On the evening of Thursday, March 8, after having written a large part of the Last Supper, I wondered how I could understand the most obscure matters while Jesus was speaking. And I asked myself, “Is this what happened to the others, too?” By others I meant the men and women mystics in these twenty centuries of Christianity, the doctors, and so on.
I heard a voice speaking to me and a great gladness coming upon me. I was anything but glad, for the distress of Jesus’ last hours was upon me and crushed me to the point of physical suffering. It said, “Do you know who I am?” But I did not know. I felt only a peace and saw only a bright light, moonlike, very lovely, in the form of a body, but so immaterial that I could not distinguish. “I am Catherine.”
I said to myself, “Oh, beautiful one! The other time18 her voice was different! This is a crystalline, youthful, shrill voice; but it has nothing to do with the lovely voice of the Sienese saint.”
“I am not the one you are thinking of. She, too, was learned by the work of Divine Wisdom. But I am Catherine of Alexandria. Christ’s martyr. And I protect you. I tell you that in us as well everything became light in the light of Jesus. Not through human study, but through superhuman action we became the learned ones of the Lord. To love Him that way. Serve Him that way. Praise Him that way And to cause Him to be loved, served, and praised through this doctrine, which came from on high and which, though humanly incomprehensible in its most sublime elements, was nonetheless as simple as a child’s words if we heard it while remaining with Him, the Bridegroom. Good-bye. I have answered you. I love you. You are a little sister. May the Triune Love be with you.”
And the light faded out, and the voice grew silent. Nothing else. I fell asleep, happy about this new friend in Heaven.19
18 See the entry for November 9 in The Notebooks. 1944.
19 We pass over numerous handwritten pages (March 10-18) containing a number of episodes from The First Year in the Public Life and three entire notebooks written between March 2 and April 7, 1946 containing episodes from the Passion and Glorifcation cycles.