Get to know the Diary of… April 16, 1937. Today, as God’s Majesty swept over me, my soul understood that the Lord, so very great though He is, delights in humble souls. The more a soul humbles itself, the greater the kindness with which the Lord approaches it. Uniting himself closely with it, He raises it to His very throne. Happy is the soul whom the Lord himself defends. I have come to know that only love is of any value; love is greatness; nothing, no works, can compare with a single act of pure love of God. Oh, what pain it causes my heart when I see a nun who has not the religious spirit! How can one be pleasing to God when one is inflated with pride and self-love under the pretense of striving for God’s glory, while in fact one is seeking one’s own glory? When I see such a thing, it gives me very great pain. How can such a soul be united closely with God? Union with the Lord is out of the question here. + It is when I meet with hypocrisy that I suffer most. Now I understand You, my Savior, for rebuking the pharisees so severely for their hypocrisy. You associated more graciously with hardened sinners when they approached You contritely. When I was left alone with the Blessed Virgin, She instructed me concerning the interior life. She said, The soul’s true greatness is in loving God and in humbling oneself in His presence, completely forgetting oneself and believing oneself to be nothing, — because the Lord is great, but He is well-pleased only with the humble, He always opposes the proud. O God of compassion, You alone can justify me, and You will never reject me when I, contrite, approach Your Merciful Heart, where no one has ever been refused, even if he were the greatest sinner. 593 O my Jesus, nothing is better for the soul than humiliations. In contempt is the secret of happiness, when the soul recognizes that, of itself, it is only wretchedness and nothingness, and that whatever it possesses of good is a gift of God. When the soul sees that everything is given it freely and that the only thing it has of itself is its own misery, this is what sustains it in a continual act of humble prostration before the majesty of God. And God, seeing the soul in such a disposition, pursues it with His graces. As the soul continues to immerse itself more deeply into the abyss of its nothingness and need, God uses His omnipotence to exalt it. If there is a truly happy soul upon earth, it can only be a truly humble soul. At first, one’s self-love suffers greatly on this account, but after a soul has struggled courageously, God grants it much light by which it sees how wretched and Saint Faustina “...and the more she humbles herself, the more God stoops down to her, pursuing her with His graces and accompanying her at every moment with His omnipotence.”
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