Flower of Devotion

St. Bridget once saw God as full of anger and heard Him say:

“I am without beginning and without end.” With Me there is neither a change of year nor a change of day, but all the time of this world is before Me, as if it were one hour, as if it were the twinkling of an eye. Everyone who sees Me sees everything that is in Me as if at one point and understands it all.
Since you, My bride, are made up of flesh, you cannot comprehend this, nor can you know how the spirit is capable of this; Therefore, for your sake, I will declare what has happened.
I sat as it were in the court, for all judgment is given to Me, and a man stood before the tribunal to receive his sentence. The Father’s voice spoke to him, saying, “Woe to you that you were ever born!” Not as if God was sorry for having created him, but as one grieves for one for whom he feels pity. Then the voice of the Son said, “I have shed My Blood for you, and I have received the most severe punishment for you; She is completely lost to you, and has nothing to do with you!” The voice of the Holy Spirit said: “I have searched the recesses of his heart to see if I may not find in him one tender feeling of love; but it is as cold as the most terrible frost, as hard as the hardest stone, and I have nothing to do with it!” These three voices were not heard as if there were three Gods, but they were spoken in this way for your sake, My bride, for otherwise you could not have understood this mystery. And then the three voices of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost soon became one, which sounded like this, and said, “The kingdom of heaven does not belong to thee!”
The Mother of Mercy was silent and did not open her mercy, for the one who was judged was not worthy of it; and all the saints cried out with one accord and said, “Justice demands that he be expelled forever from Thy kingdom and from Thy eternal joys.”
Then all those who were in purgatory cried out: “You do not have a torment so bitter that it is sufficient to punish your sins! You deserve greater torments, therefore you will be separated from us!”
Then the one who was being judged spoke with a terrible voice, and cried out, “Woe, woe to the seed from which I was formed in my mother’s womb! Cursed is the hour when my soul is united to my body, and cursed is he who gave me body and soul! Cursed is the hour in which I was born alive!”
Then came three terrible voices from hell against him, crying, “Come to us, you accursed soul! You are like a sunken stone in a river, condemned to eternal death and never-ending life!” A second time the damned cried out: “Come, you damned, vain soul, to our malice; for there will be no one among us who will not persecute you with his anger and his torments.” A third time they cried out: “Come, cursed soul! It is as heavy as a stone that sinks and sinks over and over again, but never has a foothold to rest on. So you too will sink deeper and deeper, more and more from us, so that you will not stop until you come to the deepest abyss!”
Then the Lord added: “I am like the man who has several friends; when he sees that one of them is betraying him, he turns away from him to the others who are faithful to him and rejoices with them.
Therefore, My bride, when you know what has happened to this man and see his misery, serve me all the more zealously the greater the specimenI have mercy on you. Flee from the world and its lusts. Or did I take such a bitter torment upon Myself for the pleasures of the world, or was it because I could not have done it more quickly and easily? I could have done it, of course, but justice demanded it, that as man sinned in all the members, so also in all the members there should be satisfaction. Therefore the Deity had compassion on men and was inflamed with such great love for the Most Pure Virgin that it assumed humanity from Her.
In humanity, God bore all the punishment that man deserved. If, therefore, I have accepted this punishment out of love, then remain as My servants do, continually humble, so that you may be ashamed of nothing and fear nothing but Me. Guard your mouth, so that if it were not My will, you would never want to speak. Do not grieve over earthly things, for they are transitory, and I can make rich and poor whomever I will. Therefore, My bride, put all your hopes entirely in Me.”