February 17, 2023

My master, I am afraid, but I know not of what. What fills me with fear? That I will experience pain? No. That I will have no way to deal with the pain, rather. That you will depart from me, and leave me destitute. How afraid I am of this! How my soul trembles. Do not depart from me. Do not leave me little and small and afraid. Oh Jesus, let me be strong. How afraid I am. How I yearn for you.

Is this the weakening? Will you weaken me by abandoning me? How afraid I am of this! Let the weakness be only physical, and may my spiritual interior remain like a giant among souls. How else can I bear the crosses you give me?

I despise everything. The yarn, the projects, the games, the people, even the idea of marriage, of praying to you, all these things fill me with disgust. I feel that nothing can again bring me happiness. All is sameness, like the texture and taste of dust. Though I hunger, I despise food, and I will not eat, although my body desires it. I feel a mighty sense of desire, but I can center on nothing which my soul desires. Even you, I feel, are only dust. That your presence is not true sweetness. Your mother, too, I feel, is just the same as she ever was.

How I hate to write these things, and I feel the most wretched of all your children. I do not desire to hurt you, but to understand. To know myself, and my sensations. I know that you are allowing these sensations, but I do not wish to acknowledge this. I hate that you are allowing this.

I have the strongest inclination to gorge myself on fine foods, though any examples that present themselves to my mind are foul. I want to throw myself into a bathtub and scrub vigorously, because I feel I must be dirty, and this is why I feel this way. Yet, my body is clean today and there is no purpose to this. If I run away, perhaps this will bring relief, my body suggests to me, but where would I go? How long would I last? I cannot even get up from this bed, nor is there anyone I desire to see. I want to stay here, yet I hate being seated. I am bored, and feel like I am failing, yet when I do things, they do not satisfy. I feel like I surround myself with ideas and inventions, and all are fruitless. There is no life in me. No benefit to my efforts. I am nothingness. Everything I do is the worst of all efforts, and everyone in the world is better than I at any pursuit.

Is this the dark night of the soul? How I abhor, of all ideas, that you will depart from me. You do not allow me to doubt your love and care, yet I despise my worthiness. I despise that you have only this to work with. It is like a great artist was given only a dirty wall as a canvas, and mud as the medium. How beautiful can he really make that? How beautiful can you really make me? I am mud. I am dirty. I am a wall. Spit upon me, this is all I deserve.

Yet I do not even know what has caused these feelings of unworthiness! I can center on no crime, no fault within me that is greater than the crimes or faults of others. I know that, on account of your grace, you have kept me from sin for so much of my life, and so it cannot be these accumulations of sins that causes this agony. Nor, even if I had before been the worst of sinners, I know that your mercy could have washed me clean, and Baptism or Confession would have made me a new child, had such a redemption been necessary. So it is not these things.

Therefore, I am so ungrateful! So destitute, because I have so much to be grateful for, and yet I hate myself, and you, and everything. When you withdraw, I am left with only miserable hatred.

I surrender this hatred to you. In fact, I gift it to you, because it is all I have right now. I do not know what benefit or pleasure you could possibly receive from this, but I offer it anyway. Perhaps your mother, who presents all my gifts before you, will wrap it so splendidly that it looks like joy. I do not know.

Praise your name forever! I will forever praise your name.