In the meantime I shall make this first observation; I would otherwise forget it.
The passage on the “Burial of Jesus” last year, included in the index on the Passion, which we cut apart because it struck us as superfluous as a repetition, was, however, useful to explain different matters to those desirous of (honestly) knowing everything concerning the Lord and also to those denying the real death of Christ. Towards the end it dealt with the way the Body was embalmed and placed in the cloth. And this explained a number of things.
Well, it is now over and done with. But be sure that, when I am not sustained by Jesus, I am a perfect imbecile; I see nothing and understand nothing. It is thus utterly futile to come and ask me for something after my task is finished. I no longer know anything. I no longer grasp the usefulness of a passage. At all. Absolute zero and absolute darkness.
This morning at dawn I was shown why that piece had been placed in the index of passages. And I swallowed my... medicine against the pride of human judgment. I would now add a marginal note on an attached sheet containing an explanation of the preparation of the Body and include it for the benefit and instruction of both those desirous of knowledge and those denying it.
And let us now continue.36
36 We pass over slightly under fifty-one handwritten pages dated April 24-May 4, 1945 containing ten episodes from The Second Year of the Public Life.