1. Know that what man judges in himself to be perfection is, before God, defect: for all that he does in things that have the appearance of perfection — even if he only sees them, feels them, understands them, desires them, or remembers them — without recognizing them as coming from God, in all of them he is contaminated and befouled.
2. For, since these operations must be perfect, they must be wrought in us without us, so far as we are concerned as principal agents: and the operation of God must be in God, without man as the first operator.
3. These operations are those which God performs in the last operation of pure and clean love, by Himself alone, without any merit of ours: and they are so penetrating and so burning to the soul that the body which surrounds it seems to be consumed in the same way as one standing in a great fire; for it would never rest until death.
4. It is true that the love of God, which overflows into the soul (as I see), gives it a contentment so great that it cannot be expressed; yet this contentment does not take away one spark of pain from the souls that are in Purgatory.
5. Rather, it is that love which finds itself held back that causes their pain; and the greater the perfection of the love of which God has made them capable, the greater the pain it causes them.
6. So the souls in Purgatory have the greatest contentment and the greatest pain, and the one does not hinder the other.
About this translation
This English translation from the Italian was drafted with AI assistance using SWE-2 Max and prepared as a reading edition for this library. Review has included source provenance, section structure, and selected source comparisons and corrections. It has not included a complete independent, sentence-by-sentence translation audit.
Catherine’s teaching was transmitted by her disciples and first printed in 1551. This translation follows the supplied Italian transcription; the introductory note is editorial.
This is a reading copy, not a critical edition. No professional translation certification or ecclesiastical approval is claimed for this modern edition.
No general reuse licence is specified for this modern translation or its source transcription. The age of the original work does not by itself establish their reuse terms.
Remember Eternity · remembereternity.org. AI-assisted English translation drafted with SWE-2 Max from the Italian; selected source comparisons and corrections only. No complete independent translation audit or ecclesiastical approval is claimed. Catherine’s teaching was transmitted by her disciples and first printed in 1551. This translation follows the supplied Italian transcription; the introductory note is editorial. No general reuse licence is specified for this modern translation or its source transcription.