O my God! enable me now to make others understand what then took place in my soul.
I leaned my head against my clasped hands, and after a moment's silence, during which I summoned all the strength of my will, I slowly repeated with the utmost sincerity the words he dictated:
“O my God! root out of my heart everything that separates it from Thee.”...
O merciful, divine Goodness! how shall I speak of Thee? how tell of thy marvellous grace and love? While uttering these words, before they were even ended, I felt touched by some strange, mysterious, supernatural influence. My heart and soul seemed filled with light. My whole being was transformed. I was inundated with a joy that could not be expressed in human language, and the source of this joy, the sensible cause, which I still feel, and shall never cease to feel, was the conviction made audible in some miraculous manner that God loves me!
God loves me. Yes, I heard these words. I comprehended their entire signification. The Veil was forever withdrawn. The mysterious enigma of my heart was solved as clearly and obviously as my eyes beheld the light of day.
I loved, not as we try, but in vain, to love our fellow-creatures; I loved with all the strength of my heart! and with so much strength that I could not have loved more without dying!...
All human language is inadequate, I know, to speak of supernatural grace. I can only stammer as I attempt it, and will no longer dwell on the ineffable moment which wrought an entire transformation in my life. I no longer recollect what words I then uttered, or what was said to me: I only remember the holy absolution I received with bowed head, and these words, afterwards uttered in a tone of emotion: “Be calm, my child, and go in peace.”
I had knelt down overwhelmed with sadness. I rose up so happy that I suffered from the great intensity of a joy my heart was too weak to endure!