To comfort my most painful return to sensitivity, the good Lord grants me the smile of my angel. After having suffered greatly and wept just as much. I understand this from the way I find myself broken, with my eyes burned by the tears drying around my eyebrows. I remember having dozed off after having consummated my daily hour of mortal sadness and weeping, which only God sees. I recall nothing else afterwards. But my trunk, entirely stiffened, my heart and lungs, which seem to me to be lacerated and pierced by blades, and my eyes, which have become dimmer than ever, tell me unmistakably that when I was no longer the mistress of myself, I wept unreservedly, without regard for my numberless adhesions, which are shaken by the unrestrained sobs and later hurt a lot.
I asked Marta, “Did I cry?” She told me that I had wept and laughed. I must have laughed. As for weeping, I certainly wept and a lot.
Now, while I was abandoned, without the strength to move, and prayed, looking at my angel, who was kneeling at the foot of the bed, to the right - and seemed to be praying with me, and I wondered why he remained like that and was dressed that way - I heard my invisible Teacher say:
“The guardian angel of every creature worships therein the indwelling God, if the creature is in the Lord’s grace.
“You are living temples in which God dwells. Sin drives away the Divine Guest, but otherwise every human spirit is the tabernacle, enclosed in the temple of your body consecrated by the Sacraments, in which the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are present, through the indissoluble union of the Three Persons.
“When the creature is no longer in a state of grace, the angel, weeping, venerates the work of his Creator. He can no longer venerate anything else. But since the creature is the work of his God, he venerates the creature just as you venerate a place once inhabited by Me and then profaned by my enemies, but always worthy of veneration, not because it contains Me, but because it contained Me. To understand, remember the Holy Cenacle.
“This is why every angel remains with supreme respect alongside the one he is protecting. Happy is the angel alongside a creature who can say, ‘I worship You, my Lord, enclosed in this creature of yours,’ and does not need to fly to Heaven to encounter God’s gaze!
“Let the clothing of your angel tell you the nature of his mission to you. To infuse hope into you. Among the three virtues, it is the one which should be infused into you most, for your cross reduces it to crumbles and destroys it by the hour. And it must thus descend from Heaven to nourish you by the hour. Faith is secure, as strong as the wings of your guardian. Love is as alive as the mantle adorning his shoulders. But the robe is ample and shining and says to you, ‘Hope!’
“Do you see that you are never alone? You saw him in the hours of great security in your spiritual condition and of great joy. You are seeing him now, when events are leading you to doubt your mission completely, and the sadness of spiritual solitude is demoralizing you.
“You see him because he is there. Always. He is the angel of your Gethsemane. Love him as a glorious brother who loves you.”
My Note
The angel is kneeling on the right side of the bed, at the foot. He remains with his head inclined, with supreme respect, and with his arms joined over his breast. In the same position he was in at the beginning of January,485 I believe, when I saw Paradise and the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, while Mary and John were alongside me.
The angel is the same. He is my own! How handsome he is! The face of condensed light, with perfect lines, though remaining so inclined, smiles at me. His incorporeal robe looks like a clear emerald turned into a suit of light. On his shoulders a short mantle of very bright light red, like a ruby pierced by a sunbeam. The wings are two white splendors, gathered in along the edges. And how worshipful he is!
I do nothing but repeat Angele Dei! to greet him and Hail Marys, for I remember that in January he taught me to greet Mary, who was present, with that prayer and with that decorous, venerating demeanor of his. Perhaps I should repeat the Gloria. But I think he would let me know. Mary is his Queen, and on praising Mary we also praise God, whose Daughter, Mother, and Spouse She is. I thus believe I am doing something pleasing to God and to my guardian angel in praying this way. But always remain close to me, for I truly am in the “deathly sadness” with which Jesus wept in Gethsemane....486
485 On January 10.
486 Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:33-34.