When my parents, then single, moved from the country to the city, they lost contact with the Church. It was better this way. They maintained relationships with people unrelated to religion. They met at a dance, and were "forced" to marry six months later. At the wedding ceremony, they received just a few drops of holy water, enough to draw Mom to Sunday Mass a few times a year. She never really taught me how to pray. All her efforts were exhausted in the daily tasks of the house, although our situation was not bad. Words like pray, mass, holy water, church, I can only write with intimate repugnance, with incomparable revulsion. I deeply detest those who go to Church and, in general, all men and all things. Everything is torment. Every knowledge received,
And all these memories show us the opportunities in which we despise a grace. How this torments me! We don't eat, we don't sleep, we don't walk on our feet. Spiritually chained, we reprobates contemplate our failed lives in despair, howling and gnashing our teeth, tormented and full of hatred. You understand? Here we drink hate as if it were water. We hate each other. More than anything, we hate God. I want you to understand. The blessed in heaven must love God, because they see him unveiled, in his dazzling beauty. This makes them indescribably happy. We know it, and this knowledge infuriates us. Men, on earth, who know God through Creation and Revelation, can love him. But they are not required to do so.
The believer - I tell you furiously - who contemplates, meditating, Christ with open arms on the cross, will end up loving him. But the soul that God approaches withering, as an avenger and justice because one day he was rejected, as it happened with us, this one can only hate him, as we hate him. She hates him with all the force of his ill will. He hates him eternally, because of the deliberate resolution to turn away from God with which he ended his earthly life. We cannot revoke this perverse will, nor would we ever want to.
¿Do you understand now why hell lasts forever? Because our stubbornness never melts, it never ends. And against my will I add that God is merciful, even with us. I say "against my will" because even if I say these things voluntarily, I am not allowed to lie, which is what I would want. I leave a lot of information on paper against my wishes. I must also strangle the avalanche of swear words that I would like to vomit. God was merciful to us because he did not allow us to spill on the earth the evil that we wanted to do. If he had allowed us, we would have greatly increased our guilt and punishment. He made us die before our time, like he did me, or he made extenuating causes intervene.
I displeased you one day when I told you, during a walk, what my father said a few days before my communion: "Rejoice, Anita, for the new dress; the rest is nothing more than a joke." I am almost ashamed of your displeasure. Now I laugh. The only reasonable thing about all that comedy was that children were allowed to take communion at twelve years of age. I was already, back then, quite possessed by the pleasure of the world. Without scruples, he left aside religious things. Don't take communion seriously. The new custom of allowing children to receive their first communion at age 7 makes us furious (this healthy custom was introduced by Saint Pius X). We use all means to make fun of this, making believe that to receive communion there must be understanding. It is necessary that the children have committed some mortal sins.
¿Do you remember that I used to think like that when I was on earth? I go back to my father. He fought a lot with mom. I rarely told you, because he embarrassed me. What a ridiculous thing, shame! Here, everything is the same. My parents no longer slept in the same room. I slept with mom, dad slept in the next room, where he could come back at any time of the night. He drank a lot and spent our fortune. My sisters were employed, they said they needed their own money. Mom started work. During the last year of her life, dad hit her many times when she didn't want to give him money. With me, he was always kind. One day I told you about a whim that left you scandalized. And why weren't you scandalized by me? When I twice returned a new pair of shoes because the shape of the studs wasn't modern enough.
On the night Dad died of a stroke, something happened that I never told you about, for fear of an unpleasant interpretation. Today, however, you should know. It is a memorable fact: for the first time, the spirit that torments me approached me. I slept in mom's room. Her regular breathing revealed a deep sleep. Then I heard my name called. An unknown voice murmured, "What will happen if your father dies?"
The next morning, when Mom went to tidy up Dad's room, she found the door locked. At noon, they opened it by force. Dad, half naked, was dead on the bed. Going to get beer in the basement, he must have had a fatal crisis. He had been ill for a long time. (¿Would God have made it depend on the will of his daughter, with whom the man was kind, the obtaining of more time and opportunity to convert?).
Marta K. and you made me join the youth association. I never hid from you that I considered the instructions of the two headmistresses, the Miss Xs, too "parochial". The games were quite amusing. As you know, in a short time I came to have a leading role there. That was what I liked. I also liked excursions. I came to let myself come a few times to confess and take communion. To tell the truth, he had nothing to confess. Thoughts and words meant nothing to me. And for grosser actions she was not yet ripe.
One day you called my attention: "Ana, if you don't pray more, you'll get lost." Really, I prayed very little, and that little was always reluctant, ill-willed. You were certainly right. Those who burn in hell either did not pray, or prayed little. Prayer is the first step to reach God. It is the decisive step. Especially the prayer to Her who is the mother of Christ, whose name we are not lawful to pronounce. Devotion to her tears countless souls from the devil, souls that her sins would have infallibly cast into his hands.
Furious, I continue, because I am forced to do it, although I can't take any more of so much rage. Praying is the easiest thing on earth to do. And precisely on this, which is very easy, God makes our salvation depend. To the one who prays with perseverance, gradually God gives him so much light, and strengthens him in such a way, that even the most hardened sinner can recover, even if he finds himself sunk in a swamp up to his neck. During the last years of my life I no longer prayed, thus depriving myself of graces, without which no one can be saved.
Here, we do not receive any kind of grace. Even if we received it, we would reject it with derision. All the hesitations of earthly existence ended in this afterlife. On earth, man can pass from the state of sin to the state of grace. From grace, he can fall into sin. Many times I fell from weakness; few, out of wickedness. With death, each one enters a final state, fixed and unalterable. As you get older, changes become more difficult. It is true that one has time until death to join God or to turn away from him. However, as if he were swept away by a current, before the final transit, with the last remnants of his weakened will, the man behaves according to the customs of his entire life.
Habit, good or bad, becomes second nature. It is this that draws him to the supreme moment. That's how it happened with me. I lived a whole year apart from God. Consequently, in the last call of grace, I decided against God. The fatality was not having sinned frequently, but rather that I did not want to get up any more. Many times you invited me to attend sermons or to read pious books. My usual excuses were lack of time. Could I perhaps want to increase my inner doubts? Finally, I have to record the following: when I reached this critical point, shortly before leaving the "Youth Association", it would have been very difficult for me to change course. I felt insecure and unhappy. But in front of the conversion a wall was raised.
You didn't suspect it was so serious. You thought the solution was so simple, that one day you told me: "You have to make a good confession, Ani, everything will be normal again." She knew that it would be like that. But the world, the devil and the flesh, held me too firmly in their clutches. I never believed in the influence of the devil. Now, I testify that the devil acts powerfully on people who are in the condition I was in then. Only many prayers, my own and others, along with sacrifices and suffering, could have rescued me. And even this, little by little.
While there are few bodily possessed, there are countless who are internally demon possessed. The devil cannot take away the free will of those who abandon themselves to his influence. But, as punishment for their almost total apostasy from him, God allows the "evil" to nestle in them. I also hate the devil. I like him though, because he tries to ruin all of you: him and his minions, the angels who fell with him since the beginning of time. They are millions, wandering the earth. Countless as swarms of flies; you do not perceive them. It is not up to us reprobates to tempt: that belongs to the fallen spirits.
Every time they drag a new soul to the bottom of hell, they increase their torments even more. But what is hate not capable of! Although I walked down tortuous paths, God was looking for me. I prepared the way for grace, with acts of natural charity, which I often did due to an inclination of my temperament. Sometimes God would draw me to a church. There, I felt a certain nostalgia. When I was taking care of my sick mother, despite my work in the office during the day, making a real sacrifice, the attractions of God were powerfully at work. Once it was in the hospital chapel, where you took me during the noon break. I was so impressed that I was only one step away from my conversion. I cried. But, immediately, the pleasure of the world arrived, spilling like a torrent on grace. The thorns choked the wheat.
On another occasion, you caught my attention because, instead of genuflecting to the floor, I only gave a slight bow with my head. You thought that he did this out of laziness, without suspecting that, even then, he had stopped believing in the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. Now I believe, although only materially, just as one believes in the storm, whose signs and effects are perceived.
It is commonly said that "hell is the best missionary in heaven", I verify this every time I read this true story that divine mercy left us. May God, in his infinite goodness, let this story truly touch our hearts and, despite our frailty, weakness and misery, definitively convert our souls so that one day we may deserve heaven as a reward for our perseverance or purgatory due to his divine justice, but never hell.
TO BE CONTINUE...
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