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Chapter 19

It happened to a person who was wide awake and absorbed in prayer that while she was suspended in an ecstasy of contemplation, she saw herself caught up in spirit to a palace that was of incomprehensible size and indescribable beauty. And it seemed to her that Jesus Christ was sitting among his saints on the imperial seat of majesty. He opened his blessed mouth and uttered these words that are noted down below:

”I truly am supreme charity itself; for all things that I have done from eternity, I have done out of charity; and, in the same way, all things that I do and shall do in the future proceed entirely from my charity. For charity is as incomprehensible and intense in me now as it was at the time of my passion when, through my death and out of exceeding charity, I freed from hell all the elect who were worthy of this redemption and liberation. For if it were still possible that I might die as many times as there are souls in hell so that for each of them I might again endure such a death as I then endured for all, my body would still be ready to undergo all these things with a glad will and most perfect charity. But, in fact, it is now impossible that my body could once more die or suffer any pain or tribulation. And it is also just as impossible that any soul that after my death has been or will be condemned to hell would ever again be freed from there, or would enjoy the heavenly gladness that my saints and chosen ones enjoy at the glorious sight of my body.
No, the damned will feel the pains of hell in an everlasting death because they did not will to enjoy the benefit of my death and passion and did not will to follow my will while they lived in the world. However, because no one is judge over the offenses done to me except myself, and, for this reason, my charity that I have ever shown to human beings makes its complaint in the presence of my justice, it therefore pertains to justice to render judgment on this in accord with my will.
Now I make my complaint about the inhabitants of the kingdom of Cyprus as if about one human being. But I do not complain about my friends who dwell there and who love me with all their heart and follow my will in all things; but I speak in complaint, as if to one person, to all those who scorn me and always resist my will and so very greatly oppose me. And therefore I now begin to speak to them all as if to one.
O people of Cyprus, my adversary, listen and be diligently attentive to what I say to you! I have loved you as a father loves his only son, whom he has willed to exalt to all honor. I conferred on you a land in which you could have in abundance all things necessary for the sustenance of your body. I sent to you the warmth and light of the Holy Spirit that you might understand the right Christian faith to which you faithfully bound yourself, humbly subjugating yourself to the sacred statutes and to the obedience of Holy Church.
Indeed, I placed you in a place that would be quite fitting for a faithful servant, namely, among my enemies, so that in return for your earthly labors and for the physical struggle of battles you would obtain in my heavenly kingdom an even more precious crown. I also carried you for a long time in my heart, i.e., in the charity of my Godhead, and kept you as the apple of my eye in all your adversities and tribulations. And as long as you observed my precepts and faithfully kept obedience and the statutes of Holy Church, then, of a certainty, did an almost infinite number of souls come from the kingdom of Cyprus to my heavenly kingdom to enjoy eternal glory with me for ever.
But because you now do your own will and all those things that delight your heart, without fearing me who am your Judge and without loving me who am your Creator and who also redeemed you through my very hard death; and because you spat me out of your mouth like some foul and unsavory thing; and, indeed, because you have enclosed the devil together with your soul in the chamber of your heart; and because you have driven me thence as if I were a thief and a robber; and because you were no more ashamed to sin in my sight than irrational animals are in their mating, it is therefore a fitting justice and a just judgment that you should be driven out from all my friends in heaven and be placed forever in hell amidst my enemies.
And know this without a doubt: that my Father - who is in me, and I am in him, and the Holy Spirit is in us both - is himself my witness that nothing but truth has ever gone forth from my mouth. Wherefore know for a truth that if anyone has been so disposed as you now are and if he will not amend his life, his soul will go the same way along which went Lucifer because of his pride, and Judas, who sold me because of his greed, and Zimri, whom Phinehas killed because of his lust. For Zimri sinned with a woman against my precept; and therefore, after his death, his soul was condemned to hell.
Wherefore, O people of Cyprus, I now announce to you that if you will not correct yourself and amend your life, then I shall so destroy your generation and progeny in the kingdom of Cyprus that I shall spare neither the poor person nor the rich. Indeed, I shall so destroy this same generation of yours that in a short time, your memory will thus slip away from the hearts of human beings as if you had never been born in this world. Afterward, however, it is my pleasure to, plant new plants in this kingdom of Cyprus that will carry out my precepts and will love me with all their heart.
But, nevertheless, know for a certainty that if anyone of you wills to correct himself, amend his life, and humbly turn back to me, then like a loving shepherd, I shall joyfully run out to meet him, lifting him onto my shoulders and personally carrying him back to my sheep. For by my shoulders I mean that if anyone amends his life, he will share in the benefit of my passion and death, which I endured in my body and shoulders; and he will receive with me eternal consolation in the kingdom of heaven.
You should also know for very certain that you, my enemies who dwell in this said kingdom, were not worthy that such a vision or divine revelation of mine should be sent to you. But some friends of mine who live in the same kingdom and faithfully serve me and love me with their whole heart have, by their labors and tearful prayers, inclined me to make you understand, by means of this my revelation, the grave peril of your souls. For, to some of my said friends there, it has been divinely shown by me how many countless souls from this said kingdom of Cyprus are being excluded from heavenly glory and are being eternally doomed to the death of Gehenna.
However, the above words I speak to those Latin Christians subject to the obedience of the Roman Church, and who, at baptism, vowed to me right Roman Catholic faith, and who, through works contrary to me, have totally withdrawn from me. Greeks, however, who know that all Christians must hold only one Catholic Christian faith and be under only one Church, namely, the Roman, and have, as spiritual pastor over them, only my sole vicar general in the world, namely, the supreme Roman pontiff, and who, nevertheless, will not spiritually subject and humbly subjugate themselves to that same Roman Church and to my vicar because of their stubborn pride or because of greed or because of the wantonness of the flesh or because of some other thing that pertains to the world, are unworthy to obtain pardon and mercy from me after death.
But the other Greeks, who would desirously wish to know the Roman Catholic faith, but cannot, and who nevertheless, if they knew it and had the ability, would willingly and devoutly receive it and would humbly subjugate themselves to the Roman Church and who, nonetheless, following their conscience in their state and faith in which they are, do abstain from sin and live piously - to such as these, after their death, I must show my mercy in the matter of punishment when they are called to my judgment.
Let the Greeks also know that their empire and kingdoms or domains will never stand secure and tranquil in peace, but that they themselves will always be subject to their enemies from whom they will always sustain the gravest of losses and daily miseries until, with true humility and charity, they devoutly subject themselves to the Church and faith of Rome, totally conforming themselves to the sacred constitutions and rites of that same Church.”
When, however, these things had thus been seen and heard in spirit as reported above, the said vision disappeared; and the said person remained at prayer, suspended in no little fear and wonder.

In the kingdom of Cyprus, a certain Friar Minor asked the said lady to advise him as to what he ought to do about some doubts in his conscience, especially concerning the observance of the Rule of his order. When indeed the lady was praying for the abovesaid friar one day in the holy city of Jerusalem, Christ appeared to her and spoke to her, saying many things about the Order of Friars Minor. And at the end he threatens all property-owning religious with everlasting death.

322.