Mary says:
“Since I bore the Son in myself, I have seen everything with different eyes. In the air surrounding me, in the sun warming me, in the moonbeam descending into my little room to keep me company in my nocturnal meditations, in the shining of the stars, in the flowers of the little garden or of the fields in Nazareth, in the water singing in the fountain built by Joseph to spare me the physical and moral fatigue of emerging from my almost habitual solitude, and in the little lambs with the voice of a child, I saw my Lord, the Father of my Son, and the Spouse of my virginal spirit; above all, I saw my Child, through whom all things have been made. His eyes were open in me, and I saw with the eyes of my God, who was my Child.
“The virtues increased in power within me like the flow of a rising tide, and the more my Child grew, the more his infinite Perfection pervaded his Mother, as if from his holy flesh the power which was to spread out in the three years of his ministry were flowing in rays of spiritual ether to renew me entirely.
“Oh, daughter! God, in his goodness, had me greeted as ‘Full of grace.’ But the fullness was in me when I was one with my Son. It was then my soul, one with God, that received his abundance of the virtues.
“Charity was the pre-eminent one at that time. If I loved before, afterwards I surpassed creaturely love, for I loved with the heart of the Mother of God. I burned. Fire is a veil of frost on a winter field compared to the ardor which was in me. I no longer saw creatures with a woman’s thought, but with the mind of the Bride of the Most High and the Mother of the Redeemer. Those creatures were mine.
“My spiritual motherhood then began, for there was no need, no, for Simeon to speak in order to know my destiny. I knew because I possessed Wisdom within me. He became flesh in me, and his words ran like blood through my being and flowed into my heart, where I kept them. The future life of my Son held no secrets for his Mother, who was bearing Him. And if this was torture, for I was the Woman, it was also blessedness equal to that of my Child, for to do the Will of God and redeem to reunite to God those separated and obtain the annulment of sin and an increase in the Father’s glory is what produces the happiness of the true children of God. And my sweet Jesus and I, through the goodness of God, his Mother, are the founders of the family.
“When one really loves, one lives not for oneself, but for others. When one possesses God, one loves perfectly, and every other perfection comes in the wake of Charity. Even the human senses are perfected, so that all that is around us takes on a different light, voice, and color and, above all, bears a sign which only those possessing God see: his own, holy and ineffable; and there is no need to say words to pray, for it is enough for our eyes to rest upon created things in order for our hearts to rise in the highest prayer, which is fusion with the Creator.
“Let us, then, sing the Magnificat for all the things which the Lord has done for us, Maria, for when we gave ourselves to God, God made us queens and set aside a part of his possessions for us, so that even the humblest woman can say, ‘My soul glorifies its Lord, who has looked at his handmaid, for whom He has done great things, and from now on I shall be called “blessed”!’ ”