without drinking or eating as long as her ecstacy had endured.
Let the Reader here remark how "admirable are the ways of God, and how worthy to be praised." That the sublimity of her revelations might not swell her with pride, God permitted Catherine to fall into this deceit, if we may call falsehood a word without intention of deceiving and without attaching any importance to it; this humiliation served to induce her to be more vigilant over the treasure entrusted to her, and her body which had been so to speak, oppressed by the elevation of the mind, was restored in a manner by its abasement. Although the joy of the soul is sensible to the body, on account of their intimate union, still the ravishment to the third heaven, that is to say, to the intellectual vision, so deprives the body of its particular life, that a new miracle is necessary to preserve it from death. It is certain that the act of the understanding does not require the mediation of the body, except to represent to itself the immaterial object; but if this object presents itself supernaturally to the mind, by the omnipotent effect of grace, the understanding finds the plenitude of its perfection in Christ and endeavors to unite itself to him, by abandoning the body. Sometimes the Dispenser of all good elevates the intelligence that he created, by showing to it his light; sometimes he humbles it by permitting some fall, in order to exhibit to it at once the divine perfection and its own weakness He thus sustains it in a happy mean, which saves it and conducts it through the storms of this world to the port of a blessed Eternity, "for virtue is perfected in weakness." (I Cor. xvi. 9) and also, Ne magnitudo revelationum extollat ne datus est mihi stimulus carnis mece. (I Cor. xvi, 7. ) To return to our subject, Catherine did not disclose
