6.5

I want you to know, my children, that I do not cease praying to God for you night and day, that He may open the eyes of your hearts to see more clearly the hidden wickedness they pour out upon us at every turn in this present time. I also ask Him to give you a heart of knowledge and a spirit of discernment, so that you may be able to offer your own heart as a holy sacrifice before the Father, in great holiness and without blame.

Truly, my children, they envy us every hour with their evil counsel, their many persecutions, their malice, their spirits of error and blasphemous thoughts, the unbelief they sow in our hearts, the many pains they inflict on us at every hour, and the faintness of spirit by which they ceaselessly wear down the soul. They teach us every kind of anger and slander against one another. They teach us to justify ourselves in what we do and sow condemnation in our minds, so that even when we are alone they make us judge our neighbor though he is not with us. They cast presumption into our hearts, making us hard-hearted in pride, despising one another and becoming bitter toward one another. Every hour we reproach one another and not ourselves. We think our labor rests in our own strength, judging what appears outwardly, while the robber changes everything within our house. They lead us into quarrels, rivalries, and hostility against one another until we establish our own word and appear justified in our own eyes. They stir up zeal in us and make us pursue works impossible for us to carry out, while making us give up at the wrong time the very things that are profitable to us. Therefore they make us laugh when it is time to weep, and weep when it is time to laugh. Simply put, they are always turning us away from the right path and, through many other errors, have made us their slaves; there is no time now to bring all of these into the open.

But when they have filled our hearts with all these things and we have become drunk with them, then God bears with us as long as our wickedness continues. Afterward He visits us through the dissolution of this heavy body, when we leave it. Then the evil works we committed wrongly are revealed to us in the body exposed to punishment, which we shall put on through the forbearance of the Creator; and then our last state becomes worse than the first. Therefore do not grow weary of beseeching the goodness of the Father, that His help may always be with you and that He may teach you self-knowledge, so that you may be well.