SENTIMENTS OF THE SOUL 1944

September 9

After receiving my Jesus, the pain in my soul was a little softened and at the same time my Beloved gave me a higher intensity of union (which I had already felt yesterday) with all the people I love and with those who in recent times have shown hatred for me. At the same time our Lord told me:

— Pure union, holy union, divine union on earth and in the Heaven. My daughter, give my thanks, and that of Mary, to those who deserves it (Fr Umberto Pasquale), also my love and that of Mary.

Courage on Calvary, beloved daughter! I want to see it showered with your blood; the blood that washes and purifies souls.

Straightaway the sorrowful pains of the body and of the soul returned to me.

September 15

Oh, my God, the storm doesn’t calm! Have pity on me, see how I am wounded. They try to pull me from your arms. Hold me, Jesus, hold me; don’t let them to separate me from You. To lose everything, everything that belongs to the earth, but to possess You, Jesus.

Alas, I feel myself abandoned, alone, alone, without having anyone to call, without having anyone to turn to.

O Jesus, O Heavenly Mother, hear me, hear the cry of my pain. I want to love your Most Holy Hearts, but alas, I do not know what love is, I don’t know. It seems me that it doesn’t exist in the world. Have pity of my cravings, give me the love I desire; in You I hope, Jesus; I want to love You and your Heavenly Mother.

Let me to be lost in You, let me to be lovelorn: inebriate me, inebriate me in Your divine fire.

Jesus, I want You, Jesus, I seek You; though wholly blind, I am looking for You. For you, Jesus, I feel that my breath and my life, are disappearing; I feel that I am losing everything for You.

Oh, my Jesus, four days have passed without  my receiving You. Look upon my soul that is hungry, starving, Jesus!

Come Thou, with Thy food; I lose my life because You desert me, you who are the life of my pain.

Behold this little lamp is almost extinguished; kindle it, Jesus, bring it back to life.

Look at my soul, Jesus, it is going crazy seeking You in your tabernacles. I want to receive You, I want to have You.

You are in the tabernacles, Jesus; let me to meet You there, let me live there.

Let my pain, which has almost killed me, sigh its last breath of life along with You.

O my Jesus, my Love, to have nothing, to have no one supporting me, to hear only the horrors of the storm, to feel the sufferings caused by creatures costs much, Jesus, but to go on without receiving You costs more, much more: I cannot, I do not resist, come to me.

O Jesus, what poverty is mine, what misery, what pain! I do not trust my words, I do not trust any of my feelings. What horror, what horror, what great evil!

Unable to extend my arms, it is in spirit that I extend them on my cross. It's with open arms, with eyes fixed on You that, joyfully I receive all that You give me. It is in spirit, Jesus, that I join my arms to embrace and hold forever all that hurts me, all which is the cross.

I love, I love, Jesus, everything that comes from Your divine hands, I love without knowing the love, I love without possessing it. I love in this sweet hope, I love in this confidence: I belong to Jesus, I belong only to Him, I only want what He wants.

Jesus wants to be loved, perhaps he will make me love Him.

I trust, I trust, I hope in Thee, my Jesus.

September 27

My Jesus, I cannot live here. My cravings continue. I want to love You, I want die of love. I die to give You souls. I want to see them all, all within your heart. All this is nothing, Jesus, nothing for me. I cannot find any satisfaction in the world.

Thank you for your benefits (she means the Holy Communion that was taken to her by Father John Pravisano SDB) and I cannot tell You anything, I do not know how to please You.

If only, Jesus, I could believe in the feelings You give me, if I could convince myself that my cravings are yours and that the desires I have to love You come from You, but nothing at all.

I do not see, I feel nothing except pain and it is disappearing. It is losing its life altogether. Painful are the feelings of my soul.

Hear my cry from the terrible battles with the enemy. It seems to me, Jesus, that when I call You, when I invoke your divine love and that of my Heavenly Mother, I am not heard. I feel my cry is being suffocated in the ash heap of my poor body that is no longer a corpse, as I felt a little while ago, but ashes, only ashes, my Jesus. It seems to me to be already in a cemetery and when in the midst of the agony of my soul, I implore the aid of Heaven, that cry, instead of rising to the top, is lost in that pile of gray ash and in the ash of other bodies that lie in the cemetery where I am, whose extent I cannot measure.

Have mercy, Jesus! See how my poor soul is suffering. I am not myself when I am in pain. My heart, that wishes to love You and to fly to You, is not itself.

I am not expressing myself well, my Jesus; this heart is not mine, I do not know to whom it belongs. Where is it, O Jesus, Who does it belong to? Everything has died. Jesus, have pity on me!

My will is that of yours, yours only, as You know, as you well know, my love. Behold, I am misery, I am nothing and I can do nothing without You. Look, Jesus, do not fail me, Jesus, I hope in You, I trust in You.

The fight is tremendous. They are not enough for me, the times I hear Your sweet voice infusing courage into me and telling me that all is for You, that all is to console You. I want more, Jesus, I need more, much more. The demon throws it in my face that it is only for my pleasure that I submit myself to the treatments commanded by You and by obedience. Even if it meant possessing the whole world, You know, O Jesus, that I would not undergo a single treatment.

The devil appears to me at different times of the day and of the night as a man chained by the waist, sometimes in the form of a lion then also imprisoned, except for the neck, feigning tremendous robberies, but without managing to touch my person. I am next to him like a child who is terrorized, but that does not measure the danger that he could cause.

In the form of man he spits on the ground and insults me by pretending to disgust me, sometimes he claps and laughs, making fun of evil desires which he thinks, and wants to convince me, that they had when they brought me here for treatment. Sometimes he even adopts provocative attitudes to invite me to evil. Since the beginning of these persecutions I feel my body torn, as if my guts and heart are struggling violently to escape from my being.

My cry to Jesus, my only cry against the enemy is: My Jesus, I am your victim.

At such times, the devil in the shape of lion, redoubles the howling and the assault and, when in human form, pronounces the most indecent words against me and the doctor and the others.

After Holy Communion:

I felt myself so discouraged, so depressed and I was unable to say anything to Jesus. I made an effort to repeat many times: "O my dear Jesus, my love, my dear love, I am Thine.” It took me a few moments and I didn’t say anything more to our Lord. He came:

— I like so much, my daughter, it comforts me so much, my beloved dove, that you tell me: "My Jesus, my dear Love, I am yours!" What joy, what consolation and glory for Me!

Repeat it many times. Courage, O my beloved! Do not fear the assaults of the devil. Have courage! Only thus, asking this sacrifice  of you, can reparation be made to me for such grave crimes.

Give me all that I ask for my glory and for the salvation of souls. That's why I chose the doctor for you, much beloved of my divine Heart.

Tell my dear Father Umberto that he has been chosen by Me to be near you. I do not help with his studies as quickly as he would like, but after receiving my divine lights, I want him to go to your dear spiritual Father, who is also dear to my Divine Heart (Fr Mariano Pinho) and to whom I send all my love, and in union with him feed and defend my divine cause.  My friends will help him take care of it, and of what is mine.

Go, dear one, give to my dear Father Umberto the fullness of my divine love, give it to those around you and who hold you: they are all my special ones. Tell my dear Father Umberto that the divine perfume is the scent of your virtues. I say this because he needs it for his study.

In this colloquy with our Lord, I felt twice obliged to leave Him, because I was spoken to by the person who stood beside me. I had the impression of one who is woken from a dream ... energetic, but without turning to the caller ... I felt compelled to kneel, to raise my hands to Heaven so that I could thus better praise our Lord. I felt a craving to vanish into the divine fire and to infuse this love into hearts and souls, but with a greater abundance for those who Jesus called the darlings of His divine Heart. Jesus was repeating words of love for me.

The devil, during the treatment, is still far from me. I always feel a union with Our Lord; during this time, I feel myself even more attached to Him. Today, in that trance, I felt like a caressing breeze and Jesus said to me:

— Peace, peace, my peace, my daughter, is with you. I'm very attached to you: only your strength doesn’t separate Me from you.

I felt in me a new life, though only for a few moments.

September 28

I felt today the devil beside me and within me I felt an unbearable longing to love Jesus, to give Him souls, to know Him and make Him known. Crazy for love, I repeated: Jesus, Jesus, love, love!

In the middle of this, I could not hold back the tears, feeling my misery, my mud in which I live; it caused me horror, the mud in which I live.

My cravings were worth nothing, everything was lost. I felt myself to be in an immense graveyard, and my pain almost without life, even as it was no longer moving around, just covered with ashes, reminding me of those animals in pine forests that make their homes under small heaps of earth and sawdust.

In the midst of this, I continue to offer myself to Jesus as a victim and am always afraid of offending Him. It is a tremendous fight almost without letup.

I live without living, I suffer without suffering, I love without loving.

September 29

This morning Jesus Himself came down to the graveyard, joined the animals, He covered  Himself with the same ash. Everything was  dead inside me. It seemed that death was being mixed, it was like a moaning of the whole mankind. Jesus did not spark any of life in me. I was in sad darkness, in a bitter pain. The souls, the souls, the love of Jesus compel me to suffer everything.

I already feel bitterness in me at the departure of Rev. Father Umberto, who  brought so much light and comfort to my poor soul. I f eel humiliated and knocked down; I don’t know how I can thank Jesus for the benefit of allowing him to come to me. I ask our Heavenly Mother to help me in my pain, to give thanks to Jesus in my stead for so many graces received.

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Note - Fr Umberto Pasquale took up Alexandrina’s spiritual direction on 8 September. The care in gathering together the Sentiments of the Soul is now going to increase. The journals for the three final months of 1944 will fill almost 50 pages.