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 By Sister Josefa Menendez, a victim soul.

On Saturday, June 5 th , 1920, after a formidable attack of the devil, Josefa decided to go; she went into the chapel with her sisiters for the evening adoration; there, Jesus was waiting for her. Under the influence of the arch-fiend who dominated her :

" No, " she said, " I will not take the habit, I am going home."." I said it five times, but could not go on," she wrote later. " My Jesus how good thou art to me."

All of a sudden she was, as she naively expressed it, wrapped in a sweet slumber , from which she awoke in the wound of the Sacred Heart.

" I cannot explain what happened...Jesus...I want nothing more than to love Thee and to be faithful to my vocation."

In the radiance now illuminating her, she saw all the sins of the world, and offered her life to comfort the wounded Heart of our Lord. She was seized with a vehement desire of uniting herself to Him, and no sacrifice appeared too great that she might be faithful to her vocation. In the effulgence of the Godhead the night had faded away and desolation had given place to unfathomable bliss.

" It was God who did it," she continued in the notes she wrote under obedience." I am abashed at so much goodness; I want to love Him to folly...I have but two requests : love and gratitude to His Sacred Heart...More than ever I recognize my weakness , but also I shall now find strength and courage in Him...Never before have I rested in that Divine Wound...but now I know where to go in moments of tribulation : It is a place of sweetest repose and much love."

" I feel keenly that I have been resisting grace and have been unfaithful , but this has become a further motive of confidence and hope that Our Lord never fail me, even when I seem to be all alone. That was what made me so afraid before: to be alone, and unfaithful. But now I see that, even though I didn't know it, He was helping me. Well, I simply cannot express how much I want to love Him."

When Josefa came out of the chapel, still strongly under the influence of the divine contact, she was a totally changed person.

" And then, I don't know what it is," she added two days later, " but I believe He wants to tell me another secret, because during my prayer yesterday, Monday, June 7th , He made me re-enter that Divine Wound: Oh my Jesus , how great is Thou love for me...I shall never be able to respond to so much goodness. It seemed to me that I saw in that Divine Wound a tiny opening, and I wanted to know how to get in...but He made me understand that it will not be till later."

" Twelve days have passed," she wrote on June , 17th, " since the signal grace Jesus granted me. I have had immense consolation during that time,but especially I have been able to study all that this Sacred Heart was teaching me. He showed me clearly, that what pleases Him most is to do little acts out of obedience. I understood that I must direct all my energies to this, for that is how I shall learn to deny myself in everything, and however small the act is, it will still be pleasing to His Sacred Heart...Oh, I want to be burnt up by love. Oh, what a heart is that of my Jesus!"