I am in very bad condition and have been suffering greatly for a few days. My lungs and heart refuse to function. High fever goes on burning, and rough, dry coughing is bursting my chest. There are moments of suffocation and atrocious pains....
Well then, I am in a state of joy. In my great joy when I suffer more than the usual intense suffering. For, when I suffer this way, as in recent days, and am between life and death, Divine Charity has me taste the honey of the sapiential or divine words.’, That’s it. Today I am savoring this.
I was reading: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” My Lord, had me read only this sentence and then plunged me at once into the contemplation of this kingdom of God which is in me. And the joy, the already heavenly joy of the inhabitants of the Kingdom, of the possessors of the Kingdom, enveloped me, covered me, penetrated me, and transported me. The Kingdom of God, I exclaimed, is the kingdom of true joy! And I got lost in savoring this powerful, forceful joy, which is “full of life,” even for someone physically exhausted, for to a great degree it brings with it the perfection of Heaven, that perfection where everything representing pain, extenuation, hunger, thirst, sleep, and tears is excluded, which thus conveys to those experiencing it, even in the midst of the sharp pains of an illness or an agony, a placid equilibrium, a happiness, and a serene will to suffer so as to have the Kingdom increasingly in oneself, the Kingdom which is obtained by doing the Will of God.
“Oh, it really is this! The great prayer says so! Our Father.... Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done. That’s it. In order for his Kingdom to come one must do his will just as it is presented to us by this Father of love, who wants his Name to be sanctified by his children, not with words of inactive praise, but with works, so that they, in turn, will be sanctified through them and receive perfect joy.
My soul is reflecting on these matters and is entirely joyful, though in my flesh, and in everything and everyone around me, all is a source of pain after pain.... But the divine words are soft honey to those able to savor them through a gift received from the benevolence of God.