Chapter 64
THE FIFTEENTH SHOWING
The child does not despair naturally of the mother's love; the child does not naturally presume upon itself; the child naturally loves the mother, and each loves the other naturally. These, with all the others that are like them, are the fair virtues by which our heavenly Mother is served and pleased.
And I understand no status in this life to be more noble than childhood with its feebleness, and its failure of strength and intellect, until the time that our gracious Mother has brought us up into our Father's bliss. There it shall be made known to us in truth what He meant in the sweet words where He says, "All shall be well, and you yourself shall see that all manner of things shall be well." And then shall the bliss of our Mothering by Christ begin anew in the joys of our
Father, God. This new beginning shall continue without end, beginning anew. Thus I understood that all His blessed children who have come out of Him by nature shall be brought into Him again by grace.
Chapter 64 THE FIFTEENTH SHOWING is as it was set down before; the absence of God in life is our greatest pain apart from other hard labor; but we shall suddenly be taken from all pains, since we have Jesus for our Mother; our patient waiting is greatly pleasing to God; and God wills we take our discomfort lightly, for love, thinking we are always at the point of being delivered.
Before this time I had had great longing and desire, by the gift of God, to be delivered from this world and from this life. For frequently I looked at the woe that is here, and the well-being and blessedness that being is there. And if there had been no pain in this life except the absence of our
Lord, it seemed to me sometimes that that was more than I could bear. This made me mourn and long diligently. Also my own wretchedness, sloth, weakness and weariness made it displeasing to me to live and work hard, as it fell to me to do.
To all this our courteous Lord answered, for my comfort
THE REVELATION OF DIVINE LOVE
and patience, and said these words: "Suddenly you shall be taken from all your pain, from all your sickness, from all your discomfort, and from all your woe. You shall come up above and you shall have Me for your reward. You shall be filled full of joy and bliss. You shall never again have any kind of pain, any kind of sickness, any kind of thing to displease you, or any defect in your will. You shall continually have joy and bliss without end. Why, then, should it distress you to suffer a while, since it is My will and for My glory?"
In the words "suddenly you shall be taken" I saw that God rewards man for the patience he has in awaiting God's will and His time, and that man extends his patience beyond his time of living because of his ignorance of the time of his passing. This is a great profit, for if a man knew when he was to die, he would not have patience beyond that time. Also, God wills that while the soul is in the body, it must seem itself that it is continually at the point of being taken.
All this life and this languishing that we have here is only a point, and when we are suddenly taken out of our pain into bliss, then the pain shall be nothing.
And at this time I saw a body lying on the earth. This body appeared heavy, ugly, frightening and without shape or form, as if it were a swollen bog of stinking mud. Suddenly out of this body sprang a most fair creature, a little child fully shaped and formed, swift and lively, and whiter than the lily, who sharply glided up into heaven. The swollenness of the body symbolizes the great wretchedness of our mortal flesh, and the smallness of the child symbolizes the cleanness and purity of our soul. And I thought that no fairness of the child stayed with this body, and that no foulness of the body dwelt in this child.
It is completely blissful for a man to be taken out of pain — more than for pain to be taken from a man. For if pain is taken away from us it can come back again. Therefore it is a sovereign comfort and a blissful vision in a longing soul to see that we shall be taken from pain. In this arrangement I saw the marvelous compassion that our Lord has for us in our woe, and a courteous promise of clean deliverance, for He wills