in satisfying her desires. Her Confessor, in his notes which he left, says that he did not intend celebrating Mass on that day, and that he was quite ignorant of her arrival; but grace suddenly touched his heart and gave him such an attraction for the holy Mysteries, that he yielded without delay, and went precisely to the altar at which Catherine awaited him, although it was not the one that he habitually used. There he found his spiritual daughter who asked him for the holy Communion, and he comprehended that he was the instrument of Providence; he therefore celebrated the Mass and gave Catherine the holy Communion. When she advanced towards the altar, her face was red, shining, and bathed in tears and perspiration; she received the Holy Communion with a devotion that deeply moved her Confessor, and filled him with admiration. Then she remained totally absorbed in God, lost in the inebriation of his heavenly communications, and during that day, even after having recovered the use of her senses, she remained incapable of utterance.
On the morrow, her Confessor asked her what had happened to her at the moment of receiving holy Communion, when her countenance was so red. "Father," said she to him, " I know not of what color I was, but I assure you that at the instant in which I partook of the Holy Eucharist, my senses discerned nothing corporal or colored; but my soul contemplated a beauty, relished a sweetness that no expression can render. What I beheld so attracted me, that things of earth seemed to me but emptiness and dust; and this, not only of wealth and sensual pleasures, but also of the enjoyments of the mind and heart. I implored God to deprive me of them completely, so that I might only please him and possess him.
