Ms C 35r

[35r°] Your Love has gone before me, and it has grown with me, and now it is an abyss whose depths I cannot fathom. Love attracts love, and, my Jesus, my love leaps toward Yours; it would like to fill the abyss which attracts it, but alas! it is not even like a [5] drop of dew lost in the ocean! For me to love You as You love me, I would have to borrow Your own Love, and then only would I be at rest. O my Jesus, it is perhaps an illusion but it seems to me that You cannot fill a soul with more love than the love with which You have filled mine; it is for this reason that I dare to [10] ask You “to love those whom you have given me with the love with which you loved me.” One day, in heaven if I discover You love them more than me, I shall rejoice at this, recognizing that these souls merit Your Love much more than I do; but here on earth, I cannot conceive a greater immensity of love than the one which it has pleased You [15] to give me freely, without any merit of my part.

My dear Mother, I finally return to you; I am very much surprised at what I have just written, for I had no intention of doing so. Since it is written it must remain, but before returning to the story of my brothers, I want to tell you, Mother, that I do not apply to them but [20] to my little Sisters the first words borrowed from the Gospel: “I have given them the words that you have given to me,” etc., for I do not believe myself capable of instructing missionaries; happily, I am not as yet proud enough for that! I would not have been capable either

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Ms C 35r