February 25, 1946prev home next
On waking up at 7:25 a.m. - for only in the morning was I able to rest - St. Raphael was already present. As yesterday, at the moment of Communion, when he was there, together with Our Lord. This morning he is alone. But the first action of my senses and thought on emerging from sleep was my seeing, contemplating, and greeting the dear angel, who smiled at me and invited me to start my work without heeding the weariness consuming me. And he then bid farewell and went off....
5 p.m.
The tenuous, very gentle voice, as if weary or exhausted, of someone who has suffered a lot, in an extremely white luminosity in the shape of a spiritualized body, said:
“It’s me. Don’t you recognize me? I am Aglae.176 The former mire that became light. I have come to speak to a sister of mine, less and less unfortunate than I was, but suffering the afflictions I once underwent, the purgatory of thirsting flesh.... I speak to her through you, who saw me in abjection and redemption and who from now on will be able to say you have seen me in glory. Oh, testify to how good the Lord is to the daughters of Eve, poisoned, but desiring to remove the burning heat from their blood in order to love Him.
“Tell her to love her purgatory by enduring it with patience and constancy and a spirit of sacrifice for obstinately sinful women. In my time of penance I suffered her afflictions. And I know. But I did not get discouraged. Like a patient with a badly smelling wound who must endure it because it is better for the pus to come out rather than remain in the blood to corrupt it, with my spirit I endured the memories of the flesh, its howls of madness.... My soul was higher up and did not consent. The flesh, like a wolf, howled below. Sometimes the howling even kept me from praying. I offered the Lord the prayer of endurance. And with the eyes of my spirit I looked at the Lord and with my spirit repeated his words. When I died...! An angel, my own, my own, who had not left me even when I was a monster of lust, said to me, on gathering my soul into his very pure hands, ‘More than this martyrdom, the other one, the unknown one, bloodless, in which sensuality was your torturer and executioner, turned you into a white host. Rejoice, for you have triumphed. Sensuality no longer exists. There is peace.’ I poured out rose oils on saying farewell, but the oil of my struggle against sensuality was more fragrant and pleasing.
“Tell this to my sister, who is afflicted. Tell her that the Master said so and justified us, tormented by our inferior part: ‘It is not what is material and foreign that corrupts man, but what comes out of the desire of his heart.’177 Let her divert her attention, using all means. She must not pause, after temptation, to consider whether she has sinned. Let her pass over it. To look back is to fan the fire again. Let her kiss the Redeemer on his sign of salvation. A kiss for every bite of the flesh, and amidst the flames of her earthly purgatory let her look to Heaven - to Heaven, which is open to us, too, after the harsh battle. “Good-bye. May the light of the Heavens always be with you.”
And she disappeared in a light enveloping her.
My inner advisor had said to me, shortly before she appeared, “In a little while from Heaven the saint will come to you whom you saw as a sinner and whom you would find mentioned today if you had a listing of the saints. It is just that she is not well known to the majority. She will speak to you for the tempted soul of the sister Father told you about.” But I had to stop right after Aglae’s farewell because an intense heart crisis came upon me. And I added the other words when the crisis was over. I am thus unsure whether the angel told me that she was mentioned today, February 25, or whether she is still mentioned nowadays. Just for the sake of accuracy178
176 A converted sinner in the work on the Gospel
177 Matthew 15:18-20, Mark 7:20-23, Luke 6:45.
178 We omit over four handwritten pages containing Azariah’s commentary on the Quinquagesima Mass (March 3, 1946).