prove useful to thy salvation; when the period which I had determined for the combat had elapsed, I sent my beams of light and the shades of hell were dissipated, because they could not resist the light. Is it not I in fine who gives thee to comprehend that these trials were serviceable to thou for the acquisition of strength, and that it was thy duty to support them cordially, according to my good pleasure ? Because thou have accepted them with thy whole heart, thou are delivered from them by my presence; what pleases me is not trouble, but the will that supports it courageously. I created thou in my own image and likeness, and I have assimilated myself to you, in taking thy nature. I never cease rendering thou like to me, so long as thou offer no obstacle, and what I did during my mortal life, I strive to renew in thy soul as long as thy pilgrimage endures. Therefore beloved daughter, it is not by thy virtue, but mine, that thou have so generously combatted, and merited such an abundant grace; now I will visit thou more often and more familiarly than ever."
The vision disappeared and Catherine remained absorbed with a joy and sweetness that words cannot express; her heart was especially inebriated with the way in which our Lord addressed her: "Catherine , my daughter." When relating to her Confessor what she then experienced, she besought him to employ the same expressions, in order to renew in her soul their ineffable sweetness.
From that moment the heavenly Spouse visited her with a familiarity which would appear incredible, were we ignorant of what has preceded. But the soul that knows by experience that the goodness of God is above all that man can imagine, will see in the following only things very possible and very probable. The Lord appeared
