What ardent charity!

June 29

"Oh, how miserable I am! - Exclaimed the great vessel of election, the apostle of the Gentiles - who shall deliver me from this body of death? '. No one can doubt that this apostle was one of the greatest saints and almost a first magnitude star in the field of Holy Church. Many persecutions, how much suffering, how many jobs suffered by Jesus Christ! What ardent charity, what flames of love, what ardent zeal for his honor! Many revelations, many visions, many ecstasies and raptures to the third heaven! And yet, the holy apostle, full of such great virtues and gifts so sublime, utters the lament mentioned above. Confess the saint have been stoned, beaten many times, have been in danger of sinking in the sea, carried day and night by the waves from one party to another: "Thrice was I beaten with rods, once stoned, thrice I shipwrecked, I spent a day and a night adrift at sea. " Confess your sleepless nights, his many fasts, hunger, thirst, nakedness and the rigors of cold, tolerated for the sake of Jesus, "often sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, often without food, cold and nakedness '. Claim has been caught up into paradise while still in mortal flesh, "was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which man can not express." He even said that he no longer lives in himself, which only lives in Jesus, transformed by love into it: "I live and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me."Now tell me, my little one, what is missing from this great apostle and teacher of the Gentiles to declare it perfect? Although he felt in himself an army, consisting of his moods, dislikes, habits and natural inclinations, which plotted their ruin and spiritual death. And, because it fears this shows that he hates, and hates it because it can not suffer the pain that makes you burst into the exclamation to which he responds: that the grace of God through Jesus, will preserve , no fear, no terror, not of the fight (all things, my beloved daughter, that you feel), but rather the destruction, and not allow it to be defeated.(June 18, 1917, Mary Gargani - Letters. III, p. 276)