the consolations of God amid many adversities. "According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart," he saith : " Thy consolations have given joy to my soul" (Ps. xciii 19). This sentence of Scripture God truly and manifestly fulfilled to the letter in ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM this holy virgin, whom first He cleansed, inebriating by divers pains and bitter nesses; but afterwards, amidst the bruises of many wounds visiting her, He poured in manifold consolations and rejoiced her. To repeat therefore something of what has been already said, after the first three or about four years from the beginning of her malady the virgin Lydwine was still impatient of the divine discipline, and not yet freely submissive to God, by Whom however nothing is done upon earth without cause; and when she saw her companions visiting her healthy and glad, and herself grievously sick, she desired rather health of body with the rest, than blessedness of soul through the virtue of patience. And because she did not yet savour spiritual things, and knew not what was more accept able to God, therefore sometimes she complained, and grieved much over her pains, and wept so very bitterly, that she would accept comfort from no one. Going in to her, therefore, Master John Pot her confessor, who was wont to communicate her twice a year, strove to induce her by his words of consola tion to moderate somewhat these tears no ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM and set a measure to her grief. Whence he persuaded her by a gentle exhortation to give and conform her self to the divine will, and to exercise herself in meditating upon the Lord's Passion, promising that by the means and aid thereof she would easily receive good consolation. Asking therefore the manner of this holy exercise, and having received from the priest the method of wholesome meditation, when she was desirous of exercising herself therein according to the formula given her, and did not immediately discover thence honey flowing from the rock, nor taste therein the bread of the prophet : overcome by weariness she soon cast aside as bitter absinthe that which she had received in her heart without fixedly rooting it therein. But when the same priest further in sisted and urged her most strongly to do violence to herself and persevere in her beginnings, and overcome her dis taste by a pious struggle, she, in structed by this excellent advice, easily yielded assent to the counsel of her priest. And at length the good habit of meditating upon God, gained by violence, brought her in due course of in ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM time such sweetness with the aid of heavenly grace, that denying herself perfectly she freely used to say, that if it were possible to recover the full health of her body by one Hail Mary, nevertheless she would not do it or desire it. Truly this was a change of the right hand of the Most High (Ps. Ixxvi 11); Who opened His hand to the needy (Prov. xxxi 20), and com forted her in her long languishing by nights on the bed of her sorrow. For drawn and enticed by the hidden sweet ness of the Lord's Passion, day and night at fixed intervals she used to turn over in thought the history of the same most sacred Passion divided into seven parts, according to the number of the Seven Canonical Hours ; and finding therein a hidden manna, she was filled with the joy of such sweet ness, that now not herself but Christ, Whose Passion she contemplated, seemed to endure what she had hither to appeared to suffer in the body. Then taught of the Spirit by experi ence, she could fully say with Isaias, "Verily Thou art a hidden God" (Is. xlv 15). And again exclaim: "My soul hath desired Thee in the night;

ST. LYDWINE of SCHIEDAM yea, and with my spirit within me in the morning early I will watch to