the prophecies of which were then receiving their accomplishment in
him. I saw angels standing around. Again I looked at Jesus--my beloved
Spouse--on his Cross, agonising and dying, yet still in dreary solitude.
He at that moment endured anguish which no mortal pen can describe,--he
felt that suffering which would overwhelm a poor weak mortal if
deprived at once of all consolation, both divine and human, and then
compelled, without refreshment, assistance, or light, to traverse the
stormy desert of tribulation upheld by faith, hope, and charity alone.

His sufferings were inexpressible; but it was by them that he
merited for us the grace necessary to resist those temptations to
despair which will assail us at the hour of death,-- that tremendous hour
when we shall feel that we are about to leave all that is dear to us
here below. When our minds, weakened by disease, have lost the power of
reasoning, and even our hopes of mercy and forgiveness are become, as
it were, enveloped in mist and uncertainty,--then it is that we must fly
to Jesus, unite our feelings of desolation with that indescribable
dereliction which he endured upon the Cross, and be certain of
obtaining a glorious victory over our infernal enemies. Jesus then
offered to his Eternal Father his poverty, his dereliction, his
labours, and, above all, the bitter sufferings which our ingratitude
had caused him to endure in expiation for our sins and weakness; no
one, therefore, who is united to Jesus in the bosom of his Church must
despair at the awful moment preceding his exit from this life, even if
he be deprived of all sensible light and comfort; for he must then
remember that the Christian is no longer obliged to enter this dark
desert alone and unprotected, as Jesus has cast his own interior and
exterior dereliction on the Cross into this gulf of desolation,
consequently he will not be left to cope alone with death, or be
suffered to leave this world in desolation of spirit, deprived of